Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!longway!std-unix From: dee@linus.MITRE.ORG (David E. Emery) Newsgroups: comp.std.unix Subject: Re: Standards Update Part 4: 1003.5 Message-ID: <344@longway.TIC.COM> Date: 15 May 89 18:14:41 GMT Sender: std-unix@longway.TIC.COM Reply-To: dee@linus.MITRE.ORG (David E. Emery) Lines: 76 Approved: jsq@longway.tic.com (Moderator, John S. Quarterman) Posted-From: The MITRE Corp., Bedford, MA X-Alternate-Route: user%node@mbunix.mitre.org Return-Path: To: baker@nu.cs.fsu.edu, std-unix@longway.TIC.COM, shane@bungia.mn.org Cc: posix-ada-committee@grebyn.com From: dee@linus.MITRE.ORG (David E. Emery) Standards Update Part 4: 1003.5 An update on UNIX|= Standards Activities January 1989 IEEE 1003 Meeting, Ft. Lauderdale 1003.5 - Ada Bindings to POSIX This quarter's 1003.5 report points out some problems that are really endemic to the entire standards making process. To wit, the people involved in making standards are rarely those who end up using them. The user community does not (generally) have the wherewithal or time to join standards committees and attend standards committee meetings. POSIX, like all other standards, suffers from this problem. In the case of 1003.5, the problem manifests itself in a new way. While there are few members of the committee, the vendor and end user community are about evenly represented. This would seem to be an advantage. Unfortunately, the Ada vendor and user community is not a UNIX oriented community. The members of this committee, while very knowledgeable about Ada and its requirements, may not be as well verse in traditional UNIX semantics as one would like. This may change as the DoD (and the entire US Federal Government) becomes more interested in POSIX. Until that time, 1003.5 is going to suffer from a dearth of UNIX oriented members. This may cause them to produce a standard that, while strong in Ada terms, is weak when it comes to its relationship to POSIX based systems. The Ada language binding group has a goal of having a standard Ada binding for P1003.1 by the end of 1989, with balloting to take place some time in the fall. The first draft of this standard was available for the January meeting of the POSIX committees, and it is going to take quite a bit of work to get it ready for a fall ballot. This committee is really in desparate need of some warm bodies - preferably with Ada and UNIX backgrounds. --------------- I don't think this is a very fair characterization of our working group. It may have been true at Minneapolis (where most of the 1003.5 officers, for various reasons, were unable to attend), but many of us have a pretty solid Unix background. It is true that we sometimes have to educate the 'uninitiated'. It is also true that we need more bodies, particularly people literate in both Unix and Ada. However, there is a substantial interest in Ada on Unix, indicated by the large number of vendors (Verdix, Telesoft, Alsys, Meridian, DDC and Tartan Labs ). However, I take significant exception to the implication that the 1003.5 committee "does not understand Unix." This is particularly true when you look at the expressed attitude of the rest of 1003, that "we don't care about Ada", or at best "we don't have time to learn Ada". We have a major problem when Ada and Unix clash, a problem I don't think that the rest of P1003 can appreciate (given their narrow C focus). dave emery@mitre.org [ The report was based on the Minneapolis meeting. It's good to see some counter opinions, though. -mod ] Volume-Number: Volume 16, Number 41