May 1, 1997 6:15 PM ET
IETF charters group for Web-based
printing standard
By Scott Berinato
The Internet Engineering Task Force has chartered a consortium
of vendors to develop a standard interface for Web printing.
The Printer Working Group announced this week that the IETF
has formally chartered the Internet Printing Protocol Working
Group to create the interface, which would address job
submission, ticketing and some basic management features for
Web-based printing, IPP officials said.
Formed last November under a charter from the PWG, the IPP is
faced with making printing over the Web simpler, by providing
universal protocols for submitting jobs and controlling printers
connected to the Internet. The architecture will address printers
either connected to a Web server or with an embedded Web
server, so that designated users could access the device
remotely.
In this vein, enterprises could set up "public printers," so one
business partner could push a hard copy to another enterprise
over the Web, avoiding overnight delivery costs.
A Web printing standard would also lay the groundwork for
publishers to push customized magazines to subscribers, said
IPP officials.
Sources said Microsoft Corp. presented to the working group its
architecture for Web printing, which contains some of the basics
the group hopes to implement. However, the Redmond, Wash.,
developer did not address all the issues, such as job ticketing,
that the IPP wants to standardize, sources said.
Windows NT 5.0 will support the IPP specification, the sources
said.
The IPP protocol will be designated for printers, but officials of the
IPP said there's no reason such a design couldn't be transferred
to other Web-enabled devices.
"They've got very broad industry support and that will help," said
Grey Held, associate editor of the Hard Copy Observer, in
Newtonville, Mass. "I think [support for] the IPP spec will show up
by the end of the year. It's on the fast track. People are anxious
for it."
A first draft of the Web printing guidelines is available at
www.pwg.org/ipp.
Members of the IPP working group include Adobe Systems Inc.,
Canon Computer Systems Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM,
Kyocera Electronics Inc., Lexmark International Inc., Microsoft,
Netscape Communications Corp., Novell Inc., QMS Inc., Sharp
Electronics Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc., Tektronix Inc. and Xerox
Corp.
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