The Printer Working Group (PWG) is a Program of the

IEEE Industry Standard and Technology Organization The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE has a corporate office i ...

(ISTO) with members including printer and multi-function device manufacturers, print server developers, operating system providers, print management application developers, and industry experts. Originally founded in 1991 as the Network Printing Alliance, the PWG is chartered to make printers, multi-function devices, and the applications and operating systems supporting them work together better. The PWG enjoys an open standards development process. Everyone is welcome to contribute to the development of their documents and standards, serve as editors, and participate in interoperability tests. Members may additionally serve as officers in the various working groups. Voting Members approve the documents and standards for publication and may serve as officers of the PWG.

Workgroups

The PWG has two active workgroups: the Internet Printing Protocol workgroup and the Imaging Device Security workgroup. The Internet Printing Protocol workgroup develops and maintains the

Internet Printing Protocol The Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) is a specialized communication protocol used between client devices (computers, mobile phones, tablets, etc.) and printers (or print servers). The protocol allows clients to submit one or more print jobs to t ...

(IPP) and maintains the Printer MIB, Job Monitoring MIB, Finishers MIB, and various PWG-specific MIBs used via the Simple Network Monitoring Protocol (SNMP). IPP is supported by almost all network printers, is the basis of the various driverless printing standards including

AirPrint AirPrint is a feature in Apple Inc.'s macOS, iOS, and iPadOS operating systems for printing without installing printer-specific drivers. Connection is via a local area network (often via Wi-Fi), either directly to AirPrint-compatible printer ...

, IPP Everywhere, Mopria, and Wi-Fi Direct Print Services, and is used by various print spoolers including

CUPS CUPS (formerly an acronym for Common UNIX Printing System) is a modular printing system for Unix-like computer operating systems which allows a computer to act as a print server. A computer running CUPS is a host that can accept print jobs ...

. The Imaging Device Security (IDS) workgroup develops and maintains security-related standards and best practices, and has a liaison with the Common Criteria organization in order to develop and maintain the current Hardcopy Device (HCD) Collaborative Protection Profile (cPP).

History

In February 1990, the IETF Network Printing Protocol working group was chartered. In August 1990, the working group published RFC 1179: Line Printer Daemon Protocol to document the prevalent network printing protocol at the time. In 1991, a consortium of printer and network manufacturers (Insight Development,

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

, LAN Systems,

Lexmark Lexmark International, Inc. is a privately held American company that manufactures laser printers and imaging products. The company is headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky. Since 2016 it has been jointly owned by a consortium of three multination ...

and

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. The company's focus is on developing analog ...

) formed the Network Printing Alliance (NPA). Later members included QMS,

Kyocera is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational ceramics and electronics manufacturer headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It was founded as in 1959 by Kazuo Inamori and renamed in 1982. It manufactures industrial ceramics, solar power genera ...

GENICOM GENICOM Corporation was an American manufacturer of computer printers, based in Chantilly, Virginia. The company operated from 1982 to 2003. The GE years In 1954, General Electric (GE) decided to decentralize the company into separate business ...

, Okidata,

Unisys Unisys Corporation is a global technology solutions company founded in 1986 and headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. The company provides cloud, AI, digital workplace, logistics, and enterprise computing services. History Founding Unis ...

Canon Canon or Canons may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Canon (fiction), the material accepted as officially written by an author or an ascribed author * Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture ** Western canon, th ...

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company, referred to simply as Kodak (), is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in film photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorporated i ...

Adaptec Adaptec, Inc., was a computer storage company and remains a brand for computer storage products. The company was an independent firm from 1981 to 2010, at which point it was acquired by PMC-Sierra, which itself was later acquired by Microsemi, ...

Tektronix Tektronix, Inc., historically widely known as Tek, is an American company best known for manufacturing test and measurement devices such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and video and mobile test protocol equipment. Originally an independent c ...

, Digital Products,

Pennant Systems International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

, Extended Systems and NEC. In 1993, the NPA was reformed as the Printer Working Group and added HP,

Compaq Compaq Computer Corporation was an American information technology, information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced some of the first IBM PC compati ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

Xerox Xerox Holdings Corporation (, ) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox was the pioneer of the photocopier market, beginning with the introduc ...

, Xircom, Farpoint Communications, Zenith, Castelle, Fujitsu, 3M,

Cirrus Logic Cirrus Logic Inc. is an American fabless semiconductor company, fabless semiconductor supplier that specializes in analog, mixed-signal, and audio Digital signal processor, DSP integrated circuits (ICs). Since 1998, the company's headquarters have ...

, Amp,

National Semiconductor National Semiconductor Corporation was an United States of America, American Semiconductor manufacturing, semiconductor manufacturer, which specialized in analogue electronics, analog devices and subsystems, formerly headquartered in Santa Clara, ...

and

Ricoh is a Japanese multinational imaging and electronics company. It was founded by the now-defunct commercial division of the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (Riken) known as the ''Riken Concern'', on 6 February 1936 as . Ricoh's hea ...

. In January 1994, the IETF Printer MIB working group was chartered. This working group published a series of SNMP MIB RFCs from 1995 through 2004, at which point development and maintenance of printer-related MIBs transitioned to the Printer Working Group. In March 1997, the IETF Internet Printing Protocol working group was chartered. This working group published a series of IPP RFCs from 1999 through 2005, at which point development and maintenance of IPP transitioned to the Printer Working Group. In September 1999, the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...

formalized an alliance with PWG as part of the IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization (IEEE-ISTO). Since then, the PWG has published over 60 standards and informational documents related to printing and printers. In March 2015, the IETF published a new IPP RFC developed by the PWG IPP workgroup - RFC 7472: IPP over HTTPS Transport Binary and the ipps URI Scheme. In January 2017, the IETF published updates to the core IPP RFCs (RFC 2910, 2911, 3381, and 3382) developed by the PWG IPP workgroup - RFC 8010: Internet Printing Protocol/1.1: Encoding and Transport and RFC 8011: Internet Printing Protocol/1.1: Model and Semantics. In June 2018, the IETF published these RFCs as Internet Standard 92.

References

{{reflist Information technology organizations Computer printers Working groups