Job Monitoring MIB: If the estimated completion time is
unknown, the agent should return the DEFVAL. This object
is a 'best efforts' object, so any estimate based on any data
such as the octet-count or the number of pages (perhaps obtained
from the PostScript commenting conventions up front) is far
preferable than returning the DEFVAL. A learning algorithm
based on recent job sizes and their times could be used.
ISO DPA: Estimated-completion-time
This attribute indicates the estimated time by which this job
will be completed.
The time to complete one job is dependent on the time required
to complete all other jobs that the scheduling algorithm
determines must be printed before this job may be printed. The
time to complete each individual job may depend on when on-
request resources are available. The time to print each
individual job is dependent on the characteristics of the
document formats in which the individual documents of the job
are encoded and on the complexities and other characteristics
of the documents themselves.
This attribute is highly implementation-dependent. The
estimated-completion-time may be easy to calculate for some
combinations of document formats and scheduling algorithms. It
may be impossible to calculate for other combinations. It is
recommended that, where possible, document creators provide
system hints to the print system (perhaps appropriately encoded
in document format headers) that help the print system
understand which features of the document formats the document
will be exercising.