Participating in the PWG

The Standards Process

The Printer Working Group maintains an open standards development environment and welcomes the participation of all who are interested in printing and imaging technologies, standards, and solutions. All that is required to participate is to be polite and agree to abide by the terms of the PWG Policy on Intellectual Property and Confidentiality, which roughly amounts to "anything you share in a PWG meeting, on the PWG FTP server, or on the PWG mailing lists can be included in a PWG standard or informational document."

You can participate in person or virtually via phone and/or email. See the workgroup mailing lists to ask questions, contribute, or learn when the next meeting is scheduled for a particular workgroup.

How a Document is Published

Contributing New Work

New work starts with a white paper:

  • PWG White Paper Policy (Text)
  • PWG White Paper Template (Word)

Extensions and new work for an existing workgroup can be proposed on the corresponding mailing list and discussed during a conference call or face-to-face meeting. New work outside the scope of an existing workgroup can be brought to the attention of the PWG Chair, who can direct you to an existing workgroup or schedule a "Birds of a Feather" (BOF) session at a PWG face-to-face meeting to discuss your proposal.

Registering New Items

Many PWG standards offer a registry for attributes (aka elements and properties), operations, and values that third parties define for their particular usage. Send such registrations to the corresponding workgroup mailing list.

Updating Existing Documents

The PWG regularly updates existing published standards and other documents through the errata process.

File naming conventions.
Figure N - The PWG File Naming Convention