Information Technology - Text and Office Systems - Document Printing Application (DPA) - Part 1: Abstract Service Definition and Procedures

ISO/IEC 10175 consists of three parts:

Part 1: Abstract service definitions and procedures Part 2: Protocol specification Part 3: Management abstract service definition and procedures

This part of ISO/IEC 10175:

- specifies a client-server model of printing in accordance with the D istributed-office-applications Model (ISO/IEC 10031-1); - specifies functions and services provided by Document Printing Application servers; - specifies the Document Printing Application abstract service using the principles established by the Abstract Service Definition Conventions (ISO/IEC 10021-3); - specifies the usage of other services.

The Document Printing Application is one component of a coordinated set of facilities and standards needed to satisfy the printing requirements of the modern distributed office. Together, the capabilities provided can enable users to create and produce high-quality office documents in a consistent and unambiguous manner within a distributed open systems environment.

Specifically, ISO/IEC 10175 addresses those aspects of document processing that enable users in a distributed open systems environment to send electronic documents to shared, possibly geographically-dispersed printers, and to cause the documents to be printed in accordance with the desires of those users. For the purposes of ISO/IEC 10175, it is assumed that such documents have been composed in a form that is compatible with the destination printing system prior to their introduction to the Docu ment Printing Application.

Other Standards deal with related aspects of document processing, such as the creation and formatting of electronic documents, and the underlying protocols used to transport electronic documents to a printing system. ISO/IEC 10175 is aligned with these related Standards as appropriate, and shares some i nformation in common with them. Clause 2 identifies those standards that are directly applicable to this one.

The Document Printing Application defined in ISO/IEC 10175 is consistent with the model, architectural framework and design principles of the Distributed Office Applications Model (ISO/IEC 10031-1). This Document Printing Application Standard defines services and specifies access protocols available within the application layer of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) Basic Reference Model (ISO/IEC 7498-1).

In addition, recognition has been given to the potential need for printing systems to be able to operate within and across diverse networking environments. In particular, the Document Printing Application has contributed to, and benefited from, related standardization activities in other venues such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Desktop Management Task Force, the POSIX project of the IEEE Computer Society, and X/Open.

The Document Printing Application constitutes the final phase of the document processing cycle, i.e., the queuing, preparation, rendering and finishing of the fully composed form of the document on marking engines and other image generation devices and ancillary equipment. This cycle includes other processes such as document creation and interchange through public and private networks.

ISO/IEC 10175 is oriented toward satisfying the following subset of the overall document processing functional requirements:

- an ability for multiple users to share access to distributed printers; - an ability for users to convey information to a printing system to influence the scheduling and processing requirements of a print-job; - a capability for users to monitor and manage the progress of their print-job; - a capability for printing systems, and associated facilities, to protect against unauthorized printing of documents.

Accordingly, the abstract-service defined by ISO/IEC 10175 enables a user to convey document files to a document print-serve r, along with the parameters needed to express the user's desires regarding the scheduling and production of the ensuing print-job. In addition, the abstract-service permits a user to inquire about the status, capabilities and characteristics of a document print-server in order to choose from a variety of printing devices, depending on capabilities, formats, logistic convenience, cost, ownership and availability.

The abstract-service also allows users to inquire about jobs, modify the characteristics and progress of jobs, and obtain feedb ack about a job.

Many different document formats have been developed for printing purposes, and are in wide use. For this reason, the Document Printing Ap plication has been developed with a view toward supporting arbitrary document formats in a transparent manner. That is, the specific content or format of an electronic document is independent of the access protocol defined by ISO/IEC 10175. The only requirement is that the destination printing system be capable of dealing with the format of the transmitted document, and possess the features and functionality needed to render the document successfully.

However, in spite of this generality of focus, ISO/IEC 10175 is particularly oriented toward alignment with the Standard Page Description Language (SPDL - ISO/IEC 10180). This will assure that DPA will include the features needed to assist in the transport and faithful rendering of SPDL documents