1. Introduction
The Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) is an application level protocol that can be used for distributed printing using Internet tools and technologies. IPP version 1.0 (IPP/1.0) focuses only on end user functionality. This document is just one of a suite of documents that fully define IPP. The full set of IPP documents includes: Design Goals for an Internet Printing Protocol [RFC2567] Rationale for the Structure and Model and Protocol for the Internet Printing Protocol [RFC2568] Internet Printing Protocol/1.0: Model and Semantics (this document) Internet Printing Protocol/1.0: Encoding and Transport [RFC2565] Internet Printing Protocol/1.0: Implementer's Guide [ipp-iig] Mapping between LPD and IPP Protocols [RFC2569] Anyone reading these documents for the first time is strongly encouraged to read the IPP documents in the above order. This document is laid out as follows: - The rest of Section 1 is an introduction to the IPP simplified model for distributed printing. - Section 2 introduces the object types covered in the model with their basic behaviors, attributes, and interactions. - Section 3 defines the operations included in IPP/1.0. IPP operations are synchronous, therefore, for each operation, there is a both request and a response. - Section 4 defines the attributes (and their syntaxes) that are used in the model. - Sections 5 - 6 summarizes the implementation conformance requirements for objects that support the protocol and IANA considerations, respectively. - Sections 7 - 11 cover the Internationalization and Security considerations as well as References, Author contact information, and Formats for Registration Proposals. - Sections 12 - 14 are appendices that cover Terminology, Status Codes and Messages, and "media" keyword values. Note: This document uses terms such as "attributes", "keywords", and "support". These terms have special meaning and are defined in the model terminology section 12.2. Capitalized terms, such as MUST, MUST NOT, REQUIRED, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, MAY, NEED NOT, and OPTIONAL, have special meaning relating to conformance. These terms are defined in section 12.1 on conformance terminology, most of which is taken from RFC 2119 [RFC2119]. - Section 15 is an appendix that helps to clarify the effects of interactions between related attributes and their values. - Section 16 is an appendix that enumerates the subset of Printer attributes that form a generic directory schema. These attributes are useful when registering a Printer so that a client can find the Printer not just by name, but by filtered searches as well. - Section 17 is an appendix that provides a Change History summarizing the clarification and changes that might affect an implementation since the June 30, 1998 draft.
1.1. Simplified Printing Model
In order to achieve its goal of realizing a workable printing protocol for the Internet, the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) is based on a simplified printing model that abstracts the many components of real world printing solutions. The Internet is a distributed computing environment where requesters of print services (clients, applications, printer drivers, etc.) cooperate and interact with print service providers. This model and semantics document describes a simple, abstract model for IPP even though the underlying configurations may be complex "n-tier" client/server systems. An important simplifying step in the IPP model is to expose only the key objects and interfaces required for printing. The model described in this model document does not include features, interfaces, and relationships that are beyond the scope of the first version of IPP (IPP/1.0). IPP/1.0 incorporates many of the relevant ideas and lessons learned from other specification and development efforts [HTPP] [ISO10175] [LDPA] [P1387.4] [PSIS] [RFC1179] [SWP]. IPP is heavily influenced by the printing model introduced in the Document Printing Application (DPA) [ISO10175] standard. Although DPA specifies both end user and administrative features, IPP version 1.0 (IPP/1.0) focuses only on end user functionality. The IPP/1.0 model encapsulates the important components of distributed printing into two object types: - Printer (Section 2.1) - Job (Section 2.2) Each object type has an associated set of operations (see section 3) and attributes (see section 4). It is important, however, to understand that in real system implementations (which lie underneath the abstracted IPP/1.0 model), there are other components of a print service which are not explicitly defined in the IPP/1.0 model. The following figure illustrates where IPP/1.0 fits with respect to these other components. +--------------+ | Application | o +. . . . . . . | \|/ | Spooler | / \ +. . . . . . . | +---------+ End-User | Print Driver |---| File | +-----------+ +-----+ +------+-------+ +----+----+ | Browser | | GUI | | | +-----+-----+ +--+--+ | | | | | | | +---+------------+---+ | N D S | | IPP Client |------------+ O I E | +---------+----------+ T R C | | I E U | F C R -------------- Transport ------------------ I T I C O T | --+ A R Y +--------+--------+ | T Y | IPP Server | | I +--------+--------+ | O | | N +-----------------+ | IPP Printer | Print Service | | +-----------------+ | | --+ +-----------------+ | Output Device(s)| +-----------------+ An IPP Printer object encapsulates the functions normally associated with physical output devices along with the spooling, scheduling and multiple device management functions often associated with a print server. Printer objects are optionally registered as entries in a directory where end users find and select them based on some sort of filtered and context based searching mechanism (see section 16). The directory is used to store relatively static information about the Printer, allowing end users to search for and find Printers that match their search criteria, for example: name, context, printer capabilities, etc. The more dynamic information, such as state, currently loaded and ready media, number of jobs at the Printer, errors, warnings, and so forth, is directly associated with the Printer object itself rather than with the entry in the directory which only represents the Printer object. IPP clients implement the IPP protocol on the client side and give end users (or programs running on behalf of end users) the ability to query Printer objects and submit and manage print jobs. An IPP server is just that part of the Printer object that implements the server-side protocol. The rest of the Printer object implements (or gateways into) the application semantics of the print service itself. The Printer objects may be embedded in an output device or may be implemented on a host on the network that communicates with an output device. When a job is submitted to the Printer object and the Printer object validates the attributes in the submission request, the Printer object creates a new Job object. The end user then interacts with this new Job object to query its status and monitor the progress of the job. End users may also cancel the print job by using the Job object's Cancel-Job operation. The notification service is out of scope for IPP/1.0, but using such a notification service, the end user is able to register for and receive Printer specific and Job specific events. An end user can query the status of Printer objects and can follow the progress of Job objects by polling using the Get- Printer-Attributes, Get-Jobs, and Get-Job-Attributes operations.