Subject: IPP> Need clarification: Job Template Attributes: Optional or n

From: Carl Kugler <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 18:42:44 -0500

Section 15.3.4.3, "Validate the presence of a single occurrence of required
Operation attributes", shows Job Template attributes as (M*) for Print-Job,
Validate-Job, Create-Job, and Print-URI requests.  (M*) indicates MANDATORY
attributes that an IPP object MUST support, but that a client may omit in a
request or an IPP object may omit in a response.  The reader is referred to
Section 4.2, where it says "Support for Job Template attributes by a Printer ob
ject is OPTIONAL" and refers the reader to 12.2.3, to read "Even though support
for Job Template attributes by a Printer object is OPTIONAL, it is RECOMMENDED
that if the device behind a Printer object is capable of realizing any feature
or function that corresponds to an IPP attribute and some associated value, th
en that implementation SHOULD support that IPP attribute and value."
Is there a contradiction between 15.3.4.3 and (4.2 or 12.2.3), or am I missing
something?

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From: Van Dang <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Mar 1998 15:29:08 -0800

> Is there a contradiction between 15.3.4.3 and (4.2 or 12.2.3), or am I missing

I had the same question when I was going over the document.  Perhaps
Section 15.3.4.3 should indicate that the Job Template Attributes are
(O*) instead of (M*) since the attribute group itself is OPTIONAL.

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From: Tom Hastings <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 10:14:23 PST

Yes, it is a mistake in section 15.3.4.3.  The M* should be O*,
since Job Template attributes are not MANDATORY for a Printer to
support (just recommended if the device supports the feature).

This was agreed at the IPP meeting as well as being a typo that will
be fixed by the editor, Scott Isaacson, in consultation with the RFC 
editor as the document becomes an RFC.

Since the notation also refers to section 4.2 which refers to section
12.2.3 which recommends that a Printer object support a Job Template
attribute that a device realizes, we could introduce the notation
"R" for recommended in section 15.3.4.3.  We don't want to mis-lead
implementors that are using section 153.4.3 as a check list.

Or we could just change section 15.3.4.3 (4 times):

   Group 2: Job Template Attributes (M)
            Job Template attributes (M*) (see section 4.2)

to:

   Group 2: Job Template Attributes (M)
            Job Template attributes (O*) (recommended, see section 4.2)

Please send any other discrepancies or contradictions like this to the
e-mail list so that we can fix them as the document becomes an RFC.

Thanks,
Tom