Subject: Re: JMP> URGENT: Should impressions include blank last page

From: Harry Lewis <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Jan 1998 11:41:12 -0500

We discussed this at length in LA. You may recall, I was the main proponent of
accurate accounting (i.e. not counting blank impressions). In LA it was
established, however, that many, many print controllers would be unable to
discern a blank impression because the "page eject" command from whatever PDL
is in use is still invoked. We also agreed that sheet based accounting is more
pragmatic except in the case of very high cost marker supplies.

At and/or following LA, we even went to great length to come up with a
clarified definition of an impression being a sheet side traversing the marker
path - whether or not marks were made. We had to do this to prevent counting
two impressions for every sheet of a simplex job.

Even though I came out the shoot arguing for optimum accountability, I was
convinced in LA and remain convinced that the compromise described above is a
good one. I recall discussing an additional (optional) attribute for "number of
blank impressions" to accommodate devices that ARE able to detect and account
for blanks, but don't remember if this has been
included.

I recommend we remain with these decisions.

Harry Lewis - IBM Printing Systems

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Subject: JMP> URGENT: Should impressions include blank last page back

At the JMP meeting on 12/5, we agreed that the definitions of
impressions would count the number of times a media side goes past
the marker, even if there are no marks made.

I think we agreed to that, becasue impressions is supposed to count
after the sheet is stacked, so that the sheet counter doesn't know whether
the back side of the last page (documents with an odd number of pages),
was marked or not, so we said that it SHALL count.

Howver, for an accounting application, the customers may get pretty
unhappy with having to pay for the final side they didn't use, as
Angelo points out, when their document has an odd number of pages.

URGENT: I NEED FEEDBACK FROM THE JMP LIST BY THURSDAY 12/18 EVENING.
HEARING NO OBJECTIONS I'M GOING FORWARD WITH THE FOLLOWING:

So how about RECOMMENDING (but not requiring) that the number of impressions
for two-sided printing not include counting both sides of sheets marked on
only one side.  It may be that the interpreter has to be involved in
counting impressions, rather than the sheet counter in the stacker or maybe
the implementation only worries about the last sheet and so there is just
an internal status bit that says whether a document has an odd number or an
even number of sides in order to know whether to count the last sheet as 1
or 2 impressions.

I suggest changing the sentence in the definition of impression:

If a two-sided document has an odd number of pages, the last sheet still
counts as two impressions, if that sheet makes two passes through the
marker or the marker marks on both sides of a sheet in a single pass.

to:

If a two-sided document has some sheets that only have marks on one side
(such as on the last sheet of a document with an odd-number of
impressions), those sheets SHOULD count as one impression, instead of two,
even if that sheet makes two passes through the marker.

BTW, the current definition of "impression" in the IPP Model is:

12.2.15 impressions

An "impression" is the image (possibly many print-stream pages in different
configurations) imposed onto a single media page.

So it seems that the IPP Job Model is in agreement with the following
recommendation for the Job Mon MIB:

The full definition of the term impressions (as sent yesterday) is
for the Job Monitoring MIB:

Impression:  For a print job, an impression is the passage of the entire
side of a sheet by the marker, whether or not any marks are made and
independent of the number of passes that the side makes past the marker

---

From: Tom Hastings <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Jan 1998 13:25:58 PST

Here is the text that I've included in the draft based on the e-mail
discussion (which agrees with Harry's suggestion to keep with the
L.A. agreements and the subsequent e-mail discussion about how highlight
and full color impressions are counted):

Impression:  For a print job, an impression is the passage of the entire
side of a sheet by the marker, whether or not any marks are made and
independent of the number of passes that the side makes past the marker.
Thus a four pass color process counts as a single impression, as does
highlight color.  Impression counters count all kinds: monochrome,
highlight color, and full process color, while full color counters only
count full color impressions, and high light color counters only count high
light color impressions.

One-sided processing involves one impression per sheet.  Two-sided
processing involves two impressions per sheet.  If a two-sided document has
an odd number of pages, the last sheet still counts as two impressions, if
that sheet makes two passes through the marker or the marker marks on both
sides of a sheet in a single pass.  Two-up printing is the placement of two
logical pages on one side of a sheet and so is still a single impression.
See "page" and "sheet".

NOTE - Since impressions include blank sides, it is suggested that
accounting application implementers consider charging for sheets, rather
than impressions, possibly using the value of the sides attribute to select
different charges for one-sided versus two-sided printing, since some users
may think that impressions don't include blank sides.

So I think our consensus is holding here.

Tom