IPP Mail Archive: IPP> Document Object Spec Comments...

IPP> Document Object Spec Comments...

From: Mike Sweet (mike@easysw.com)
Date: Mon Apr 28 2003 - 23:07:52 EDT

  • Next message: Michael Sweet: "Re: IPP> Should we do a PWG IPP/1.2 standard?"

    First, given the number of changes/issues, I think we need to do
    another revision and review of the spec.

    OK, here is a list of problems with the current document object
    spec draft:

         1. Create-Document and Send-Data are not well thought out.
            Assuming that the current Validate-Job operation is
            insufficient to validate the document format and job
            template attributes for a document file, Create-Job
            adds a serious Denial-of-Service vulnerability - just
            do a bunch of Create-Job calls to use up all of the
            server's resources.

            My recommendation is to map PSI's Create-Document operation
            to Validate-Job with the additional job/document template
            attributes in the spec, and to map Send-Data to
            Send-Document.

         2. All MUSTs for the document-format-details collection
            attributes should be CMUSTs.

         3. document-format-details opens up a big can of security
            worms, and has very limited usefulness. Like print-by-
            reference, "packaged" files sometimes need authentication
            (passwords). They also can (and often do) contain embedded
            paths which are a serious security risk as well as an
            interop nightmare. If the purpose is for supporting web
            page printing, XHTML-Print is probably the way to go...

            Also, it is not clear how a client is supposed to determine
            whether the server supports this attribute; the absense of
            document-format-details-supported may not be sufficient
            since some implementations (e.g. CUPS) may choose not to
            send collection attributes that are not requested to
            avoid compatibility problems with clients that do not
            support collections...

    -- 
    ______________________________________________________________________
    Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products                  mike@easysw.com
    Printing Software for UNIX                       http://www.easysw.com
    



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