in070804
Annual Report for: W1
Covering the Period from 6/06 – 6/07
Title of INCITS Subgroup: Office Equipment
Links:
Informal Description of Work:
The InterNational Committee on Information Technology (INCITS) W1 subcommittee develops standards for office equipment -- scanners, printers, facsimile equipment, copiers and multi-function devices and consumables for this equipment. It serves in two capacities: as INCITS W1 (national standards) and as the US Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to the International Standards Organization / International Electrotechnical Commission (ISO/IEC) JTC1, Information Technology, Subcommittee 28 on Office Equipment (international standards). The Committee's activities focus on office equipment test standards (image reproduction), evaluation standards (image quality and longevity, office equipment & consumables quality and performance) and calibration techniques (perception-based metrics and optimization systems).
All current W1 projects are for directly developing international standards in cooperation with ISO/IEC JTC1/SC28.
This year, the membership has reduced from 13 to 11 with two
additional advisory
members. Progress on most projects was
excellent;
this was due in part to the SC28 secretariat and Chairman from
In 2006 W1 was instrumental in the publication of color yield standards. The monochrome standard published in 2004 generated a lot of interest in standards development in the Office Equipment area and is one of the top 100 selling standards in the ISO web store. W1 is one of the key participants in the development of yield standards for both ink and laser printers (ISO/IEC 19798, 24711 & 24712) and productivity standards for printers and copiers (ISO/IEC 24735 & 24734). There is significant global market interest in these standards.
• Publication of
• ISO/IEC 19798 – Color EP Printer Yield
• ISO/IEC 19799 – Gloss Uniformity
• ISO/IEC 24711 – Color Inkjet Printer Yield
• ISO/IEC 24712 – Test pages for color printer yield
•
Hosting of ISO/IEC JYC1 SC28 WG02
and WG03
working group meetings
In
addition to the technical challenges facing W1 in the coming year, W1
continues
to face the difficulty in dissemination of documents from SC28. W1 functions mostly on an international
level, most members directly participate in development of
international
standards. In the past, the SC28
Secretariat granted web access to all W1 members. This
facilitated the participation of members
in international discussion. This requires
that the chair distribute all of the documents, or arrange for a
website to
post them too. This is additional
unnecessary work. Access to the SC28 web
site should be available to all members of W1. An
e-mail distribution is being used right
now, but some of the files are extremely large >10Mb making this a
sub-optimal solution.
The
scope of SC28 and W1 is expanding. Doing
this in a well planed and organized manner will take effort and
discipline. The work on scope expansion
started at the 2005 plenary in
There are some voting members of W1 that have not been participating in the decisions of W1. This has in some cases reduced the ability of W1 to form recommendations. This will be addressed in the coming months and if these members continue to ignore the responsibilities of a voting member, they will be placed in jeopardy.
The list of projects for W1 is significant. (See Appendix A). Of this list there are a few that will hold challenges in the coming year.
ISO/IEC 24734 - Method for measuring digital printer productivity and ISO/IEC 24735 - Method for measuring digital copying machine productivity, these standards have far reaching implications for messaging of office equipment performance. Because of this there is a lot of contention on how these attributes should be measured and what devices should be included within the scope of the standards. W1 will work diligently to keep development progress moving forward in the coming year.
This should be a list that shows the dates and locations for each meeting held during the previous 12-month period, i.e., between reports. Meetings of Task Groups, ad hoc groups, etc. should be included in the list. If the activity uses number designations for meetings they should be included. A pointer to WWW URL or accessible database may be substituted here if appropriate.
|
Meeting Number |
Date |
Location |
|
01 |
8/10/06 |
Phone |
|
02 |
10/12/06 |
Phone |
|
03 |
12/7/06 |
Phone |
|
04 |
1/18/07 |
Phone |
|
05 |
2/15/07 |
Phone |
|
06 |
3/15/07 |
Phone |
|
07 |
4/3-5 |
|
|
08 |
5/28-6/01/07 |
Plenary, Matsumoto Japan |
Same as above, except for the forthcoming year. Include full twelve months, if known. A pointer to WWW URL or accessible database maybe substituted here if appropriate.
|
Meeting Number |
Date |
Location |
|
01 |
7/19/07 |
Phone |
|
02 |
8/16/07 |
Phone |
|
03 |
10/18/07 |
Phone |
Standards for the Graphic Arts – Yee Ng of NexPress
Solutions, W1
member, and Nobuaki Usui of
CIE Division 8 – Image Technology – Anne McCarthy
ECMA TC38 – Chemical Emissions/Energy Efficiency – Paul Menard
We do not need a separate list of the members, but we do need to know if there are any trends in membership or other membership issues that would affect the ability of the TC to meet its workload. The list of officers(both elected and appointed) gives some indication of who the key people are and how long they have served.
The
title, name and address of each person that held an office during the
year. If
an office was held by more than one person, list each and indicate
dates in
office. Include the date each officer last attended a training course
held by
the INCITS Secretariat. (Note - the Vocabulary Representative is an
officer and
should be included in this list.) A pointer to WWW URL or accessible
database
may be substituted here if appropriate.
|
Position (and training date) |
Name and organization represented |
|
Chair |
Paul Jeran - Hewlett-Packard |
|
Vice Chair |
Dwight Lewis - Lexmark |
|
Secretary |
|
|
International Representative |
Paul Menard - Lexmark |
|
Vocabulary Representative |
|
See Appendix B
W1 deals with office Equipment standards. The functions of offices are primarily to handle information. "Handling" includes transcribing, storing, printing, distributing etc., and the information is in either verbal or document form (both text and images) .
I perceive several technology trends in this area:
Digital Information storage is rapidly becoming cheaper and more flexible. This storage can be done both on-line and by CDs or DVDs. CD and DVD drives are available which can record on write-once and/or rewritable media. The higher capacity and higher speed Blu-Ray Disc and Advanced Optical Disc will be readily available sometime in 2005. Storing documents on electronic digital media offers many advantages compared to paper documents, including the capability of computer searches and auto-indexing.
There has been a long-standing prediction that less hard copy document storage (filing cabinets) will be needed and therefore less office printing will be done. If this occurs it might have a significant negative effect on the companies which support W1. So far the prediction has proved false, and I expect that situation to continue for at least several more years. Somehow the human interface with the higher resolution printed hardcopy and its physical portability is superior to that with a computer display, especially when multiple documents are being used simultaneously.
Digital Information transmission bandwidth is rapidly increasing and transmission costs are strongly decreasing. This trend should encourage use of larger documents with more images and thus result in increased printer and copier usage. Postal mail and Fax document transmission should decrease relative to electronic transmission of documents over the internet. Similarly, the use of printed forms will decrease relative to the use of electronic forms especially when encrypted document and digital signature techniques become commonly understood and used
The brutal decrease in the cost/performance ratio of office equipment will continue. This will make it difficult for the office equipment manufacturers, but will result a real benefit to customers and therefore in a continued expansion of the office equipment market (at least in terms of wider use). If manufacturers can also decrease the operating cost (cost per page) for printers and copiers, expanded volume of usage in current markets can also be achieved.
The crunch of profits due to the strong market competition and the economic stagnation of the past 3 years has tended to make it difficult for the manufacturers of office equipment to be generous enough to support standards activities. With the anticipated gradual end of the general economic downturn, this situation should improve. W1 has followed through in its plan to document and publicize the financial benefit for companies to participate in the office equipment standards development process by presenting papers and status reports at the IS&T NIP and PICS conferences. In 2003 there has been no immediate effect on W1 committee membership but many more people and companies are aware of our efforts, and there has been some interest in W1 membership (but no takers) and there have been some new volunteers to help with the research necessary for some of the current W1 projects.
To compete in the marketplace the manufacturers will continue to significantly improve office equipment quality and capability. This will require new or improved standards for measurement of printer and scanner performance. W1 is participating in several projects in anticipation of these needs.
There is increasing use of color in documents and images in the office. This will require new standards for measuring color print and image quality both for high precision and high accuracy quality comparisons, and rough but fast and simple "consumer" grade measurements. W1 has several current projects in these areas.
The techniques necessary for these standards are usually well understood and are often available inside specific companies as proprietary methods. Thus in developing the necessary standards it is often not necessary to do a large amount of new research. Instead it is only necessary to get the experts to cooperate and agree to disclose their private methods for public comparison and testing.
One proposal to avoid disclosure of proprietary quality evaluation algorithms is for a company to distribute a software "black box" with ordinary commercial software copy and disassembly protection. The "black box" would take measurement values made by specified methods and would have print quality attribute values as outputs. The implications of such a scheme and whether it is necessary and practical for use in a public standard are being investigated. At first glance it seems like nonsense to include a secret method in a public standard. However, all scientists and engineers make measurements using instruments that are essentially black boxes (such as spectraphotometers, oscilloscopes etc) -- without knowing or understanding all the technology and details of how to make the instrument. All that is really necessary is that it be reliable and that its performance can be tested and verified.
There will be a continued rapid improvement of computer power and improved functionality at a decreased cost for all electronics equipment and circuits. This trend can result in drastic changes in office equipment capability and use. An example is speech recognition by computer. In the last 2 years inexpensive software ($50) for ordinary office computers is available which is capable of very good speech recognition of natural speech. This will significantly improve the overall efficiency of converting people’s thoughts to text documents, since many people do not type rapidly. This capability will also be used with mobile computers and will eventually make good voice controlled computing a common mode of operation. I think this will be especially useful with mobile computers to enable operation and control with little use of hands.
I think this improved functionality will increase the use of office equipment because of the increase in the flow of information and by greater market penetration with the improved products.
Future Projects –
Because scanners are increasingly used both for ordinary consumer scanning purposes and as an inexpensive optical measurement tool W1 expects that one of the future W1 and SC28 projects will be a method of measuring scanner performance. Attributes such as resolution, dynamic range, flare into nearby pixels, color accuracy, distortion of pixel positions, etc. would be measured. This will involve use of standard test pages so it will be necessary to find useful existing test pages or to develop and produce new ones.
One of the agenda items for our April meeting each year is to discuss other potential new standards projects. Any ideas selected as worthwhile are assigned to one of the W1 members who prepares an NP proposal in time for the SC28 plenary in May. Two of the possible areas for a standard which have been discussed are for Multi Function Devices (scanner-copier-printer-FAX combinations) and for variable data printing. So far no W1 participant has conceived an idea for a standard in these areas which is needed and would be useful.
Since the personal computer is actually the central and most important piece of office equipment, W1 has several times discussed whether there are any projects suitable for W1 effort. So far none have been recognized—everything seems to be well covered by other committees.
Mentioned above was the need for improved measurement method standards because of the increase in office equipment quality. I think that there is also a need for fast, simple, easy to understand and easy-to-use measurement methods suitable for rough and basic comparisons and characterization of office equipment. These should be suitable for ordinary users of the equipment and not require special equipment.
Appendix A: Program of Work
ISO/IEC DIS 10779Office equipment accessibility guidelines for elderly persons and persons with disabilities
ISO/IEC NP 19751Information technology -- Office Equipment -- Appearance-based image quality standards for printers
ISO/IEC WD 24734Method for measuring digital printer productivity
ISO/IEC WD 24735Method for measuring digital copying machine productivity
ISO/IEC NP 24790Information Technology -- Office Equipment -- Measurement of image quality attributes for hardcopy output -- Binary monochrome text and graphic images
ISO/IEC DIS 28360Information technology -- Office equipment -- Determination of chemical emission rates from electronic equipment
ISO/IEC NP 29102Information technology -- Method for the determination of ink cartridge yield for colour photo printing with inkjet printers and multi-function devices that contain inkjet printer components
ISO/IEC NP 29103Information technology -- Colour photo test pages for measurement of ink cartridge yield for colour photo printing
ISO/IEC NP 29112Test Chart and Method for Measuring Printer Resolutions of Monochrome Laser Printers