Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!hellgate.utah.edu!hamblin.byu.edu!byuvax!byuvax!cunyvm!psuvm!frecp12!trearn!LONGWAY!USENIX.ORG!JSH Posted-Date: 29 Mar 90 17:56:18 GMT Apparently-To: std-unix-list@uunet.uu.net Message-ID: <604@longway.TIC.COM> Approved: NETNEWS@TREARN.BITNET Gateway Newsgroups: comp.std.unix Reply-To: std-unix@uunet.uu.net Sender: STD-UNIX redistribution list Comments: Warning -- original Sender: tag was std-unix@LONGWAY.TIC.COM From: usenix.org!jsh@LONGWAY.TIC.COM Subject: Standards Update, IEEE 1201: User Interface Date: Wed, 2 May 1990 23:09:23 TUR From: An Update on UNIX* and C Standards Activities January 1990 USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee Jeffrey S. Haemer, Report Editor IEEE 1201: User Interface Update Peter H. Salus reports on the January 8-12, 1990 meeting in New Orleans, LA: What's happening? P1201 purports to concern itself with the user interface. As of the New Orleans meeting, P1201 comprised .1 (Applications Programming Interface), .2 (Graphical User Interface), .3 (Human-Computer Interaction), and .4 (XLib) subgroups. Working backwards through these, 1201 has recommended that XLib go to ballot directly, a proposal which seems to have so shocked the SEC that they put off deciding on balloting till April. Steve Jobs told the USENIX audience in Phoenix, in June 1987, that X was ``brain- damaged''. Whether that's true or not, X has won, and just putting XLib to a vote makes good sense. 1201.3, under the chairmanship of Richard Seacord, has had a number of interesting discussions and presentations (of which I attended several, though not all). The major problem here is that we are nowhere near knowing what the ``standard'' for an interface might really require. However, the explorations are valuable, and a forum like this can be informative. This leaves me with the GUI and the API. Both in Brussels and in New Orleans were skirmishes in the GUI wars: battalions of employees of OSF its member companies arrayed in opposition to those of UI or USO and theirs, with a pair of observers from NeXT and Apple taking and placing bets on the sidelines. I assure readers that have never attended these meetings, acrimonious backbiting and vituperation are the order of the day in both camps. Though a former employee of OSF, I wouldn't hesitate to condemn the behavior of both sides, but the blame rests elsewhere. Where? In the tourists. See below, but for my money, too many folks like to travel and too many people have caught the ``open systems/open standards'' bug. __________ * UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T in the U.S. and other countries. January 1990 Standards Update IEEE 1201: User Interface - 2 - So long as the market remains unsettled about Motif, NeXTStep, OPEN LOOK, and Presentation Manager (to say nothing of Apple's MacIntosh interface and IBM's CUA) [Editor: That's ``Common User Application'', a part of SAA.], the meetings of 1201.1 and 1201.2 will serve as tilting grounds, not occasions for useful discussion. >From my point of view, until the market (which means the big boys and the users) has a shake-out, .1 and .2 can only serve as debate platforms or end up recommending standards that are either the intersection of OPEN LOOK and Motif or their union. It might be that 2 can come to some sort of conclusion on the various style guides without .1, but I see the products being waved, not the function banners. Why is it turning out this way? All of this is prologue (``The past is prologue,'' writes Shakespeare in The Tempest) to a commentary on the TCOS-standards industry. [Editor: TCOS, the Technical Committee on Operating Systems, is the IEEE organization under which both 1201 and 1003 fall.] Over the past 40 years, ISO has approved or accepted over 20,000 standards, which concern almost everything imaginable from hockey masks to medical prostheses to the hinging of radar masts on inland- waterway vessels. The standards have arisen in a variety of ways, most emanating from one of the regional or 70-odd national standards bodies. Typically, it has taken from four to ten years to progress from raising a committee to approving a standard. The result of this has been general agreement within the concerned industry prior to the issuance of an international standard. Wall plugs are an excellent example of what happens when the engineers and bureaucrats issue a standard without industry consensus. I am far from convinced that the ever-increasing number of 1003 and 1201 (sub)committees is productive or useful, and embarrassed and appalled at their continuing proliferation. There are currently at least six or seven standards for diskettes. Do we really need that many for graphical user interfaces? I think not. Might we get what happened in the record industry (i.e., 45s for short cuts; 33s for long works and anthologies) if we wait? I think so. Moreover, does the standards process really require more than two or three folks per company? There were 38 in attendance at the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee on Application Portability meeting in September (including the secretariat); there were nearly 300 in New Orleans. My perception is that going to a POSIX meeting is a perk. Holding the meetings in Hawaii, New Orleans, and Snowbird does little to dissuade me. The New Orleans host was OSF; the Snowbird host is Unisys. Though the new Unisys is a big entity, I didn't realize they had a site in Snowbird; nor OSF one in New Orleans. January 1990 Standards Update IEEE 1201: User Interface - 3 - C'mon, lets get back to work, not meetings for the holiday or for the sake of meetings. 1003.1 did good, solid work. Some of the other groups are doing work, too. Partying ain't part of it. Bah! January 1990 Standards Update IEEE 1201: User Interface Volume-Number: Volume 19, Number 34