I'm not sure exactly what "bolt" means, but I don't really understand your
concern. We aren't bolting anything on that I know of. We are allowing the
messaging system represented by fax to be accessed by internet messaging
systems. This does not eliminate the need for internet printing. If you are
connected to the internet and the internet printing standards are complete,
then it is likely that this will displace much of the fax traffic of today.
I would like to suggest that any work done in this area will include many of
the constructs used in fax, such as a means to negotiate file formats for
remote rendering, etc. This doesn't mean that we should "brain dead" use
T.30 fax for these things (I have never suggested that).
However, fax technology does provide lots of tools for sending SCANNED
documents to another remote site for printing. These standards are still
extremely popular (t.4 huffman encoding for example, which is used in many
GDI "printer" applications also). I daresay that the simplicity of the
compressed bit-map representation is certainly attractive when you have to
express this as a standard. The printer languages (I have personnally
written my share of emulations) are quite complex by comparison, and
sometimes the files are surprisingly larger than the equivalent compressed
bit-map representation. Am I saying that g3fax is the best format for
printers? NO! In fact, as you are aware, I presented at the last PWG meeting
the need to register the various printer languages as MIME types so that
these could be sent as MIME attachments. So, I do want to see these printer
languages supported.
Don, you state that your opinion is that Fax will go away as we know it. I
agree. But I don't agree that it will be _replaced_ by internet printing.
The fax paradigm is scan-here, print-there. Today, in spite of email
displacing much of the fax traffic, it has not decreased in volume -- just
the opposite of what you might think, and contrary to many marketing
pundits. Just because internet printing becomes available, this doesn't mean
that fax traffic will decrease then either. Will the protocols used on the
PSTN change over time for fax? You bet. Will fax be made to interoperate
with the internet? You bet.
The bottomline is that providing interoperability between the facsimile
infrastructure and the internet makes good sense. It does not eliminate the
need for internet printing standards, and I know the MFPA is firmly behind
the upswelling of interest in this direction as well. We were first to
propose logical inter-domain job submission schemes for printing and other
operations that would work on both PSTN and internet printing situations.
Don, let's work together to make both internet printing and fax-internet
interoperability become real. Since you apparently prefer to contribute to
the internet printing work, I'm ready to work on that too. Fair enough?
-Raymond
/***********************************************************************
** Raymond Lutz Voice: 619-447-3246
** Director R & D, Cognisys, Inc. Fax: 619-447-6872
** MFPA EC Chair BBS: 619-447-2223
** 1010 Old Chase Ave., Suite B EMail: raylutz@cognisys.com
** El Cajon (San Diego Co.), CA 92020 USA MFPA: 1-800-603-MFPA
** WWW: http://www.cognisys.com http://www.mfpa.org
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