Requirements and design goals for an Internet printing protocol

Abstract

■ In the Beginning . . . For almost as long as there have been computers, there have been people working on standards for them. Computer designers and users soon realized that a computer by itself had a limited number of uses; computers need to communicate with other computers and with peripherals such as storage, input, and output devices. ommunication and networking standards groups like the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) have focused much more on the exchange of data between computers and the management of the computer and network infrastructure than on communications with peripherals. While the Internet Printing Protocol is currently defined as “experimental” by the IETF, it is expected to move to the “standards track” in the near future. When that happens, it will become the first “standards track” printing protocol. (RFC1179, “Line Printer Daemon Protocol,” is an informational document.) The working group, composed of leaders in the printer and printing industries, spent much of its time early in the process developing a design goals or requirements document. That document was then used as a benchmark to assess the validity of design decisions.