That IPP Internet Printing Protocol for managing print jobs and accessing print resources across TCP/IP networks is supposed to get an airing in the next couple of weeks once its supporters get their marketing ducks in a row. Novell Inc has already started talking-up its involvement (CI No 3,081). The protocol, which supposedly combines IBM Corp’s HyperText Printing Protocol and Novell’s LDAP Lightweight Document Printing Architecture, is being developed and supported by about a dozen companies, including Xerox Corp, IBM, Novell, Sun Microsystems Inc, Microsoft Corp and Netscape Communications Corp. Its aim is to define simple printing instructions, like how to print a page, inquire on the status of a print job, or how to delete an item from the printer queue. It has already being considered for use as a standard by the IETF Internet Engineering Taskforce Force. Using it, companies could also set up internet fax services where print jobs could be sent to Universal Resource Locators over the Internet at a fraction of today’s fax rates. More advanced printing features, like pausing or redirecting print jobs would follow. The notion is to have IPP supported on web browsers by year-end as a feature of the HTTP HyperText Transfer Protocol.
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