A few days ago, I stated my lack of support in Ron's ballot request...
>I am requesting a formal ballot regarding the recent request
>from Xerox to expand the object jmSystemAttributeSupport to three objects.
I should elaborate that I do not object to the particular
jmSystemAttributeSupport changes proposed by Xerox but to the entire notion
of submitting an updated version of the Job MIB to the IETF if that version
has new mandatory objects which were not part of the agreed PWG standard,
closed months ago, and which is the basis of all prototypes and
implementations thus far.
The existing PWG Job MIB standard (v1) has been intended for submission to
the IETF for consideration as an RFC. (It has been debated whether this
would
be standards track with the Printer MIB, Informational, Experimental etc...
but, nonetheless, the Job MIB would be submitted).
Recently, there have been proposals, resulting from prototypes, which have
been discussed and agreed to be improvements. I agreed to the addition of
an optional "mirror table" as part of the IETF submission because it was
optional. Later there was the notion of a "system table" to differentiate
Job MIB versions. This would be a new mandatory table. Finally, there are
proposed modifications in the details of the objects in this table.
While I welcome and have been very willing to discuss spec changes to the
standard, I feel the PWG process recognizes a v1 PWG Job MIB standard which
is in PWG maintenance mode. I believe this should be considered the most
stable version and the one that is published to the IETF. A SECOND updated
PWG Job MIB standard is entirely feasible but I don't believe it is valid
to publish new mandatary objects in the first EXTERNAL version of the
standard.
I highly recommend at least one coordinated interoperability test prior to
declaring the second major version of the Job MIB standard.
Harry Lewis - IBM Printing Systems
harryl at us.ibm.com