Usenet 1994 January/usenetsourcesnewsgroupsinfomagicjanuary1994.iso/sources/std_unix/mod.std.unix.v2

Internet Message Format | 1987-06-30 | 42KB

From jsq  Wed Sep 18 15:57:19 1985
Path: ut-sally!jsq
From: [e-mail] (John Quarterman)
Newsgroups: mod.std.unix
Subject: D.C. committee meeting and administrativia
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: 18 Sep 85 20:57:01 GMT
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 45
Approved: [e-mail]
Draft-9: P1003.D.C.

The IEEE P1003 Portable Operating Systems Environment Committee
(note the name change to avoid using the trademarked word UNIX)
met in Tyson's Corner Virginia (just outside of Washington D.C.)
last week.  A number of things were accomplished, many of which
I will report on in this newsgroup.  Among them are relations
with the X3J11 C standards committee, access to the P1003 draft
standard, various issues relating to specific sections of the
current draft, and the schedule for further meetings and balloting.

A couple of people have complained that digest format is inappropriate
for this newsgroup.  Since the volume is, ah, shall we say, low,
I don't have any strong feeling one way or the other.  So, from
now on mod.std.unix will not use digest format.  If you have
an opinion one way or the other, mail a note to std-unix-request.

I'm also not going to post all the access information in every article.
Here it is once, and I'll probably repeat it now and then.

The USENET newsgroup mod.std.unix is for discussions of UNIX standards,
particularly the IEEE P1003 draft standard.  It is also distributed
in an ARPA Internet mailing list.  I'm the moderator, which mostly
means I post what you send me.

Submissions-To:    ut-sally!std-unix    or [e-mail]
Comments-To: ut-sally!std-unix-request    or [e-mail]
UUCP-Routes: {ihnp4,seismo,harvard,gatech}!ut-sally!std-unix

Permission to post to the newsgroup is assumed for mail to std-unix.
Permission to post is not assumed for mail to std-unix-request,
unless explicitly granted in the mail.  Mail to my personal addresses
will be treated like mail to std-unix-request if it obviously refers
to the newsgroup.

Archives may be found on sally.UTEXAS.EDU.  The current volume is
volume 2, this is the first article in it, and it may be retrieved by
anonymous ftp (login anonymous, password guest) as ~ftp/pub/mod.std.unix,
while the previous volume may be retrieved as ~ftp/pub/mod.std.unix.v1.

Finally, remember that any remarks by any committee member (especially
including me) in this newsgroup do not represent any position (including
any draft, proposed or actual, of the standard) of the committee as a
whole, unless explicitly stated otherwise in such remarks.

Volume-Number: Volume 2, Number 1


From jsq  Wed Sep 18 16:37:26 1985
Path: ut-sally!jsq
From: [e-mail] (John Quarterman)
Newsgroups: mod.std.unix
Subject: Access to IEEE P1003 proposed draft standard
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: 18 Sep 85 21:37:16 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 55
Approved: [e-mail]
Draft-9: D4.Access

Draft 4 of the proposed draft standard of the IEEE P1003
Portable Operating System Environment committee is available
by anonymous ftp from sally.UTEXAS.EDU as ~ftp/pub/P1003.D4.Z,
which is a compressed tar file.

If you have a UUCP connection to decvax, you can probably get
it from them if you drop a note to decvax!jmcg.  If you have
a UUCP connection to ut-sally, drop me <ut-sally!jsq> a line
and we'll negotiate about getting it from sally.  Neither
decvax nor ut-sally can accept new UUCP connections solely
for this purpose.

We're still looking for some UUCP host with very high connectivity
to make it generally available on the UUCP network.  Volunteers?

In agreeing to make the draft available by these methods,
IEEE requires that it *only* be available from a limited set
of hosts.  That set is currently sally.UTEXAS.EDU (aka ut-sally)
and decvax.  If you get it from anywhere else, even if the
bits compare, it's not the real thing.  Please do *not*
make any copies publicly available for UUCP or ftp transfer
without letting me know.

Note that the document is not a standard.  It is not even
a trial use standard.  It is a proposed draft standard.
The following text appears on the title page:

        Portable Operating System Environment

                  P1003/D4

               September, 1985

    All rights reserved by the Institute of Electrical and
    Electronics Engineers, Inc.

    This is an unapproved draft and is subject to change.

    Do not specify or claim conformance to this document.

In the above comments about access to and status of the draft,
I am representing the opinion of the committee and IEEE,
as I understand it.

This particular draft is the one which was current at the *beginning*
of the committee meeting last week near Washington D.C.  The next
draft should be available in about three weeks.  Meanwhile, you
should know about a few things which were changed after this draft.
Most of the C library functions are now not in the P1003 standard,
rather the P1003 standard refers to the X3J11 C standard for them.
Similarly for most C type definitions and some system calls.
Getlogname and ustat are gone.  Termio is now in an appendix.
I will post more details in following articles.

Volume-Number: Volume 2, Number 2

From jsq  Thu Sep 19 18:04:17 1985
Path: ut-sally!jsq
From: [e-mail] (John Quarterman)
Newsgroups: mod.std.unix
Subject: Re: Access to IEEE P1003 proposed draft standard
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: 19 Sep 85 21:25:36 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 17
Approved: [e-mail]
Draft-9: D4.Access

Rick Adams has volunteered seismo for UUCP access to P1003 Draft 4
by people on machines with existing UUCP connections to seismo.
It's ~uucp/P1003.D4.Z, which is the same compressed tar format
as the copy on sally.  Thus the draft is now available to
Australia and Europe as well as to North America.

So the list of hosts from which the draft is available is now
seismo for UUCP, decvax for UUCP by arrangement with decvax!jmcg,
ut-sally for UUCP by arrangement with ut-sally!std-unix-request,
and sally.UTEXAS.EDU for anonymous ftp within the ARPA Internet.

The offer is still open:

> We're still looking for some UUCP host with very high connectivity
> to make it generally available on the UUCP network.  Volunteers?

Volume-Number: Volume 2, Number 3

From jsq  Sat Sep 21 17:20:19 1985
Path: ut-sally!jsq
From: [e-mail] (John Quarterman)
Newsgroups: mod.std.unix
Subject: IEEE P1003 committee meeting schedule
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: 21 Sep 85 22:20:12 GMT
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 49
Approved: [e-mail]
Draft-9: P1003.schedule

Here is the schedule for currently planned IEEE P1003 committee meetings
and related events.  (Courtesy of Doug Gwyn:  I lost my notes on this.)

14-Oct        Revised spec (P1003/D5) online and in IEEE office
        Start of document review, mass mailing to Working Group
01-Nov        Technical review, Steering Committee meets in Dallas for
        editing session
04-Nov        Master copy of document to IEEE
08-Nov        Mail document for balloting
        Technical review and ballot resolution begins too
11-Dec        End of balloting
        Ballot resolution continues
13..15-Jan    P1003 meeting in Denver to review comments and
        proposed responses
21..31-Jan    Window during which ballot responses can be changed
15-Feb        Final document submitted to IEEE Standards Board
22-Mar        IEEE Standards Board meeting

P1003/D5 will be Draft Five and is intended to contain changes
agreed upon at the recent meeting near Washington, D.C.
I will make it available as the current draft when I get
a copy of it.  This will probably be after the Steering
Committee meeting at the beginning of November.

The "Final document" referred to here is the one which
is intended to become the trial use standard.  That will stand
for some period of time, possibly a year, and then be followed
by the real standard, which will be developed from experience
gained from the trial use standard.

The meeting in Dallas this November is of a small group and is
basically for technical editing, to pull the document into a
more self-consistent form.  The next full meeting of the committee
will be in January in Denver, in conjunction with the USENIX
conference, and is hoped to be the last one before the trial
use document is submitted to IEEE.

This schedule may slip if any form of the document is not ready
at its particular deadline.

There will probably be a meeting in April, place indeterminate
at the moment, and likely another in June in Atlanta in conjunction
with the USENIX Conference there.

Some P1003 committee members will be attending upcoming X3J11
committee meetings to help promote coordination between the
two committees.

Volume-Number: Volume 2, Number 4

From jsq  Sat Sep 21 17:26:47 1985
Path: ut-sally!jsq
From: [e-mail] (John Quarterman)
Newsgroups: mod.std.unix
Subject: problem with signal() in D5
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: 21 Sep 85 22:26:41 GMT
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 54
Approved: [e-mail]
Draft-9: 3.3

Date:     Fri, 20 Sep 85 11:53:29 EDT
From: Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]

I checked with X3J11 and the proposed change in the declaration of
user signal-handling functions has a problem.

The proposed change in the declared type of a signal handler was to:
    void func( int sig, ... );
where the ", ..." was intended to allow provision of additional
information (such as PC at time of fault) to the signal handler,
in a "signal and implementation dependent" way.

This is a nice idea, but according to X3J11 in order to guarantee
portability one would have to define all signal handlers with the
same ", ..." notation.  The fundamental reason behind this
requirement is that some C implementations will use a different
function parameter passing mechanism for variable parameter lists
than for regular lists.

This means that existing code such as
    void
    onintr( sig )            /* SIGINT catcher */
        int    sig;
        {
        do_something_with( sig );
        }
would officially be broken.  (Of course, many UNIX C implementations
on "nice" architectures would continue to work anyway.)

In order to avoid having to recode signal handlers to look like
    void
    onintr( int sig, ... )        /* SIGINT catcher */
        {
        do_something_with( sig );
        }
I recommend that the "optional" extra signal handler function
parameter(s) be removed from the proposed specification.  I agree
that a better signal interface would be desirable, and suggest
that the "real time extensions" subcommittee should consider this
issue (hopefully, they will use a different mechanism such as
4.2BSD's if they need to change the semantics).

Incidentally, the reason that this variable parameter list issue
is not a problem with open(), execl(), printf(), etc. is that the
application developer ("user") sees those functions from the
outside only, not from the inside (i.e., he uses their declarations
but does not have to provide a definition).  For brand-new
facilities there is also no problem, since X3J11 provides a
"stdargs" mechanism to provide a portable way to implement such
function definitions.  It is only when compatibility with past
function definitions is involved that a problem can arise.

Volume-Number: Volume 2, Number 5

From jsq  Wed Sep 25 09:17:04 1985
Path: ut-sally!jsq
From: [e-mail] (John Quarterman)
Newsgroups: mod.std.unix
Subject: Re: Access to IEEE P1003 proposed draft standard
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: 25 Sep 85 14:16:55 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 24
Approved: [e-mail]
In-Reply-To: <[e-mail]>
Draft-9: D4.Access

[ This makes the set of hosts with a copy of the standard available be
ARPA Internet:  anonymous ftp from sally.UTEXAS.EDU as ~ftp/pub/P1003.D4.Z.
UUCP:  decvax (contact decvax!jmcg), ut-sally (contact ut-sally!jsq),
and enea (contact enea!ber).  I'm still looking for some host for more
general UUCP availability in the States.  The file is in compressed
tar format.  You need a copy of compress (which has been posted to
net.sources several times, and is also available from sally.UTEXAS.EDU
as ~ftp/pub/compress.shar) to uncompress it.  -mod ]

Date: Tue, 24 Sep 85 22:25:15 -0200
From: Bjorn Eriksen <seismo!enea!ber>
To: ut-sally!std-unix

I'v now got a copy of P1003 from seismo and could make it available
to 'swnet', that is the Swedish part of Usenet/Eunet. OK?

--
    Bjorn Eriksen
    ENEA DATA Sweden

    UUCP:    {seismo,mcvax,cernvax,diku,ircam,prlb2,tut,ukc,unido}!enea!ber
    ARPA:    enea![e-mail]

Volume-Number:  Volume 2, Number 6

From jsq  Wed Sep 25 13:00:29 1985
Path: ut-sally!jsq
From: [e-mail] (John Quarterman)
Newsgroups: mod.std.unix
Subject: IEEE P1003 (participation in the working group)
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: 25 Sep 85 18:00:18 GMT
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 34
Approved: [e-mail]
Draft-9: Access.Standards

Date: Mon, 23 Sep 85 09:49:44 pdt
From: [e-mail] (Armando P. Stettner)
To: [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail]

Hi John.
What are the chances of getting onto this committee and/or
getting copies so as to participate in the review??
    aps.

[ As I understand it, there are two groups:  the working group,
and the balloting group.  The working group is the one which prepares
the various drafts.  The balloting group is the one which votes on
whether the drafts become any sort of standard (trial use or other).

There is a fair amount of intersection between the two groups.
I am in both the balloting and the working groups as the representative
of USENIX.  (Those of you who want to influence the USENIX vote on
the trial use standard, do let me know what you think I should do.
Though the actual vote will be cast at the direction of the USENIX board,
I hope to inform them of any opinions of the membership.)

DEC is already represented on both groups, so the easiest way for you
to get copies of things would probably be to get them from DEC's
representative.  I will send you his address and that of the chair.
I believe to get onto the working group you have to contact the chair
of the committee.  To get onto the balloting group you probably have
to be sent by a participating organization which IEEE has approved.

Could someone on the committee who knows more about the details of
this sort of thing please post a pocket summary to the newsgroup?
    -mod ]

Volume-Number:  Volume 2, Number 7

From jsq  Sat Sep 28 10:39:50 1985
Path: ut-sally!jsq
From: [e-mail] (John Quarterman)
Newsgroups: mod.std.unix
Subject: Re: Access to IEEE P1003 proposed draft standard
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: 28 Sep 85 15:39:44 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 58
Approved: [e-mail]
Draft-9: D4.Access

The draft document is formatted with the -mm macros.
Unfortunately, one must have a System V or System III (or PWB)
license to have those, and many people reading this do not.
I cannot make a copy of those macros publicly available
without violating UT's licenses.  So I am providing a copy
of the draft which is already formatted.

Some have had trouble uncompressing the original form of the
document sources I provided.  So I am providing both compressed
and uncompressed forms, as well as source to compress.

Some file names got truncated to 14 characters in the tar file
somewhere along the line.  This makes formatting on a 4.2BSD
machine difficult.  Running this will help:
#!/bin/sh -x
mv    sect/ch03_process_p    sect/ch03_process_prim
mv    sect/ch04_process_e    sect/ch04_process_env
mv    sect/ch06_nonlocal_    sect/ch06_nonlocal_jumps
mv    sect/ch09_device_sp    sect/ch09_device_specific
mv    sect/ch11_sort_sear    sect/ch11_sort_search
mv    sect/ch14_data_inte    sect/ch14_data_interchange

By anonymous ftp (login anonymous, password guest) from sally.UTEXAS.EDU,
one may retrieve the following over the ARPA Internet:

-rw-rw-r--  1 jsq      bin        389120 Sep 27 16:24 ~ftp/pub/P1003.D4
-rw-r--r--  1 jsq      bin        124553 Sep 19 17:00 ~ftp/pub/P1003.D4.Z
-rw-r--r--  1 jsq      bin        291305 Sep 27 16:30 ~ftp/pub/P1003.D4.doc
-rw-rw-r--  1 jsq      bin         89889 Sep 27 16:30 ~ftp/pub/P1003.D4.doc.Z
-rw-r--r--  1 jsq      ftp         56515 Apr  9 13:53 ~ftp/pub/compress.shar

P1003.D4 is the sources for the document, in tar format.
P1003.D4.Z is the same compressed.
P1003.D4.doc is a formatted form of the document (63 line pages
    separated by form feeds, i.e., ARPANET RFC format, which
    should be printable on just about any line printer).
P1003.D4.Z is the same compressed.
Compress.shar is the sources for compress.

Obviously you will want to retrieve the compressed form if you can.

The list of hosts from which the document is available by UUCP is
ut-sally (contact ut-sally!jsq), decvax (contact decvax!jcmg),
seismo, and enea.  Presumably they will pick up the new files.
Remember the IEEE rule that only copies obtained from one of the
hosts on the approved list (those named in this article) are real.

We still need a host with high connectivity in North America
for greater UUCP availability.

There is an IEEE interest list which people can join to get copies
of current drafts.  It is not clear that you will get them faster
that way than by the electronic means described above.  If you do
want to get on that interest list, you will want to send a request
including paper mail address to decvax!frog!jim, who is Jim Isaak,
the IEEE P1003 committee chair.

Volume-Number:  Volume 2, Number 8

From jsq  Tue Oct  1 15:44:28 1985
Path: ut-sally!jsq
From: [e-mail] (John Quarterman)
Newsgroups: mod.std.unix
Subject: Re: IEEE P1003 (participation in the working group)
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: 1 Oct 85 20:44:21 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 74
Approved: [e-mail]
Draft-9: Access.Standards

Date: Mon, 30 Sep 85 08:43:26 cdt
From: topaz!packard!ihnp4!uiucdcs!ccvaxa!willcox (David A Willcox)
To: uiucdcs.CS.UIUC.EDU!std-unix

John -

I just thought I would respond to the note on who can be in the working
and balloting groups.  If you don't get any other responses, you can
edit and/or summarize this and post it.  This is all my understanding
of the rules, but I am pretty sure they are accurate.

[ This is the most informative response I've gotten, so I'm posting it. -mod ]

The Working Group consists of whoever shows up for a meeting.  There is
no requirement of sponsorship by any organization - you don't need to
belong to any organization, nor do you need to be a corporate rep.  Of
course, someone, probably your employer, needs to pay transporation,
lodging, etc.  There is a rule which CAN be invoked at the request of
anyone at the meeting which limits participation (in the "concensus
process") to those who have attended at least two of the previous three
meetings.  This is to prevent any one organization or locality from
"stuffing the ballot box" at any particular meeting.  The rule has
never been invoked.

[ Perhaps it's worth remarking that the Working Group is already quite
large and somewhat unwieldy:  fifty people came to the last meeting.  -mod ]

The Ballotting Group is, itself, divided into two groups, the quorum
group and (I guess it would be called) the non-quorum group.  It would
require going into more detail about the balloting process than is
appropriate for this news group to explain the difference between
these.  The major differences are that those in the quorum group

    1) Must be a member of either IEEE or the IEEE Computer
       Society.
    2) Can vote either "yes" or "no", and
    3) Will get phone calls late at night if they don't return
       their ballots.

Those in the non-quorum group.

    1) Needn't be a member of anything.  (Needn't even be employed.)
    2) Can only vote "no", and
    3) No one but they care if their ballots are returned.


To be a member of either, request a form from Jim Isaak (John - you have his
address).  It'd better be SOON, since balloting should start in
December.

[ The address is:

    James Isaak
    Chairperson, IEEE/CS P1003
    Charles River Data Systems
    983 Concord St.
    Framingham, MA  01701

    (decvax!frog!jim)

As others have pointed out, there is also a mailing list for interested
parties, who get copies of the drafts but do not otherwise have to
participate.  Requests to get on that list should go to the above address.
    -mod ]

---------------------------------------
David A. Willcox
Gould CSD-Urbana
1101 E. University Ave.
Urbana, IL 61801
217-384-8500
{decvax!pur-ee,ihnp4}!uiucdcs!ccvaxa!willcox

Volume-Number:  Volume 2, Number 9

From jsq  Tue Oct  1 16:01:22 1985
Path: ut-sally!jsq
From: [e-mail] (John Quarterman)
Newsgroups: mod.std.unix
Subject: X/OPEN
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: 1 Oct 85 21:01:13 GMT
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 41
Approved: [e-mail]
Draft-9: Access.X/OPEN

At the D.C. P1003 committee meeting, there were two documents which
were referred to more than any others which were not actually submitted
as proposals to the committee:  The System V Interface Definition
(The Purple Book), and the X/OPEN PORTABILITY GUIDE (The Green Book).
(The /usr/group Standard was constantly being referred to implicitly,
since the current P1003 drafts are derived from it, and of course the
X3J11 draft standard was of great interest.)

X/OPEN is "A Group of European Computer Manufacturers" who have produced
a document intended to promote the writing of portable facilities.
Their flyer remarks (in five languages), "Now we all speak the same
language in Europe."

The book is published by

    Elsevier Science Publishers
    Book Order Department
    PO Box 211
    1000 AE Amsterdam
    The Netherlands

or, for those in the U.S.A. or Canada:

    Elsevier Science Publishers Co Inc.
    PO Box 1663
    Grand Central Station
    New York, NY 10163

The price is Dfl 275,00 or USD 75.00.  According to the order form,
"This price includes the costs of one update which will be mailed
automatically upon publication."  They take a large number of credit
cards and other forms of payment.

Could someone please send me details on how to order the SVID so
I can post that, too?  While I realize that such announcements
may appear somewhat commercial, nonetheless the X/OPEN and SVID
documents are of sufficiently direct interest to the standards
effort to post access information for them.  (If you disagree
with this assertion, let me know.)

Volume-Number:  Volume 2, Number 10

From jsq  Thu Oct  3 13:07:19 1985
Path: ut-sally!jsq
From: [e-mail] (John Quarterman)
Newsgroups: mod.std.unix
Subject: System V Interface Description
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: 3 Oct 85 18:07:11 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 26
Approved: [e-mail]
Draft-9: Access.SVID

[ A reader has supplied the following information.  -mod ]

A frontal page in my SVID has the following ordering information:

    To purchase the System V Interface Definition, write to:

        System V Interface Definition
        Select Code 307-127
        AT&T Customer Information Center
        2833 North Franklin Road
        Indianapolis, IN 46219

    Be sure to include the address the document should be shipped to
    and a check or money order made payable to AT&T.

    or call

            1-800-432-6600

    and ask for operator 77. Give the operator the Select Code
    307-127. (You must have a major credit card to order by phone.)

No price is given on that page.


Volume-Number:  Volume 2, Number 11

From jsq  Sun Oct  6 15:02:21 1985
Path: ut-sally!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (std-unix)
Newsgroups: mod.std.unix
Subject: Re:  System V Interface Description
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: 6 Oct 85 20:02:15 GMT
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 9
Approved: [e-mail]
Draft-9: Access.SVID

Date:     Sun, 6 Oct 85 14:59:41 EDT
From: Dan Franklin <seismo!BBN-LABS-B.ARPA!dan>
To: ut-sally!BBN-LABS-B.ARPA!std-unix

Re price of SVID: I ordered a copy a couple of months ago.  It was around $30.

    Dan Franklin

Volume-Number:  Volume 2, Number 12

From jsq  Tue Oct  8 20:29:06 1985
Path: ut-sally!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (Moderator, John Quarterman)
Newsgroups: mod.std.unix
Subject: Changes to the P1003 D4 Draft Proposed Standard
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: 8 Oct 85 23:41:46 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Organization: IEEE/P1003 Portable Operating System Environment Committee
Lines: 52
Approved: [e-mail]
Draft-9: D4.Changes

This is the first of a series of articles about changes which were made
to the P1003 D4 proposed draft standard at the D.C. meeting.  This one
contains a few general comments.

All these comments are my opinion, and not the official position of
IEEE, P1003, or anyone else.  While I think I understand the things I'm
writing about here, I've only been to two committee meetings.  I trust
that other, more experienced members will correct me if I stray too far
from the consensus.


Many people have the impression that the P1003 standard will be almost
exclusively based on System V.  This is not really true.  The draft
standard is probably closer to System V than to any other variant of
UNIX, and the System V Interface Description is a constant reference at
committee meetings.  However, committee members often express concern
about not outlawing features of hosted systems (emulations on top of
other operating systems), networked systems, or distributed systems.
(The standard does not explicitly address most of these issues, it just
carefully does not make them impossible or hard to do.)  Also, many of
the committee members run non-System V-based software on their own
systems at work.  4.2BSD features, in particular, are frequently
mentioned.

Thus, while some System V-specific features like FIFOs appear in
the standard, the mechanisms provided for reading directories
are the 4.2BSD opendir/readdir/closedir functions, and the data
interchange format is tar, not cpio.

Another major concern of the P1003 committee is compatibility with
the X3J11 C standard.  This led to major modifications to P1003.D4.

An issue which has not been addressed thus far to any great extent
is internationalization.  There is no mention of character sets
other than ASCII, for instance.

And another issue which is explicitly not addressed is binary
compatibility:  the standard is intended to facilitate the writing
of programs whose *source* may then be moved from one conforming
implementation to another with minimal changes.

While the P1003 committee wishes to produce a standard which
is inclusive enough to be of use, it is necessary to start with
a small trial use standard and include other issues in later drafts.


In the specific comments on P1003 D4, note that I identify things
by draft number and section number, not page number.  This is necessary,
due to the many printed forms of the draft.  Please do the same in
any comments you submit to the committee or to the newsgroup.

Volume-Number: Volume 2, Number 13

From jsq  Tue Oct  8 18:47:37 1985
Path: ut-sally!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (Moderator, John Quarterman)
Newsgroups: mod.std.unix
Subject: Compatibility of P1003 and X3J11
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: 8 Oct 85 23:47:20 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Organization: IEEE/P1003 Portable Operating System Environment Committee
Lines: 57
Approved: [e-mail]
Draft-9: X3J11

In the interests of compatibility with X3J11, most of these sections
    6.  Nonlocal Jumps        (setjmp, longjmp)
    10. C Language Library
    11. Sorting and Searching    (bsearch, qsort)
    13. Errors and Diagnostics    (perror)
are no longer in the P1003.D4 draft.  Instead, there will be some sort
of reference to the X3J11 standard, the exact form of which will be
decided at the Steering Committee meeting in Dallas in early November.
Section 2.6, C Language Definitions, may be further revised, as well.

There are several exceptions.  The following remain with P1003:
ctermid, cuserid, fileno, fdopen, mktemp, ttyname, and isatty.
Thus all stream (FILE *) returning functions go to X3J11,
while all file descriptor-returning functions remain with P1003.

These are no longer in either draft standard:  swab, ecvt, fcvt,
and gcvt.  I think bsearch and qsort are still in the X3J11 draft,
but they are removed from the P1003 draft.

The conversion functions _toupper, _tolower, toascii, and isascii
are handled by X3J11 (in slightly different forms), but no longer
by P1003.

These are in both the P1003 and the X3J11 drafts:  getenv, exit,
kill, signal, and time.  The currently intended way of handling
kill and signal is that X3J11 will define the syntax and a certain
small subset of legitimate arguments and behavior, while P1003 will
add more signals and more behaviors.

Exit (section 3.2.2) is a controversial topic, as both committees would
like to have complete control over it.  The points of contention are
that the X3J11 definition refers to streams, which are no (almost) no
longer referenced by P1003, and also the onexit function.  P1003 has
defined _exit (just like the real _exit which appears in most known
UNIXes) and has recommended that X3J11 drop onexit from their exit.  I
frankly can't remember whether P1003 has actually dropped exit
completely in favor of _exit.

Also, everyone is aware that some of the P1003 Numerical Limits of
section 2.7 (particularly the floating point ones) conflict with
those of X3J11.  This is being worked on by the X3J11 liaison
committee, and will probably take a more definite form in Dallas.

Section 2.7 is in fact that of the previous draft (D3), due to a clerical
error which misplaced the changes made to it at the Portland meeting.
The real limit definitions will be replaced and further revised
in the next draft.

The definition of errno (section 2.3, Error Numbers) is still in both
draft standards.  The issue of the proper wording of what happens to
the value of errno when a function succeeds will likely come up again
in Dallas, once we know whether X3J11 has again modified their wording.

Once again, remember that these are only my opinions, and not those
of the P1003 committee, IEEE, or anyone else.

Volume-Number: Volume 2, Number 14

From jsq  Tue Oct  8 21:03:36 1985
Path: ut-sally!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (Moderator, John Quarterman)
Newsgroups: mod.std.unix
Subject: Re: Changes to the P1003 D4 Draft Proposed Standard
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: 8 Oct 85 23:53:03 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Organization: IEEE/P1003 Portable Operating System Environment Committee
Lines: 110
Approved: [e-mail]
Draft-9: D4.Changes

This article mentions some changes to the P1003.D4 draft by section,
sometimes with discussion of the motivation for the changes.
There were far too many changes to record them all, and I do not
have the minutes which have the details anyway.  Thus I am trying
here merely to mention changes which strongly affect the reader
of P1003.D4, in hopes of reducing duplicate effort.

Section 2.2, General Terms, has been expanded to include many
previously missing definitions.  There was a proposal to change the
format to be more tutorial, with definitions of specific terms embedded
in paragraphs discussing related concepts (in fact, the writeup in that
form was considered to be the text of that section for D4 instead of
what appears in the current copy, which is older).  The consensus was
that, while there is certainly a need for such tutorial material,
a standard is a reference, not a place to learn the operating system.
The result is the same general form as that of P1003.D4, though
somewhat more detailed.

Much attention has been paid to error codes throughout the document.
Many of the definitions in 2.3, Error Numbers, have been revised.

The spurious last sentence about structure elements in section 2.4
has been deleted.

Most places where the numeric values of symbolic constants were
given, such as section 2.8, Symbolic Constants, the numeric values
have been removed, and the form of the display has been changed
from C preprocessor definitions to a table.  I believe there is
an intention to give the numeric values in appendices as examples
of what they historically have been.  The main exception is section
14. Data Interchange Format, as the values of the bytes on the tape
or other interchange medium must be defined.

In section 4.2, User Identification, it was decided that there
was no need for three methods of getting the user's login name
(cuserid, getlogin, and getlogname).  Getlogname was removed,
and the writeups of the other two were redone to emphasize when
it was appropriate to use each.  Note that though the logname
function was removed, the LOGNAME environment variable was not.
These changes are different from what is in the SVID or X/OPEN
documents.

Ustat, and its containing section 7.9.1, File System Statistics,
no longer exist.  The reasoning was that only a very few programs
used it (df and ed) and it does not generalize easily to networked
file systems.  Df is not defined by the standard, and the use
of ustat in ed is not necessary and not sufficient.  Also, ustat
required the definition of a "mounted file system" which was otherwise
not in the standard (as mount and umount are not).

In section 8.3, Pipes, much work was put into producing a description
which permitted most known existing implementations while retaining
enough specificity to be useful.  There are a few areas which will
affect existing implementations, but this is more because there
already were conflicting implementations, not that P1003 wishes
to legislate one version as the better one.  A table will appear
in an appendix showing what happens with various attempts at
writing with O_NDELAY on or off, and with differing buffer sizes.
The Version 8 manual was an inspiration for some of the wording.

In section 8.6, Input and Output, a proposal to change the
nbyte arguments of read and write from type int to unsigned
failed to pass the committee, as has apparently happened many
times before.  Verbiage was added to the Errors subsections
to clarify what may happen if a negative nbyte argument is passed.

In section 8.7.3, File Record Locking, the last vestiges of references
to enforcement mode were removed.  There were only two known
implementations of enforcement mode, and the representatives of both
companies (AT&T and HP) said they had done it only because the
/usr/group standard had included it, and they would be happy to have it
removed.

Section 9.1.1, Termios, does not appear in the copy of the draft which
is currently available, but was supplied to the committee as a separate
document which I believe was considered to be part of P1003.D4.  The
subcommittee which considered it at the meeting recommended removing it
from the draft standard altogether.  The reasons for this were various,
including that the wording was too stringent in places (it would
apparently require an X.25 or TCP/IP/RS232C connection to act like an
ordinary terminal port) and too vague in others (it was not clear what
a line discipline was).  Also, there was no provision for speeds other
than the traditional ones up to 19200 baud, only one direction of
XON/XOFF protocol was supported, etc.

In the full committee, several members objected to the removal of the
termio section on the grounds that a) many of the objections to the
section were internationalization issues, and the committee had
otherwise explicitly avoided addressing such issues, and b) the draft
standard really needed a termio section, as it would risk being voted
down by the balloting committee if it lacked one.  It was speculated
that the /usr/group standard would have had more influence if it had
included a similar section.

The resolution was to put the existing termio section in an appendix,
while letting section 9.1.1 refer to the appendix, saying something
to the effect that the committee did intend to have a section similar
to the one currently in the appendix, but possibly not until after
trial use.  This prohibits anyone from specifying compliance to the
current termio section, while making the intention to include one clear.

In section 12. Passwords, there are no longer any references to text
files for the /etc/passwd or /etc/group information.  Only the getpwent
and getgrent functions are defined:  the internal storage format is
not defined.

Once again, remember that these are only my opinions, and not those
of the P1003 committee, IEEE, or anyone else.

Volume-Number: Volume 2, Number 15

From jsq  Sat Oct 19 09:29:15 1985
Path: ut-sally!jsq
From: [e-mail] (John Quarterman)
Newsgroups: mod.std.unix
Subject: Re: Access to IEEE P1003 proposed draft standard
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: 19 Oct 85 14:29:10 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 17
Approved: [e-mail]
Draft-9: D4.Access

P1003 Draft 4 is now available from ucbvax in their uucppublic directory.
They have the compressed files:

P1003.D4.Z is a compressed tar archive of the sources of the document.
P1003.D4.doc.Z is a compressed formatted copy of the document.

As those in Australia already know, the document is also available
from munnari.

The other hosts from which it was already available is, once again:
sally.UTEXAS.EDU by anonymous ftp over the ARPA Internet, and on UUCP
ut-sally (contact ut-sally!jsq), decvax (contact decvax!jcmg),
seismo, and enea.

I am investigating the availability of Draft 5.

Volume-Number: Volume 2, Number 16

From jsq  Tue Oct 29 13:02:17 1985
Path: ut-sally!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (Moderator, John Quarterman)
Newsgroups: mod.std.unix
Subject: P1003 Steering Committee Meeting Friday in Dallas
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: 29 Oct 85 19:02:05 GMT
Organization: IEEE/P1003 Portable Operating System Environment Committee
Lines: 11
Approved: [e-mail]
Draft-9: D5.Access

The P1003 Steering Committee meeting is this Friday, 1 November,
not 4 November as I previously thought and reported.  I will
carry any comments I receive by Thursday to Dallas with me.

Draft 5 (the results of the D.C. meeting a couple of months ago)
is online at decvax, but there seems to be some problem with
transmission to here from there.  If I do not get it before
I leave for Dallas, I will attempt to bring it back on a tape,
including changes made in Dallas.

Volume-Number: Volume 2, Number 17

From jsq  Wed Oct 30 19:47:30 1985
Path: ut-sally!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (Moderator, John Quarterman)
Newsgroups: mod.std.unix
Subject: P1003.D5
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: 31 Oct 85 01:47:15 GMT
Organization: IEEE/P1003 Portable Operating System Environment Committee
Lines: 63
Approved: [e-mail]
Draft-9: D5.Access

An online document which "represents" P1003 Draft 5 is on sally.UTEXAS.EDU,
for retrieval by anonymous ftp (connect with ftp, log in as anonymous
with password guest) over the ARPA Internet.  The files are:

-rw-r--r--  1 jsq      bin        282038 Oct 30 16:08 ~ftp/pub/P1003.D5.doc
-rw-r--r--  1 jsq      bin        337920 Oct 30 16:08 ~ftp/pub/P1003.D5
-rw-r--r--  1 jsq      bin         92315 Oct 30 16:01 ~ftp/pub/P1003.D5.doc.Z
-rw-r--r--  1 jsq      bin        109677 Oct 30 16:01 ~ftp/pub/P1003.D5.Z

P1003.D5 is a tar archive of the source for the document.
P1003.D5.doc is an nroff formatted copy of the document, suitable
    for printing on a line printer (contains form feeds and backspaces).
P1003.D5.Z and P1003.D5.doc.Z are compressed copies of the above files.
They were compressed with compress version 4, a public domain program
which has been distributed over newsgroup net.sources on USENET.
There is a copy on sally.UTEXAS.EDU in ~ftp/pub/compress.v4.shar.

The list of hosts which previously made Draft 4 available are
sally.UTEXAS.EDU, as above; on UUCP:  ut-sally (contact ut-sally!jsq),
decvax (contact decvax!jmcg), seismo, ucbvax, munnari, and enea.
Presumably they will all pick up at least the compressed files.
Some other hosts have asked for copies by mail to make them available.
I will mail those copies when I return from Dallas.

The rest of this article is a note which appears in the document:


This online document represents, but IS NOT, the current DRAFT (Draft
5, produced 22 October 1985) of the IEEE Computer Society's P1003
Working Group for a "Portable Operating System Enviornment" based on
the UNIX Operating System (Trademark of AT&T Bell Laboratories).

This material is copyright of IEEE, with ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  Please
respect these restricitions so we can continue to offer on-line access
to the information.

If you want to join the Correspondent Group (don't expect to make
meetings), the Working Group, or Balloting group for this standards
effort please contact:

     Jim Isaak             decvax!frog!jim
     Charles River Data Systems
     983 Concord Street
     Framingham, MA  01701.

(Jim needs your US Mail address to send you information about the effort;
he also needs your IEEE Membership Number if you wish to join the Balloting
Group).

Trial Use balloting is targeted for Nov-Dec 1985, with a final use
ballot some time near the end of 1986.

A moderated USENET group exists for on-line discussion of this effort
under the name: mod.std.unix

If you want hard copies of the DRAFT, you can obtain these from:

    Beth Cummings
    IEEE Standards Office;
    345 E. 47th Street
    New York, NY  10017

Volume-Number:  Volume 2, Number 18