Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!std-unix From: std-unix@uunet.UU.NET (Moderator, John S. Quarterman) Newsgroups: comp.std.unix Subject: Access to UNIX-Related Standards Message-ID: <2843@uunet.UU.NET> Date: Thu, 5-Nov-87 20:58:11 EST Article-I.D.: uunet.2843 Posted: Thu Nov 5 20:58:11 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 8-Nov-87 04:32:14 EST Reply-To: std-unix@uunet.uu.net Lines: 479 Approved: jsq@uunet.uu.net (Moderator, John S. Quarterman) This is the latest in a series of similar comp.std.unix articles. Corrections and additions to this article are solicited. Access information is given in this article for the following standards: IEEE 1003.1 (operating system interface), 1003.2 (shell and utilities), 1003.3 (testing and verification), 1003.4 (real time). NBS FIPS. /usr/group working groups on distributed file system, network interface, graphics/windows, database, internationalization, performance measurements, realtime, security, and super computing. X3H3.6 (display committee) X3J11 (C language) /usr/group Standard System V Interface Definition (SVID, or The Purple Book) X/OPEN PORTABILITY GUIDE (The Green Book) 4.3BSD Manuals UNIX is a Registered Trademark of AT&T. POSIX and IEEE are trademarks of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, Inc. X/OPEN is a licensed trademark of the X/OPEN Group Members. The IEEE P1003 Portable Operating System Interface for Computer Environments Committee is sometimes known colloquially as the UNIX Standards Committee. They published the 1003.1 "POSIX" Trial Use Standard in April 1986. According to its Foreword: The purpose of this document is to define a standard operating system interface and environment based on the UNIX Operating System documentation to support application portability at the source level. This is intended for systems implementors and applications software developers. Published copies are available at $19.95, with bulk purchasing discounts available. Call the IEEE Computer Society in Los Angeles 714-821-8380 and ask for Book #967. Unfortunately, this only works for multiple copies. But the following mail address works for single copies: IEEE Computer Society P.O. Box 80452 Worldway Postal Center Los Angeles, Ca. 90080 Include a check for $19.95 + $4 for shipping and handling. For UPS shipping, add another $4. Or contact: IEEE Service Center 445 Hoes Ln. Piscataway, NJ 08854 and ask for "IEEE 1003.1 Trial Use Standard" - stock number SH10546. The Trial Use Standard will be available for comments for a period such as a year. The current target for a Full Use Standard is Spring 1988. The current draft, Draft 12, is being balloted on starting 15 November 1987. It's too late to join the balloting group, but written objections or comments are still solicited during the thirty days following that date from everyone and will be fully considered. The main difference is that only ballots from the formal balloting group will count toward the numeric goals for returning ballots and yes yotes. The appropriate address is: Computer Society Secretariat IEEE Standards Office 345 East 47th St. New York, NY 10017 The possible categories for voting are: yes, perhaps with comments; no, with objections, and perhaps with comments; and yes because of lack of time or expertise (this last one makes no sense unless you are in the official balloting quorum). Text of comments and objections should organized by section of Draft 12, with each major section at the beginning of a new page. Each remark should be marked as to whether it is an objection or a non-binding comment, and numbered within those categories. IEEE has initiated the process to have the 1003.1 effort brought into the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) arena. IEEE 1003.1 Draft 12 is also a ``Draft Proposed International Standard (ISO DP).'' The convenor is Jim Isaak: see below for his address. The National Bureau of Standards is producing a Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) based on IEEE 1003.1. It will probably be available before the Full Use Standard, and may reflect Draft 12, rather than the final 1003.1 standard. For information, contact: Roger Martin National Bureau of Standards Building 225 Room B266 Gaithersburg, MD 20899 (301)975-3295 Machine readable copies of the IEEE 1003.1 Trial Use Standard are not and will not be available. The same applies to copies of later drafts. There is a paper mailing list by which interested parties may get copies of drafts of the standard. To get on it, or to submit comments directly to the committee, mail to: James Isaak Chairperson, IEEE/CS P1003 Digital Equipment ZK03-3/Y25 110 Spit Brook Rd. Nashua, NH 03062-2698 Tel.: (603)881-0480 Fax.: (603)881-0120 decvax!isaak Sufficiently interested parties may join the working group. The term POSIX also applies to the other P1003 subcommittees: group subject co-chairs 1003.2 shell and utilities Hal Jespersen (UniSoft), Don Cragun (Sun) 1003.3 verification Roger Martin (NBS), Carol Raye (AT&T) 1003.4 real time Bill Corwin (Intel) Inquiries regarding 1003.2, 1003.3, and 1003.4 should go to the same address as for 1003.1. The next scheduled meetings of the P1003 working groups are, in 1987 and 1988: Dec. 7-11 San Diego, CA P1003.1 group will meet evenings on 7 and 8 and all day on the 11th. P1003.2 group will meet 7-10 December. April 1988 Washington, DC Here are some details from Hal Jespersen regarding P1003.2: The IEEE P1003.2 "Shell and Utilities" Working Group is developing a proposed standard to complement the 1003.1 POSIX standard. It will consist of a shell command language (currently planned to be based on the Bourne Shell), groups of utility programs, or commands, programmatic interfaces to the shell (system(), popen()) and related facilities (regular expressions, file name expansion, etc.) defined environments (variables, file hierarchies, etc) that applications may rely upon utilities for installing application programs onto conforming systems which will allow application programs to be developed out of existing pieces, in the UNIX tradition. The scope of the standard emphasizes commands and features that are more typically used by shell scripts or C language programs than those that are oriented to the terminal user with windows, mice, visual shells, and so forth. There has been some controversy in the Working Group about clarifying the scope of the 1003.2 standard in regard to its relationship with 1003.1. The Working Group is attempting to produce a standard that will assume the structure and philosophy of a POSIX system is available, but it will not require a fully conforming implementation as a base. For example, it should be feasible to eventually produce a 1003.2 interface on a V7 system, or on a system very close to POSIX, but missing a few crucial features (as long as the shell and utilities didn't need them). However, the proposed standard will *not* be unnecessarily watered down simply to allow non-POSIX systems to conform. The group is currently seeking proposals for groupings of commands that may be offered by implementors. As groups are identified, command descriptions will be solicited. There is no requirement that the commands be in System V or BSD today, but they should realistically be commands that are commonly found in most existing implementations. There are three Institutional Representatives to P1003: John Quarterman from USENIX, Heinz Lycklama from /usr/group, and Mike Lambert from X/OPEN. As the one from USENIX, one of my functions is to get comments from the USENIX membership and the general public to the committee. One of the ways I try to do that is by moderating this newsgroup, comp.std.unix An article related to this one appeared in the September/October 1986 ;login: (The USENIX Association Newsletter). I'm also currently on the USENIX Board of Directors. Comments, suggestions, etc., may be sent to John S. Quarterman Texas Internet Consulting 701 Brazos, Suite 500 Austin TX 78701-3243 +1-512-320-9031 uunet!usenix!jsq jsq@longway.tic.com For comp.std.unix: Comments: uunet!std-unix-request std-unix-request@uunet.uu.net Submissions: uunet!std-unix std-unix@uunet.uu.net The September/October 1987 issue of CommUNIXations (the /usr/group newsletter) contains a report by Heinz Lycklama on the /usr/group Technical Committee working groups which met in September 1987. If you are interested in starting another working group, contact Heinz Lycklama: Heinz Lycklama Interactive Systems Corp. 2401 Colorado Ave., 3rd Floor Santa Monica, CA 90404 (213)453-8649 decvax!cca!ima!heinz Here is contact information for /usr/group working groups as taken from the CommUNIXations article mentioned above, and updated by later information from Heinz Lycklama. /usr/group Working Group on Distributed File System: Art Sabsevitz Frederick Glover AT&T Information Systems MK02-1/H10 190 River Road Digital Equipment Corporation Summit, NJ 07933 Continental Boulevard 201-522-6248 Merrimack, NH 03054-0430 attunix!bump 603-884-5111 decvax!fglover /usr/group Working Group on Network Interface: Steve Albert AT&T Information Systems 190 River Road, Rm. A-114 Summit, NJ 07901 (201)522-6104 attunix!ssa /usr/group Working Group on Internationalization: John Wu Laurie Goudie Charles River Data Systems Santa Cruz Operation 983 Concord St., 400 Encinal Framingham, MA 01701 Santa Cruz, CA 95060 617-626-1000 408-458-1422 /usr/group Working Group on Graphics/Windows: Tom Greene Apollo Computer, Inc. 330 Billerica Road Chelmsford, MA 01824 (617)256-6600, ext. 7581 /usr/group Working Group on Realtime: Bill Corwin Intel Corp. 5200 Elam Young Pkwy Hillsboro, OR 97123 (503)681-2248 /usr/group Working Group on Database: Val Skalabrin Unify Corp. 1111 Howe Ave. Sacramento, CA 95825 (916)920-9092 /usr/group Working Group on Performance Measurements: Ram Chelluri Dave Hinnant AT&T Computer Systems SCI Systems, Inc. Room E15B Ste 325, Pamlico Bldg 4513 Western Ave. Research Triangle Pk, NC 27709 Lisle, IL 60532 (919)549-8334 (312)810-6223 /usr/group Working Group on Security: Steve Sutton Ms. Jeanne Baccash Consultant, Addamax AT&T UNIX Systems Engineering 1107 S. Orchard 190 River Road Urbana, IL 61801 Summit, NJ 07901 217-344-0996 201-522-6028 attunix!jeanne /usr/group Working Group on Super Computing: Karen Sheaffer Robin O'Neill Sandia National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore Laboratory P.O. Box 969 P.O. Box 5509, L560 Livermore, CA 94550 Livermore, CA 94550 415-422-3431 415-422-0973 oneill#r%mfe@lll-mfe.arpa Co-chair The X3H3.6 display management committee has recently formed to develop a model to support current and future window management systems, yet is not based directly on any existing system. The chair solicits help and participation: Georges Grinstein wanginst!ulowell!grinstein The Abstract of the 1003.1 Trial Use Standard adds: This interface is a complement to the C Programming Language in the C Information Bulletin prepared by Technical Committee X3J11 of the Accredited Standards Committee X3, Information Processing Systems, further specifying an environment for portable application software. X3J11 is sometimes known as the C Standards Committee. Their liaison to P1003 is Don Kretsch AT&T 190 River Road Summit, NJ 07901 A contact for information regarding publications and working groups is Thomas Plum Vice Chair, X3J11 Committee Plum Hall Inc. 1 Spruce Avenue Cardiff, New Jersey 08232 The current document may be ordered from Global Press 2625 Hickory St. P.O. Box 2504 Santa Anna, CA 92707-3783 U.S.A. 800-854-7179 +1-714-540-9870 (from outside the U.S., ask for extension 245.) TELEX 692 373 Ask for the X3.159 draft standard. The price is $65. The /usr/group Standard is a principal ancestor of P1003.1, X/OPEN, and X3J11. It may be ordered for $15.00 from: /usr/group Standards Committee 4655 Old Ironsides Drive, Suite 200 Santa Clara, California 95054 Tel: (408)986-8840 Fax: (408)986-1645 /usr/group also publishes an eight page document, ``Your Guide to POSIX,'' explaining what IEEE 1003 is, and a nineteen page document, ``POSIX Explored,'' about technical aspects of IEEE 1003.1, and its relations to other standards and historical implementations. Contact /usr/group at the above address for details. The System V Interface Definition (The Purple Book, or SVID). This is the AT&T standard and is one of the most frequently-used references of the IEEE 1003 committee. AT&T Customer Information Center Attn: Customer Service Representative P.O. Box 19901 Indianapolis, IN 46219 U.S.A. 800-432-6600 (Inside U.S.A.) 800-255-1242 (Inside Canada) 317-352-8557 (Outside U.S.A. and Canada) System V Interface Definition, Issue 2 should be ordered by the following select codes: Select Code: Volume: Topics: 320-011 Volume I Base System Kernel Extension 320-012 Volume II Basic Utilities Extension Advanced Utilities Extension Software Development Extension Administered System Extension Terminal Volume Interface Extension 320-013 Volume III Base System Addendum Terminal Interface Extension Network Services Extension 307-131 I, II, III (all three volumes) The price is about 37 U.S. dollars for each volume or $84 for all three. Major credit cards are accepted for telephone orders: mail orders should include a check or money order, payable to AT&T. The X/OPEN PORTABILITY GUIDE (The Green Book) is another reference frequently used by IEEE 1003. The X/OPEN Group is "Ten of the world's major information system suppliers" (at time of publication, Bull, DEC, Ericsson, Hewlett-Packard, ICL, NIXDORF, Olivetti, Philips, Siemens and Unisys and subsequently augmented by AT&T) who have produced a document intended to promote the writing of portable applications. They closely follow both SVID and POSIX, and cite the /usr/group standard as contributing, but X/OPEN's books cover a wider area than any of those. The book is published by Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. Book Order Department P.O. Box 1991 1000 BZ Amsterdam The Netherlands and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada by: Elsevier Science Publishing Company, Inc. 52 Vanderbilt Avenue New York, NY 10017 U.S.A. There are currently five volumes: 1) System V Specification Commands and Utilities 2) System V Specification System Calls and Libraries 3) System V Specification Supplementary Definitions 4) Programming Languages 5) Data Management They take a large number of credit cards and other forms of payment. Comments, suggestions, error reports, etc., for Issue 2 of the Green Book may be mailed directly to: xpg2@xopen.co.uk uunet!mcvax!inset!xopen!xpg2 Information about X/OPEN can be requested from: Mike Lambert Technical Director X/OPEN Ltd c/o ICL BRA01 Lovelace Road Bracknell Berkshire England +44 344 42 48 42 mgl@xopen.co.uk uunet!mcvax!inset!xopen!mgl Finally, 4.2BSD and 4.3BSD have influenced POSIX in a number of areas. The best reference on them is the 4.3BSD manuals, published by USENIX. An order form may be obtained from: Howard Press c/o USENIX Association P.O. Box 2299 Berkeley, CA 94710 415-528-8649 {ucbvax,decvax}!usenix!office 4.3BSD User's Manual Set (3 volumes) $25.00 User's Reference Manual User's Supplementary Documents Master Index 4.3BSD Programmer's Manual Set (3 volumes) $25.00 Programmer's Reference Maual Programmer's Supplementary Documents, Volume 1 Programmer's Supplementary Documents, Volume 2 4.3BSD System Manager's Manual (1 volume) $10.00 Unfortunately, there are some license restrictions. Contact the USENIX office for details. Volume-Number: Volume 12, Number 26