Harry,
a few personal comments from my point of view:
1. my company Oasis Semiconductor is very engaged in the MFP section of the market.
so I would certainly listen carefully to everything that type of group would say.
2. I suffer with some conceptional design decisions in the Semantic Model.
I think the description of the finishing features was rushed and could be reviewed.
and I am a believer that a structured tree has some advantages over a long list of standalone feature or capabilities descriptions. instead of describing the same element three times and call it something like 'FeatureDefault', 'FeatureReady' and 'FeatureSupported' I would prefer a structured tree of features, allow the tree to be defined three times and add an attribute with three enumerations 'Default', 'Ready' and 'Supported'. that way the firmware and host software could reuse the same functions with different meaning. and the SM would decrease in size, which I consider artificially blown up by that cause.
3. the UPDF structure supports PrintCapabilities.
it was designed from the beginning - to be exact, at some early stage it was planned - to support other device processes like faxing and scanning as well.
so the way the UPDF structures are designed, they could be easily extended to support drivers of other processes.
Don't know exactly what you have in mind, as there are quite some parameters an MFP cares about.
but I'll follow the discussion.
cheers
Norbert Schade
----- Original Message -----
From: Harry Lewis
To: pwg-announce at pwg.org
Sent: Friday, June 18, 2004 12:37 PM
Subject: PWG-ANNOUNCE> Call for interest - Complete Standard Imaging Model
The PWG has a legacy of developing standards that span a large segment of the printing industry. The Printer MIB, for example, has been adopted in devices ranging from low-price, low-speed network attached printers to very high speed production applications. The PWG Common Semantic Model, likewise, is leveraged by industry standards ranging from CIP4 to Bluetooth.
One area of primary focus, the networked office device, has undergone a transformation from network printer to network MFD with an associated shift toward to a services oriented, fleet managed placement and operation model. This begs for new standards upon with to base new tools development to enable remote management of heterogenous fleets. The PWG is responding to this need, largely via the WIMS (Web-based Imaging Management Services) effort which includes extending the PWG Common Semantic Model to express the necessary device management elements.
WIMS presents the opportunity (and need) for the PWG to model more than just the printer, print job and document... but to grow our model to embrace a more complete imaging system including scan, fax, copy and finishing services. THIS IS A CALL FOR INTEREST IN FORMATION AND PARTICIPATION IN A FORMAL, MFD ORIENTED, PWG WORKING GROUP TO DEFINE A COMPLETE STANDARD IMAGING MODEL. I hope the industry will respond with a show of support for this effort. To create a CSIM working group we will need volunteer leadership and knowledgeable participants from across the industry. If, due to lack of bandwidth (in PWG and the industry) we cannot muster critical mass, the default approach will be for WIMS to develop a skeleton set of objects, enough to express the state and some metrics interesting to fleet management and billing (ex. number of scan impressions).
We try not to clog up "pwg-announce" with long threads so I invite you to respond to me, personally and copy your response to "pwg at pwg.org" where we welcome and encourage general discussion about goals and operation of the PWG.
I look forward to your responses and I will plan a report on this topic and proposal for action during the PWG Plenary in Montreal August 18, 2004.
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Harry Lewis
IBM STSM
Chairman - IEEE-ISTO Printer Working Group
http://www.pwg.org
IBM Printing Systems
http://www.ibm.com/printers
303-924-5337
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