Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!hplabs!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!longway!std-unix From: ahby@bungia.bungia.mn.org (Shane P. McCarron) Newsgroups: comp.std.unix Subject: Standards Update, Part 4: 1003.0 and 1003.1 Message-ID: <272@longway.TIC.COM> Date: 11 Dec 88 16:40:23 GMT Sender: std-unix@longway.TIC.COM Reply-To: Shane P. McCarron Lines: 159 Approved: jsq@longway.tic.com (Moderator, John S. Quarterman) [ These Standards Updates are published after each IEEE 1003 meeting, and are commissioned by the USENIX Association. See Part 1 for contact information. -mod ] An update on UNIX|= Standards Activities - Part 4 POSIX 1003.0 and 1003.1 Updates November 18, 1988 Shane P. McCarron, NAPS International 1003.0 - POSIX Guide At this meeting of 1003.0 the group was presented with the first working draft of the guide document. Throughout the week the committee met in both small groups and in plenary sessions to expand on the first draft and start nailing down the exact focus of the project. In particular the group concentrated on the issues that had been raised and entered in the Issues Log, the overall objectives and the scope of the document. The purpose of the discussions was in part to clarify the strategic goals of the committee, and in part to prioritize those items that have already been decided upon. Each small group that met worked on a particular area of the draft, expanding on its contents. As the full working group could not decide on the level of detail that should be included in each section, it was left up to each small group and revisited later. Topics that are being covered include: The Benefits of Open Systems, Key Open Systems Areas. The Watchdog contact for 1003.0 is Kevin Lewis. He can be reached at: Kevin Lewis DEC 1331 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Suite 645 Washington, DC 20004 klewis@gucci.dec.com +1 (202) 383-5633 1003.1 - System Services Interface The big news from this meeting of the 1003.1 working group is that its Chair, Jim Isaak, has resigned after 5 years of work. Jim is also Chair of 1003, the convenor of the ISO __________ |= UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T in the U.S. and other countries. - 2 - work item on POSIX, and a pacel of other things; consequently he felt that he could no longer contribute the amount of time to 1003.1 that is really necessary for a working group chair. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Jim for all of the effort he put in to making the first POSIX standard a reality. We are fortunate that there are people like him in the industry. The new chair of the committee is Donn Terry. Donn has been co-chair for a couple of years now, and has been the real chair (if not in name, then in actions) since the standard went to ballot in November of 1987. He is one of the original members of 1003.1, and is also the chair of the US Technical Advisory Group on POSIX to ANSI. Donn coordinated the last two rounds of balloting on the 1003.1 standard, and did an excellent job. I'm confident that he will prove to be as able a chair as Mr. Isaak. Almost as important is that the standard is now available in print. The bound version of the standard, while almost unreadable because of IEEE enforced formatting changes, and hard on the eyes because of its ugly split-pea-green cover, is now available for $16 (members) or $32 (non-members) from the IEEE office in New Jersey. For a copy, please contact: IEEE Service Center 445 Hoes Ln. Piscataway, NJ 08854 +1-201-981-0060 After electing the new chair, the working group got down to business. They continued their work on extending the first POSIX standard, IEEE Std 1003.1-1988. Their primary areas of focus are now a new archive format, a functional interface for terminal interaction, and cleanup of the first standard. In addition the group starting forming a sub group to be the interpretations committee for the released standard. Each standard must have a "supreme court" of sorts. Users of the standard may submit formal questions to the IEEE, and those questions will in turn be conveyed to the interpretations committee. It is up to this committee to figure out the answers to the questions, and then to modify the standard if necessary so that in future printings the question doesn't come up. More about this as it develops. One issue of great import is internationalization of the standard. The international community has some concerns, particularly in the areas of character sets and the use of the words "byte" and "character". These concerns were in particular voiced by the Japanese representatives at the - 3 - October meeting of WG15 in Tokyo. The committee tried to be very careful when drafting the standard, but apparently not everything was covered. In any event, the working group now has to write an appendix to the standard which specifies the intent of the group regarding international implementations of POSIX. The standard is not really an implementors guide, but the appendix should provide a better guide to the intent of the group. Hopefully this appendix will be enough to keep the international community at bay long enough for the standard to be ratified as an ISO Draft International Standard (DIS). On a related note, the ISO Working Group for POSIX (ISO/IEC JTC1/Sc22/WG15) has recommended that DP 9945 (the draft proposed international standard POSIX) be elevated to a DIS. This means that the standard has to go through another (international) balloting period before it can be a real international standard. Personally, I don't anticipate any trouble. The 1003.1 committee hopes to ballot a revised version of the standard within two years. This revised version would contain a new archive format, some additional functions there were left out of the original, but are now felt to be necessary, and any clarifications that have come from the interpretations committee. In addition all of the interfaces in the standard will be described in a way that is programming language independent, and there will be a chapter that has the C language binding to this language independent description. It sounds like a big job, but the committee is optimistic. It is also small enough now that it might just get it done in that time frame. I am the Watchdog committee contact for 1003.1: Shane P. McCarron NAPS International 117 Mackubin St. Suite 6 St. Paul, MN 55102 +1 (612) 224-9239 ahby@bungia.mn.org uunet!bungia.mn.org!ahby Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 40