Usenet 1994 January/usenetsourcesnewsgroupsinfomagicjanuary1994.iso/sources/std_unix/volume.15

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From jsq  Thu Sep  1 22:02:17 1988
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From: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: comp.std.unix Volume 15
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This is the first article in Volume 15 of comp.std.unix.
These volumes are purely for administrative convenience.
Feel free to continue any previous discussion or start new ones.

The USENET newsgroup comp.std.unix is also known as the ARPA Internet
mailing list [e-mail].  It is for discussions of UNIX
standards, particularly of IEEE 1003, or POSIX.  The moderator is
John S. Quarterman, who is also the institutional representative of
the USENIX Association to the IEEE P1003 Portable Operating System
Interface for Computer Environments Committee (commonly known as
the UNIX Standards Committee).

Submissions-To:    uunet!std-unix        or [e-mail]
Comments-To: uunet!std-unix-request    or [e-mail]
The host cs.utexas.edu may be used in place of uunet.uu.net.
Postings from the moderator may originate from longway.tic.com.

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 uunet.uu.net.  The current volume may
be retrieved by anonymous ftp (login anonymous, password guest)
over the ARPA Internet as
    ~ftp/comp.std.unix/archive
or
    ~ftp/comp.std.unix/volume.15
The previous volume may be retrieved as
    ~ftp/comp.std.unix/volume.14
For hosts with direct UUCP connections to the uunet machine,
UUCP transfer should work with, for example,
    uucp uunet!comp.std.unix/archive archive

Volumes 1-10 are filed under the former newsgroup name, mod.std.unix,
as ~ftp/pub/mod.std.unix.v1, ~ftp/pub/mod.std.unix.v2, etc., through
~ftp/pub/mod.std.unix.v10.  Volume 3 contains the AT&T public domain
getopt(3).  Volume 10 is a special index volume that catalogs Volumes 1-9.

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 a standard) of the committee as a
whole or of any subcommittee unless explicitly stated otherwise
in such remarks.

UNIX is a Registered Trademark of AT&T.
IEEE is a Trademark of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
    Engineers, Inc.

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 1

From root  Fri Sep  2 19:17:03 1988
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From: Lori Grob <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: UNIX ON SUPERCOMPUTERS WORKSHOP
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From: Lori Grob <[e-mail]>

               UNIX ON SUPERCOMPUTERS WORKSHOP

A large number of supercomputers are  now  or  will  in  the
future  be  running  Unix as their primary operating system.
This is the first workshop to consider the general  problems
of  running  Unix  on  supercomputers, and will cover topics
both practical and abstract.  Some of the topics  that  will
be covered are

        o Performance
        o Parallelism
        o Scheduling and Load Balancing
        o Storage Management
        o Processes and Process Management
        o Experiences


The workshop sessions will include both  full-length  papers
and short presentations, and there will be works in progress
sessions.  Works in  progress  presentation  slots  will  be
available  at  the  workshop  on  a first come, first served
basis.  Proceedings will be provided to registered attendees
at the workshop.


In addition to the regular sessions, there will be a trip to
the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and Westinghouse Energy
Center facilities.  Housed in the same building, this is one
of  the  largest  privately-owned  computing  centers in the
world.  A reception will be held  in  conjunction  with  the
visit.   There will also be a no-host reception Sunday even-
ing preceding the workshop.

                   WORKSHOP EVENT SCHEDULE


                  SUNDAY EVENING, September 25
  4:00pm - 9:00pm         No host reception and registration

                  MONDAY, September 26
  9:00am - 5:00pm         Workshop sessions
  7:00pm - 9:00pm         Reception at Pittsburgh Supercomputing &
                  Westinghouse Energy Center

                  TUESDAY, September 27
  9:00am - 5:00pm         Workshop sessions


  P R E L I M I N A R Y    S C H E D U L E    O F   S P E A K E R S
  (Subject to Change)


                         Performance
                         -----------
  Kenneth Bobey, Myrias Research Corporation.
        "Monitoring Program Performance on Large Parallel Systems"

  Eugene Miya, NASA Ames Research Center.
        "Some Observations on Computer Performance Characterization"

  John Renwick, Cray Research, Inc..
        "High-speed networking with Supercomputers"
            (short presentation)


                         Parallelism
                         -----------
  Brian Baird, Myrias Research Corporation.
        "Distributed UNIX Services in a Massively Parallel Supercomputer"

  Ray Bryant, et al., IBM T.J. Watson Research Center.
        "The RP3 Parallel Computing Environment"

  Brewster Kahle and Bill Nesheim, Thinking Machines.
        "The Use of Unix in the Connection Machine System"

  Traian Muntean, University of Grenoble.
        "UNIX* on Transputers* based supercomputers"


                Scheduling and Load Balancing
                ---------- --- --------------
  Martin Fouts, NASA Ames Research Center.
        "Multitasking under UniCos: Experiences with the Cray 2"

  Ralph Knag, AT&T Bell Laboratories.
        "The Unicos Fair Share Scheduler"
            (short presentation)


                      Storage Management
                      ------- ----------
  Patrick Clancy, Multiflow Computer.
        "Virtual Memory Extensions in TRACE/UNIX"

  Jan Edler, Jim Lipkis, and Edith Schonberg, Ultracomputer Research Laboratory.
        "Memory Management in Symunix II"

  E.C. Pariser, AT&T Bell Labs.
        "Static and Dynamic Reduction of Memory Requirements on the
      Cray X-MP"

  Mike Muuss, BRL, Terry Slattery, USNA, and Don Merritt, BRL.
        "BUMP - The BRL/USNA Migration Project"

  Alan Poston, GE Aerospace, NASA Ames Research Center.
        "A High Performance File System for UNIX"

  Douglas E. Engert, National Laboratory.
        "Attaching IBM Disks Directly to a Cray X-MP"
            (short presentation)


               Processes and Process Management
               --------- --- ------- ----------
  Jim Lipkis, Jan Edler, and Edith Schonberg,  NYU Ultracomputer Project.
        "Process Management Extensions at the Ultracomputer Project"

  Piyush Mehrotra, Purdue University.
        "Microthreads: Featherweight Processes in C"

  Dennis Ritchie, AT&T Bell Laboratories.
          "A Guest Facility for Unicos"


            Experiences (all short presentations)
            -------------------------------------

  H. Stephen Anderson, Ohio Supercomputer Graphics Project.
        "Distributed Supercomputer Graphics Using Unix Tools"

  Jonathan Brown, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
        "The CTSS/Posix Project"

  Robert M. Panoff, Department of Physics and Astronomy.
        "Real Productivity for Real Science Without Real UNIX"

  Satoshi Sekiguchi, Hiroyuki Kusumoto, and Akio Kokubu,  Electrotechnical
          Laboratory.
        "A Design for Supercomputing Environment at the Tsukuba
      Research Center of MITI"

  Cheryl Stewart, Cornell Mathematical Sciences Institute.
        "Numerical Interprocess Communication Protocol"

  Kevin Wohlever, Cray Research, Inc.
        "Unicos System Administration at the Ohio Supercomputer
      Center - Tuning Considerations"


  W O R K S H O P    R E G I S T R A T I O N    I N F O R M A T I O N

  You MUST  register  in  advance  to  attend  this  limited
  enrollment workshop.  Register early as space is available
  on a first-come, first-served basis.


                  REGISTRATION FEE.............   $200.00
                  REGISTRATION DEADLINE........   September 19, 1988


  You may pay by check (MAKE CHECK PAYABLE TO USENIX CONFER-
  ENCE)  or  use  your VISA, MasterCard, or American Express
  charge card to pay your registration  fees.  Payment  MUST
  accompany registration form.  Purchase orders and vouchers
  are not accepted.

  R E F U N D    C A N C E L L A T I O N    P O L I C Y

  If you must CANCEL, all refund requests must be in writing
  and  postmarked  no later than September 19, 1988.  Direct
  your letter to the USENIX Conference Office.

  H O T E L    I N F O R M A T I O N

  The workshop will be held at:

          The Westin William Penn Hotel
          530 William Penn Way
          Pittsburgh, PA  15219
          Telephone # [phone]

          ROOM RATES:  $85.00/night - Single or Double Occu-
      pancy (Plus 9% city and state tax)

  TO MAKE YOUR RESERVATION.......

  Call the Hotel directly and ask for the Reservation  Desk.
  Tell  reservations that you are a USENIX Conference atten-
  dee to take advantage of our group rate.  You may  guaran-
  tee your late arrival with a major credit card.

  IMPORTANT:  Room  reservation  deadline  is  September  6,
  1988.   Requests for reservations received after the dead-
  line will be handled on a space and RATE available basis.

  A I R P O R T    T O    H O T E L    T R A N S P O R T A -
  T I O N

  The Airlines Transportation Company  Bus  at  the  Greater
  Pittsburgh Airport provides shuttle service to the William
  Penn Hotel. Due to construction, buses are only  departing
  from  one  area  of the airport at this time. To catch the
  bus, go right  outside  the  U.S.Air  baggage  claim  area
  located  on the lower level of the main terminal, or check
  with the Airlines Transportation Company desk located near
  the  rental  car  agencies, to verify their next scheduled
  departure.  Buses run approximately every 20 - 30  minutes
  at a cost of $8.00 one way.

  Taxi service is available at an approximate  cost  of  $25
  one way.

     FOR FURTHER CONFERENCE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:


                   USENIX Conference Office
                         P.O. Box 385
                   16951 Pacific Coast Hwy
                   Sunset Beach, CA  90742
           Telephone [phone]


  Program Co-chairs:


  Lori Grob                    Melinda Shore
  NYU Ultracomputer Research   Frederick Cancer Research
  Lab                          Facility
  715 Broadway, 10th Floor     P.O. Box B, Building 430
  New York, New York 10003     Frederick, MD  21701
  [phone]               [phone]
  [e-mail]      [e-mail]
  or [e-mail]


Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 2

From root  Fri Sep  2 19:28:37 1988
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From: Alix Vasilatos <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Workshop on Large Installation Systems Administration
Keywords: systems administration
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From: [e-mail] (Alix Vasilatos)

Folks, note the deadline for submissions is September 15!!!  Keep those cards
and letters coming!          - Alix


                       Call for Papers
         Workshop on Large Installation Systems Administration

                       Monterey, California
                       November 17-18, 1988

               Sponsored by the USENIX Association


In light of last year's successful workshop on Large Installation
Systems Administration, Alix Vasilatos will again be chairing a workshop
on this subject in Monterey, CA on Thursday and Friday, November 17th
and 18th, 1988.  There is demonstrable benefit in bringing together
system administrators of sites with 100 or more users (on one or more
processors) to compare notes on solutions that they have found for a
variety of common problems.  These include but are not limited to:

          Large file systems (dumps, networked file systems)
          Password file administration
          Large mail system administration
          USENET/News/Notes administration
          Heterogeneous environments (mixed vendor and/or version)
          Load control and batch systems
          Monitoring tools
          Software release to multiple systems
          Output device management

We are particularly interested in technical solutions to problems
involving changes which directly affect users.

The workshop will focus on short papers and presentations.  Please
submit (electronically, to [e-mail]) a one or two page
single-spaced summary describing the solution to a problem.  Include
a description of the unique characteristics of the site, an outline
of the problem, and a description of the solution (detailed enough
that fellow administrators can implement it).  Workshop proceedings
will be available at the workshop.

The deadline for submissions is September 15, 1988.  For further details
about the workshop, contact:

          Alix Vasilatos
          MIT Project Athena
          E40-357
          1 Amherst Street
          Cambridge, MA  02139

          [e-mail]

          617-253-0121

For further details about registration, contact:

          USENIX Conference Office
          P.O. Box 385
          Sunset Beach, CA  90742

          213-592-1381
          213-592-3243

          {uunet,ucbvax}!usenix!judy

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 3

From root  Sat Sep  3 01:02:17 1988
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From: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: An update on UNIX Standards Activities
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From: Shane P. McCarron <[e-mail]>

[ This report was commissioned by the USENIX Association.  -mod ]

           An update on UNIX Standards Activities

                       August 1, 1988

           Shane P. McCarron, NAPS International

This is the third in a series of reports on standards bodies
relating to the Unix community.  Before I start, I would
like to take a couple lines to thank all of those readers
who were kind enough to drop me a line of either criticism
or encouragement; both are greatly appreciated.  In the
future please feel free not only to comment on the articles
here, but also on standards issues.  I am more than happy to
try and answer any of your questions either individually or
through this column.

To business: the most important item to report (from my
perspective) is that the Usenix Association has formed a
Standards Watchdog Committee.  The charter of this group is
to keep an eye on as many of the standards efforts as
possible, and report the progress of those efforts back to
the membership.  In addition, the group will be looking for
important or contentious decisions, and trying to determine
a Usenix position where it seems appropriate.  The group
will also be looking to you, the members, for input.
Everyone has opinions, and the Watchdog Committee, through
its standards committee representatives, can serve as a
channel to get your ideas to the appropriate groups or can
put you in contact with the appropriate people.  For more
information, please contact:

          John S. Quarterman
          Texas Internet Consulting
          701 Brazos, Suite 500
          Austin, TX  78701
          [phone]
          [e-mail], uunet!usenix!jsq

As always, the standards bodies have been pretty busy during
the  past  quarter.  Busy, that is, in standards body terms.
There is often a great deal of heat, but very little  light.
I have remarked in the past that these committees can take a
long time to complete things.  In some future issue, maybe I
will  take  a few inches and sketch out how a full standards
working group meeting really goes :-).  Not this time though
- there is too much real news to get to:

P1003.0 - The POSIX Open Systems Environment Guide

The IEEE 1003.0 working group met on July 12 & 13,  1988  in
Denver,  Colorado.   The purpose of this meeting was to have


                           - 2 -

the group members, who  had  volunteered  during  the  March
meeting  to  work  on  certain  portions (sub-groups) of the
POSIX Open Systems Environment guide document, present their
material  for  review  and  critique  by the group. This was
accomplished on day 1 and the morning of  day  2.  The  sub-
groups that were discussed included:

       1.  Operating System

       2.  Database Management

       3.  Data Interchange

       4.  Network Services

       5.  User Interface

       6.  Languages

       7.  Graphics

The remainder of the meeting focused on goals and objectives
for  the next meeting in October. There was strong consensus
within the group that the next goal should be a  very  rough
draft  document.  Volunteers were assigned to each sub-group
above with the purpose of putting into  narrative  form  the
material  that  had  been presented. It was also agreed that
distribution of this draft  prior  to  the  October  meeting
would  be  essential  in  order  to  allow  for  good,  well
thought-out discussion during the meeting.

The group has targeted October, 1989 as a goal for beginning
the  balloting  process.   This is aggressive, but possible,
assuming that the effort between meetings can be  maintained
at its present level.

Overall, the meeting was very productive and is drawing more
participation  from  a  good  cross-section  of  vendors and
users.

P1003.1

The big news this month is, of course,  that  as  of  August
22nd the POSIX System Services Interface standard is finally
complete.  By the time you read  this  final  drafts  should
have  been  circulated  to  all  of  the POSIX working group
members, and copies of that draft should be  available  from
the IEEE office in New York.  While you can obtain a copy of
the final draft now, you would do well to wait for a  couple
of  months  and  pick  up  a real, hard-bound version of the
standard from the IEEE.  To order a copy of the final draft,


                           - 3 -

contact:

          IEEE Standards Office
          345 E. 47th St.
          New York, NY  10017
          [phone]

Since the  last  installment  in  this  series,  the  1003.1
standard  has  gone  through not one, and not two, but three
more  recirculations.   As  you  may  remember,  the  second
recirculation  was  scheduled  to  take place in May, and it
did.  This one went as well as expected, and generated  some
excellent  feedback.   The  changes  from that recirculation
were assembled and sent back  to  the  balloting  group  for
review   at   the   end  of  June.   As  a  result  of  that
recirculation, there were yet more changes to the  standard,
and  those changes had to be recirculated as well. The final
recirculation took place at the end of July,  and  generated
no  substantial  changes.   At  that  point the standard was
released to the Technical Editor for final copy editing, and
has  now been balloted on and approved by the IEEE Standards
Board!

This is actually good and bad.   It  is  good  for  all  the
reasons  you  would suppose.  It is bad because the standard
is not perfect; there are things that  shouldn't  be  in  it
that  are  (e.g.  some  weird  timezone stuff and read() and
write() functions that allow broken  behavior),  and  things
which  should  be  in  it  but  are  not (like seekdir() and
telldir()).  Even though the standard  is  not  perfect,  at
least  we  now  have  a  foundation  upon  which  additional
documents can be based.  In the future this standard will be
extended  and  revised,  but  for  now  (in combination with
Standard C), it's the best thing  we  have  for  application
portability.

In the mean time, the .1 working group has  not  been  idle.
Although  the initial work on the Services Interace standard
was completed some months ago, there are always new areas to
work in. I gave a detailed description of these new areas in
the April update;  the  following  is  only  information  on
developments where they occured:

Clean Up

There  are  some  issues  that  were  not  handled  to   the
satisfaction  of  the  working group in the first cut of the
standard.  A small group is working on sifting  through  the
unresolved  balloting  objections  (there  were several) and
identifying  those  items  that  can  be  rectified  through
modification to the standard.  It turns out that many of the


                           - 4 -

unresolved objections were very reasonable items,  but  were
introduced  too  late  in  the  process  to be placed in the
standard.  Those items will be looked at and possibly  added
to the standard in a supplement.

Language Independent Description

While little progress has been made in this area by  the  .1
working  group, it turns out that there has been quite a bit
of  work  done  by  other  working  groups   and   technical
committees.    The   /usr/group   technical   committee   on
Supercomputing,  in  particular,  has  produced  a   Fortran
language  description  of  the .1 interface.  In the process
they have come up with a number of items that can be used by
the   .1   people  to  develop  their  language  independent
description.

Terminal Interface Extensions

The  Working  Group  looked  at  the  various   requirements
necessary  for  a  terminal  interface  standard (a terminal
interface standard is something like the Terminal  Interface
Extensions  in  the  SVID,  better know as curses/terminfo).
The group determined that there is little or no way to get a
single interface standard that will satisfy the needs of the
entire community.  Those people with bit mapped displays can
do things better, and we should let them.  Those people with
block mode terminals have special needs that should not have
to  be  addressed by Joe Portable Application.  The majority
of users that we are trying to satisfy, those with character
based  terminals,  have  well defined needs that are already
being addressed by existing practice.

What's the solution?  Well, none was really proposed, but  I
would  guess  that  the  people  in the bit mapped world are
going to care a lot more about Open  Look  and  Presentation
Manager (bite my tongue) than they are about something based
on terminfo or termcap.  For the other  90  percent  of  the
Unix  using  community,  while  terminfo/termcap may be what
they are used to seeing, it is hardly attractive  enough  to
make  them  sit  up  and  take notice.  They are looking for
flashier, better, faster applications, and  the  traditional
interface  is  not  going  to  be  enough.   For application
developers, the functionality  which  can  be  achieved  via
terminfo  is  fine  but  hardly  adequate  for  building the
products that the user community is coming to expect.

I would guess that the POSIX committees will settle on  some
subset  of  the terminfo interface as the standard, and that
no one will use  it.   Sure,  it  will  be  on  every  POSIX
conformant  system,  but who cares?  It is a lame interface,


                           - 5 -

and someone will come up with a better one soon enough.

New Archive Format

As I mentioned previously, the ISO has asked P1003.1 to come
up  with  a  new  archive  format  that  will  not  have the
deficiencies of tar or cpio and will be  able  to  take  the
security concerns of the P1003.6 group into consideration (I
assume  that  by  this  they  mean  access  control   lists,
mandatory  access  controls, and the like).  Little was done
on this topic between meetings, but at the July meeting  the
committee  discussed  ways to extend the cpio archive format
to  take  these  things  into  consideration.    While   the
technical details of this extension are clear, they are also
boring.  Suffice it to say that the filename  field  in  the
archive  can  be extended through a kludge and that it would
be backward compatible.

This met with mixed reactions, and I believe that in the end
it  will  not  be used.  This discussion (popularly known as
Tar Wars) has been very religious  and  contentious,  and  I
don't  think  that  a format based on either will be able to
get popular support from the working group.  There is now  a
small  group  of people (from both camps) working on another
new format, and I am certain that they  will  come  up  with
something for the October meeting.

P1003.2 - Shell and Tools Interface

This group is actually  a  little  bit  ahead  of  schedule.
Forget all the nasty things I have said about their schedule
being too tight and optimistic - they are actually going  to
do  it!   You're not as impressed as I am, I can tell.  Some
people are just never satisfied.  Okay, here's some evidence
for you:

Functionality was frozen at the March meeting.   This  means
that  no  additional  commands or concepts could be added to
the standard.  It also means that the working group  members
were  free  to  concentrate  on  the  content  of the draft,
instead of looking at new proposals for additional  commands
all of the time.  This has turned out to be very profitable;
the draft has been cleaned up to the point where it  can  be
submitted  (to  the  working and corresponding groups) for a
mock ballot in September.  A mock ballot is just  that  -  a
process  during  which the draft is picked apart as it would
be in the balloting process, with changes submitted  through
formal   balloting  objections.   This  may  seem  a  little
excessive, but it has proven effective in the past.


                           - 6 -

Assuming that all goes well, and  the  objections  from  the
mock  ballot  are resolved at the October meeting, the group
could go to a full ballot  as  early  as  January.   A  less
optimistic scenario shows the group working on resolution of
the mock ballot for two full meetings, with the real  ballot
occuring  in February or March.  Either way, the group is on
schedule for a full use standard before the end of 1989.

In addition  to  this  good  news,  there  were  a  few  key
decisions made at the July meeting:

This side of the Tar Wars is apparently at  an  end.   There
were  two  aspects  to  the war - user/program interface and
actual archive format.
 The interface side of it seems to have been settled by  the
introduction  of  a command called pax (latin for peace :-).
This command will be able to read and write  both  types  of
archives  and  has  an  interface that is acceptable to both
camps.  While this has not been agreed upon by the balloting
group,  or  even by the full working group, the interface is
pretty familiar, and I believe  it  will  be  approved  with
little change.

The group also concentrated on  trying  to  remove  anything
that  might  be considered implementation dependent from the
draft.  This included removing the octal modes  from  chmod,
and  the  signal numbers from trap and kill.  In their place
go all of the mnemonic command line arguments that have been
in  those commands all along, but aren't used by anyone.  As
a committee member I can see what they are trying to do, and
even  agree  with it.  As a user, however, I wish they would
have placed requirements that, say, kill -9 would always map
to  SIGKILL.  At least that way I wouldn't have to fix every
shell script I have ever written.

P1003.3 - Testing and Verification

This working group is progressing well on their verification
standard for 1003.1.  They are planning to have a version to
ballot in January or February of 1989.  That would make  the
standard  available  just  about  the  time  that  the major
vendors are finishing their .1 conformant implementations.

The group has also started supplying liason people  to  each
of  the  other  working  groups.   These  people, with their
experience writing a testing standard for  .1,  are  proving
very valuable in designing testable standards.

New POSIX Work Items


                           - 7 -

In addition to all of the committees you have heard about in
past   articles,  there  were  several  new  working  groups
proposed to the P1003 steering committee:

System Administration

The committee recognizes the need for a  standard  interface
to  many  of the system administration utilities that we are
plagued with.  While there  was  a  considerable  amount  of
skepticism   exhibited   from   the  members,  the  steering
committee has agreed to let work  progress  on  this  topic.
Consequently,  a  PAR was filed by Steve Carter of Bellcore,
and the new working group will start meeting in October.

This  group  has  a  lot  of  work  ahead  of   them;    The
difficulties of designing standard interfaces to things like
fsck and fsdb may prove impossible.  Also,  from  an  system
implementor   standpoint,   I   would   hate   to  have  the
administrative functions I can provide limited by  something
that  a  standards  committee  is going to generate based on
existing practice.  This is not an area in which there is  a
huge  body  of existing applications, so implementors should
be allowed to innovate and improve if they like.

On the other hand, the  computer  users  of  the  world  are
probably  pretty sick of having to learn a new way to enable
printers on every system they purchase.  For  those  people,
having  a standard is going to be a big win.  This is one of
those times when  the  saying  "be  careful  what  you  wish
for..." comes into play.  The ultimate, generic system admin
interface may prove to be so restricted or  brain-dead  that
it  is of no use to anyone.  The .1 standard was nearly that
way.

Networking

Another new working group will be focusing on  the  services
and  service  interfaces  for  a  networked POSIX conformant
system.  While the exact charter and goals of this group are
not  fully  established,  what they are not trying to do is.
They are not trying to  overlap  the  work  of  the  ISO-OSI
committees,  nor  are they trying to supplant the work being
done by IEEE 802.  Their plan is to spend two years defining
the  services and service protocols, and maybe an additional
year defining interfaces to those protocols.

User Interface Commands

If you have looked closely at the 1003.1 and  .2  standards,
you  will  notice  that  there  is nothing in either of them
about User Interface.  Well, you're not alone,  and  someone


                           - 8 -

is  finally  going to do something about it.  A sub-group of
the Shell and Tools committee has beenformed to  codify  the
interface  of  many  of  the  classic Unix commands (vi, ed,
etc...).  In addition, the group will be defining  the  user
interface  aspects  of  those  commands  already  in  the .2
standard which have traditionally  had  user  interfaces  as
well as their programmatic ones.

This group is going to work somewhat in  a  vacuum  -  since
there  is  no  standard  for  terminal  interface,  the user
interfaces  defined  are  not   going   to   have   a   way,
programmatically, of being put on the screen.  Terminfo will
of  course  work  for  this,  but  it  is  not  a  standard.
Hopefully   the  .1  committee  can  get  a  supplement  out
regarding this before the .2  sub-group  finishes  its  work
describing the utilities.

X/Open

The X/Open group is just about to release version 3  of  the
X/Open Portability Guide.  This set of manuals is a must for
any application developer or system implementor planning  on
marketing  products in Europe.  Version 3 will encompass all
of the .1 standard, but will not contain any  of  the  items
proposed  in  the latest drafts of .2 - that document is too
immature.  The XPG also has language  definitions,  database
interface  specifications,  and  many  other  things  that a
growing programmer needs in the Unix world.

NBS - Federal Information Processing Standard

I have written about this in each issue of this report,  and
each  time  I  say  that it is almost here.  Well, I am done
making predictions.  The federal  government  has  a  shield
that  my  crystal  ball  just  refuses to penetrate.  I have
heard recently that the FIPS for the .1 standard  is  within
the  Commerce  department  somewhere,  but  I have no proof.
When it does finally come out, it will be based on a version
of the standard that is almost a year out of date.  Draft 12
of the .1 standard resembles the final standard about like a
caterpillar   resembles   a   butterfly.    This   is   very
unfortunate, as the vendors that are serious  about  selling
computers  to  the feds are going to have to conform to that
standard, and not the real one.  Note that while the NBS did
try  to  jump  the  gun  a  little  bit,  they forced the .1
committee  to  work  harder  and  faster.    Without   their
encouragement   the   standard  may  well  never  have  been
finished.

Of course, the NBS has indicated that they will start making
the FIPS conform to the final standard just as soon as it is


                           - 9 -

out (now, that means).  But, given the  amount  of  time  it
took  them  to  get the first standard out the door, I'm not
holding my breath.  It could be deep into 1989 before we see
a   revised   FIPS   hit  the  Federal  Register's  list  of
announcements.

In the mean time, the NBS is proceeding in its specification
of  other interim FIPS.  Just until there are real standards
in these areas, of course, we are going to see FIPS on Shell
and  Tools,  User Interface, System Administration, Terminal
Interface Extensions, and probably  shoe  lacing.   The  NBS
people  are  very  busy  cranking out standards that federal
government  departments  can  cite   when   generating   bid
requests.    Unfortunately,   in   those   cases  where  the
committees aren't far enough along yet, these standards  are
going to be based on the SVID.  And if the SVID is used as a
base document by the Feds, you can be sure that it will also
be  used  by  any standards committees that come along later
and  want  to  "codify  existing  practice".   Just  another
example  of  the  Federal  Government  guiding the standards
community.

The NBS is putting on a series of  workshops  this  fall  to
address  some  of  these  issues,  and  get  input  from the
community.  The first  of  these  workshops,  a  seminar  on
"POSIX  and other Application Portability Profile Standards"
will be September 22nd and 23rd.  For more information,  you
should  contact  Debbie Jackson at [phone].  She will
be happy to send you registration materials, as well as give
you  information  about future workshops being put on by the
National Bureau of Standards.

X3J11 - ANSI C Language Standard

This standard is pretty important to everyone  in  the  Unix
community.   Unfortunately,  that means that everyone has to
get involved in the development of it, and that takes  time.
The document has now entered its third public comment period
(July  1st  ->  August  31st).   From  what  I  gather,  the
committee  will  be  very  reluctant  (read  "it  will never
happen") to make any substantive changes to the standard  as
a  result  of  this  period.   What  they are looking for is
affirmation from the public that the changes made  in  round
two   were  adequate  to  remove  most  of  the  outstanding
objections.

The good news here is that the "noalias"  keyword  has  been
removed  from the draft.  This was a very contentious issue,
and was introduced very late in the  process.   In  simplest
terms,  noalias  would  allow the programmer to specify that
the program, for that statement, would do  exactly  what  it


                           - 10 -

was  supposed  to do.  Pretty silly, when you get right down
to it.  Anyway, its gone now - like a bad dream.

In addition, a number of simple editorial changes were made.
Most  of these are transparent, and just made the standard a
little more readable.  Unfortunately, it is still a standard
written  by  programmers,  for  programmers, and is a little
hard to read.  There is even rumor  of  a  x3speak  program,
like  the  valspeak of a few years ago, about to come out in
comp.sources.misc.  This would take any prose and render  it
senseless  through  the  addition of legalese.  My advice to
future readers of the standard is this:  Don't go  into  the
water  alone.   Use  the  buddy  system, and take a readers'
guide with you.

Assuming all goes well at the September meeting, the ANSI  C
Language Standard should be published later this year.

Well, that's about it for this month.  Remember, keep  those
cards and letters coming to:

          Shane P. McCarron
          NAPS International
          117 Mackubin St.
          Suite 6
          St. Paul, MN  55102
          [phone]
          [e-mail]


Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 4

From news  Sun Sep  4 18:01:37 1988
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA27050; Sun, 4 Sep 88 18:01:37 EDT
From: Roger Martin <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: POSIX FIPS approved
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: Roger Martin <[e-mail]>
Date: 1 Sep 88 20:29:27 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive
Status: O

From: Martin <uunet!hpda!amdahl!swe!martin>

               IT'S A FIPS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

August 31, 1988

I am at long last pleased to announce that the Federal
Information Processing Standard (FIPS) for POSIX has been
officially approved!  The official notice will appear in the
Federal Register within the next few days, but as of today,
August 31, 1988, POSIX is an approved Federal standard.



        Federal Information Processing Standard

                          #151

    Portable Operating System for Computer Environments



For additional information on the FIPS or the NBS POSIX
Conformance Test Suite, contact Roger Martin.

NOTE:   Effective August 23, 1988 the name of the National
        Bureau of Standards was changed.  My new mailing
        address is:

        Roger J. Martin
        National Institute of Standards and Technology
        Technology Building, Room B266
        Gaithersburg, MD 20899

        phone:  [phone]
        e-mail:  [e-mail]

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 5

From root  Mon Sep  5 09:31:21 1988
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA23944; Mon, 5 Sep 88 09:31:21 EDT
From: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Re: An update on UNIX Standards Activities
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: uunet!sysadm!bjorn
Date: 5 Sep 88 01:55:17 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive
Status: O

From: uunet!sysadm!bjorn

>> New POSIX Work Items
>>
>> System Administration
>...
>> Consequently,  a  PAR was filed by Steve Carter of Bellcore,
>> and the new working group will start meeting in October.
>
>Is there any way to get further information about this group, and
>its work?

[ Steve Carter can apparently be reached as

    uunet!usenix!bellcore!pyuxv!ctsd!slc2

and it is possible that [e-mail] may also work.
I have sent him a request for details to post to comp.std.unix.
My understanding is that there will be a brief meeting of the
new subcommittee at the Hawaii 1003 meeting (end of October),
but that real work probably won't commence until next year.

See also the announcement of the USENIX Large System Installation
Administration Workshop in November.  -mod ]

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 6

From root  Wed Sep  7 20:21:08 1988
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA29926; Wed, 7 Sep 88 20:21:08 EDT
From: John S. Quarterman <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix,comp.org.usenix,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Calendar of UNIX-related Events
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Expires: 2 Nov 88 21:45:37 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail] (John S. Quarterman)
Date: 7 Sep 88 15:41:08 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive
Status: O

From: [e-mail] (John S. Quarterman)

This is a combined calendar of planned conferences, workshops, or standards
meetings related to the UNIX operating system.  Most of this information
came from the various conference organizers, although some was taken from
;login: (USENIX), 13, 1, Jan/Feb 1988 and CommUNIXations (/usr/group), VII,
6, Nov/Dec 1987.

If your favorite meeting is not listed, it's probably because I don't know
about it.  If you send me information on it, I will probably list it both
here and in the appropriate one of the companion articles:
        Access to UNIX User Groups
        Access to UNIX-Related Publications
        Access to UNIX-Related Standards

Changes since last posting: USENIX Conferences 1992 and 1993, and corrected
dates, 1989-1991.  UniForum 1993.  UNIX EXPO details.  EUUG dates,
locations, hotels, 1988-1991.  JUS UNIX Fair '88 dates.  AMIX date.
TCP/IP INTEROP details.  OMNICOM ISO Conference.  IFIP WG 6.5.

Abbreviations:
            C   Conference
        G, MD   Gaithersburg, Maryland
            S   Symposium
            T   Tradeshow
            U   UNIX
          V.4   System V Release 4.0
            W   Workshop

USENIX, EUUG, AUUG and DECUS sponsor conferences of the same names;
/usr/group sponsors UniForum.

UNIX is a Registered Trademark of AT&T Bell Laboratories.

[e-mail]         John S. Quarterman           uunet!longway!jsq

88/09/07 pg. 2        Calendar of UNIX-Related Events         comp.std.unix

year mon days     conference           (sponsor,) (hotel,) location

1988 Sep 13-15    AUUG                 Melbourne, Australia
1988 Sep 14-16    V.4 Soft. Dev.       AT&T and Sun, New York, NY
1988 Sep 22       Syst. Adm. W         and Shell & Tools W, NBS, G, MD
1988 Sep 23       X Windows W          and POSIX FIPS W, NBS, G, MD
1988 Sep 26-27    U&Supercomp. W       USENIX, Pittsburgh, PA
1988 Sep 26-30    TCP/IP INTEROP       ACE, Doubletree Hotel, Santa Clara, CA
1988 Sep 27-29    V.4 Soft. Dev.       AT&T and Sun, Los Angeles, CA
1988 Oct 3-7      EUUG                 Hotel Estoril Sol, Estoril, Portugal
1988 Oct 5        POSIX Conformance    Test. & Lab. Accred. W, NBS, G, MD
1988 Oct 10-12    IFIP WG 6.5          U.C. Irvine, Red Lion Inn, Costa Mesa, CA
1988 Oct 11-13    V.4 Soft. Dev.       AT&T and Sun, Tokyo, Japan
1988 Oct 17-21    DECUS S              Anaheim, California
1988 Oct 17-21    C++ Conference       USENIX, Denver, CO
1988 Oct 17-19    ISO SC22             Tokyo, Japan
1988 Oct 20-21    ISO WG15             Tokyo, Japan
1988 Oct 24-28    IEEE 1003            Honolulu, Hawaii
1988 Oct 25-27    V.4 Soft. Dev.       AT&T and Sun, London, England
1988 Oct 31-Nov 2 OSI Conference       Omnicom, Peabody Hotel, Orlando, FL
1988 Oct 31-Nov 2 UNIX Expo            Javits Conv. C., New York, NY
1988 Nov  9-11    V.4 Soft. Dev.       AT&T and Sun, Boston, MA
1988 Nov 10-11    U Symposium          JUS, Osaka, Japan
1988 Nov 15       POSIX Appl. W        NBS, G, MD
1988 Nov 16       POSIX FIPS Rev. W    NBS, G, MD
1988 Nov 17-18    Large Install.       Syst. Adm. W II, USENIX, Monterey, CA
1988 Nov 29-Dec 1 V.4 Soft. Dev.       AT&T and Sun, Chicago, IL
1988 Dec 5-7      Sun User Group       Fontainebleau Hilton, Miami Beach, FL
1988 Dec 12-16    ANSI X3J11           Seattle, WA
1988 Dec 13-15    V.4 Soft. Dev.       AT&T and Sun, Washington, DC
1988 Dec 17-18    U FAIR '88           JUS, Tokyo, Japan
1988 TBA          V.4 Soft. Dev.       AT&T and Sun, Toronto, ON

1989 Jan 9-13     IEEE 1003            Embassy Suites, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
1989 Jan 17       Terminal Int. Ext.   and Net. Serv. W, NBS, G, MD
1989 Jan 30-Feb 3 USENIX               Town and Country, San Diego, CA
1989 Feb          U in Gov. C&T        Ottawa, ON
1989 Feb 28-Mar 3 UniForum             Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA
1989 Apr 3-7      EUUG                 Palais des Congres, Brussels, Belgium
1989 Apr 10-11    ANSI X3J11           Phoenix, AZ
1989 Apr 17(29?)  IEEE 1003            Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN
1989 Apr          Soft. Management W   USENIX, New Orleans, LA
1989 May 8-12     DECUS S              Atlanta, Georgia
1989 May 14-16    AMIX                 Israel
1989 May 16       POSIX Appl. W        NBS, G, MD
1989 May          U 8x/etc C&T         /usr/group/cdn, Toronto, ON

[e-mail]         John S. Quarterman           uunet!longway!jsq

88/09/07 pg. 3        Calendar of UNIX-Related Events         comp.std.unix

1989 Jun          NZSUGI               New Zealand
1989 Jun 12-16    USENIX               Hyatt Regency, Baltimore, MD
1989 Jul 10-14    IEEE 1003            San Francisco, CA
1989 Sep 18-22    EUUG                 WU Vien, Vienna, Austria
1989 Oct 16-20    IEEE 1003            Brussels (or Amsterdam)
1989 Oct          UNIX Expo            New York, NY
1989 Nov 6-10     DECUS S              Anaheim, California

1990 Jan 22-26    USENIX               Washington, DC
1990 Jan 23-26    UniForum             Washington Hilton, Washington, DC
1990 Jan 29       IEEE 1003            New Orleans, LA
1990 Feb          U in Gov. C&T        Ottawa, ON
1990 Apr          IEEE 1003            Montreal, Quebec
1990 Apr 23-27    EUUG                 Munich, Germany (tentative)
1990 May 7-11     DECUS S              New Orleans, Louisiana
1990 May          U 8x/etc C&T         /usr/group/cdn, Toronto, ON
1990 Jun 11-15    USENIX               Marriott, Anaheim, CA
1990 Autumn       EUUG                 south of France

1991 Jan 21-25    USENIX               Dallas, TX
1991 Jan 22-25    UniForum             Infomart, Dallas, TX
1991 Feb          U in Gov. C&T        Ottawa, ON
1991 Spring       EUUG                 Tromso?, Norway (tentative)
1991 May          U 8x/etc C&T         Toronto, ON
1991 Jun 10-14    USENIX               Opryland, Nashville, TN

1992 Jan 20-24    USENIX               Hilton Square, San Francisco, CA
1992 Jan 21-24    UniForum             Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA
1992 Jun 8-12     USENIX               Marriott, San Antonio, TX

1993 Jan          USENIX               northeast North America
1993 Mar 2-4      UniForum             Washington, D.C.

[e-mail]         John S. Quarterman           uunet!longway!jsq

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 7

From root  Fri Sep  9 00:51:31 1988
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA24871; Fri, 9 Sep 88 00:51:31 EDT
From: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Re: (386) Unix (In)compatibilities Summary
Summary: ABI doesn't define modem interface; POSIX 1003.1 does
Keywords: V.3, 80386, ABI, 1003.1, POSIX, Mindcraft, Conformance Test Suite
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: Dominic Dunlop <uunet!mcvax!sphinx.co.uk!domo>
Organization: Sphinx Ltd., Maidenhead, England
Date: 2 Sep 88 14:09:42 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive
Status: O

>Newsgroups: comp.unix.microport,comp.sys.att,comp.std.unix
>Followup-To: comp.unix.microport
From: Dominic Dunlop <uunet!mcvax!sphinx.co.uk!domo>

[ I'm not quite sure whether this was already posted to any of the
other newsgroups, since I don't follow them, but I'm going to play
it safe and just post it on comp.std.unix.  Let me know if I guessed
wrong, Dominic.  -mod ]

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Brian Litzinger) writes:
>> [Material from Greg Woods requesting tales of incompatibilities between
>>  V.3 ports on 80386-based systems.]
>
>I'm curious if the following does or does not consitute a compatibility
>problem:
>
>Two different versions of 386 Unix V.3: Brand X and Brand Y
>Same Application software
>Same Hardware
>Brand X can successfully talk to my telebit at 19200 baud rate.
>Brand Y cannot.
>
>The problem is caused by Brand Y's serial port driver.
>
>Does this mean Brand Y is not compatible?  After all, every application
>that talks to my telebit fails.

This sort of issue is the reason behind the incredibly detailed description
of terminal devices in the POSIX 1003.1 standard.  (Although I'd feel a
little more secure in writing that if I had the standard to hand, rather
than having left it at home...)  Compliant systems should all agree on
whether or not they can talk to a particular type of modem.  V.3 is not
compliant.  Yet.  To put it another way, how a system drives a modem is
outside the scope of the standard set by an Application Binary Interface.

By the way, a company called Mindcraft ((800) LE POSIX/[phone]) has
recently introduced a POSIX Conformance Test Suite (PCTS), which it
developed under contract to IBM, and which Mindcraft is authorised to
distribute.  According to a product description picked up by a colleague at
the recent Uniforum show in Washington, the PCTS can be run on a
non-conforming system in order to determine what must be done to make the
system conformant.  Yours for $2,500.  Looks useful.  Those interested
should form an orderly line in Palo Alto.

(Usual disclaimers apply, particularly as I haven't perused the product!
--  Hi, Bruce!)

[ There's a story about Mindcraft in the first issue of UNIX Today.  -mod ]
--
Dominic Dunlop
[e-mail]  [e-mail]

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 8

From news  Sat Sep 10 06:58:27 1988
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA20106; Sat, 10 Sep 88 06:58:27 EDT
From: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: IEEE 1003 System Administration Subcommittee PAR
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: uunet!usenix!bellcore!pyuxv!ctsd!slc2
Date: 9 Sep 88 14:19:28 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive
Status: O

From: Steve Carter <uunet!usenix!bellcore!pyuxv!ctsd!slc2>

[ In response to a request for information about the new
POSIX System Administration subcommittee, its chair has sent
this letter.  I don't know what its original date was.  -mod ]


Proposed working group on System Administration
                                                    6 Corporate Place
                                                    Room PYA 1J-254
                                                    Piscataway,
                                                    NJ  08854
                                                    [phone]
                                                    bellcore!pyuxv!slc2
September 10, 1988

IEEE POSIX 1003 Steering Committee and Working groups

Attached is a copy of the IEEE POSIX System Administration
Standards Project Authorization Request (PAR).  It briefly
describes the scope and purpose of the proposed System
Administration working group.  In order to get this work started,
we need to identify the resources and related activities that we
can utilize.

First, we need to establish the administrative responsibilities
for this group.  Listed below are the names of people who have
indicated an interest in helping in the roles of Chair, Co-chair
and Secretary.  In addition, we are looking for volunteers for
technical editor and technical reviewers.  If you have
recommendations for individuals who could help out in these areas
we would appreciate your input.  This effort will probably have
just one main group.  In general,  the Chair and Co-chair roles
are best served by persons with management experience.  Strong
technical experts are better able to advocate positions as
members rather than from the chair.  There is a slight preference
to have users serve as chairs where we can find supported
candidates.  All of these roles should be supported by the
individual's employeer, since there is a need for attendance, and
also for other activities that take time.  For example,
chairpersons attend IEEE Computer Society Standards Coordinating
Committee (SCC) meetings (two days long, twice a year) and spend
hours preparing documents for secretaries and technical editors.
Identified to date are:

    Chair       Steven Carter   Bellcore
    Co-Chair    Ken Faubel      Apollo Computer, Inc.
    Co-Chair    David Hinnant   Northern Telecom, Inc
    Secretary   Mark Colburn    Analysts International Corp.

Also, we realize that corporations and institutional
representatives may be working on specifications that could be of
use to this effort. If you are aware of a group doing work in
this area that might be able to contribute proposals, please get
that information back to me.  Groups that have been identified so
far include:


                           - 2 -

      /usr/group Performance Metrics       Ram Chelluri
                                           David Hinnant
      National Bureau of Standards (NBS)   Tony Cincotta
      Open Software Foundation (OSF)       Alex Morrow
      Unisys                               Bob Krieger
      USENIX                               John Quarterman
      X/Open                               Michael Lambert

Please send information about prospective administrative
assistance to at least the Technical Committee on Operating
Systems (TCOS) Chair, Joe Boykin, and the TCOS-Standards
Subcommittee Chair, Jim Isaak:

Joe Boykin                    Jim Isaak
Encore Computer Corp          Digital Equipment Corp, ZK03-3/Y25
257 Cedar Hill St.            110 Spitbrook Road
Marlborough, MA 01752         Nashua, NH  03049
uucp:  encore!boykin          uucp:  decvax!isaak
ARPA:  [e-mail]

Please send information about related efforts and possible
sources for proposals to me, the POSIX System Administration PAR
initiator.

Steven L. Carter
POSIX System Administration PAR Initiator

SLC-slc

Copy (with att.) to
/usr/group Technical Steering Committee
Tony Barrese
Al Hankinson
Dale Harris
Kevin Lewis
John Williams

Institutional Representatives
Heinz Lycklama    /usr/group Institutional Representative to P1003.1
John Quarterman   USENIX Institutional Representative to P1003.1
Mike Lambert      X/Open Chief, Technical Officer
Alex Morrow       OSF Director of Strategic Relations

IEEE POSIX Committee Chairpersons
Jim Isaak          Chair      P1003.1
Donn Terry         Co-Chair   P1003.1
Hal Jespersen      Chair      P1003.2
Continued next page


                           - 3 -

Copy (with att.) to - contd.
Don Cragun         Co-Chair   P1003.2
Roger Martin       Chair      P1003.3
Carol Raye         Co-Chair   P1003.3
Bill Corwin        Chair      P1003.4
Mike Cossey        Co-Chair   P1003.4
Terence Fong       Chair      P1003.5
Stowe Boyd         Co-Chair   P1003.5
Dennis Steinauer   Chair      P1003.6
Ron Elliott        Co-Chair   P1003.6
Al Hankinson       Chair      P1003.0
Kevin Lewis        Co-Chair   P1003.0

IEEE Computer Society
Paul Borrill       Chair, IEEE CS Standards Coordinating Committee (SCC)
Joe Boykin         Chair, Technical Committee on Operating Systems (TCOS)
Don Fleckenstein   Chair, IEEE Standards Board
Jane Post          Secretary, New Standards Committee
Bob Prichard       Computer Society Secretariat
Helen Wood         VP for Standards

System Administration Interest Group
Allen Barofsky
James C. Bohem
Kevin H. Brady
Sivaram Chelluri
Tony Cincotta
Mark Colburn
Pat Conway
Tom Eisenhart
Ken Faubel
Don Folland
Bob Gambrel
John L. Hill
David Hinnant
Timothy R. Honey
Randall Howard
John Jastrow
Jeff Kimmel
Martin Kirk
Rick Kuhn
Greger Leijonhufvud
Gary W. Miller
Alex Morrow
Martha Nalebuff
Karen L. Sheaffer
Teoman N. Topcubasi
Alix Vasilatos
Andrew E. Wheeler, Jr.

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 9

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA03761; Sun, 11 Sep 88 17:45:59 EDT
From: <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix,comp.org.usenix,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Access to UNIX User Groups
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Expires: 2 Nov 88 21:45:37 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Date: 11 Sep 88 20:07:20 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive
Status: O

From: [e-mail]

This is the latest in a series of similar comp.std.unix articles,
intended to give summary information about UNIX User groups;
to be accurate, but not exhaustive.  It's cross-posted to
comp.org.usenix and comp.unix.questions because there might be
interest there.

There are three related articles, posted at the same time as this one,
and with subjects
    Calendar of UNIX-related Events
    Access to UNIX-Related Publications
    Access to UNIX-Related Standards
The latter is posted only to comp.std.unix.

Corrections and additions to this article are solicited.  I keep track
of the conferences, groups, and publications that I attend, am a member
of, or subscribe to.  All others (the majority of the listings) I derive
either from listings elsewhere, or from contributions by readers.
In particular, the meeting schedules and descriptions of most of the
groups are provided by their members.  If a group doesn't have a
meeting schedule listed, it's because nobody has sent me one.  This is
a low-budget operation:  I publish what I have on hand when the time
comes (approximately monthly).

Changes since last posting:
USENIX Conferences 1992 and 1993, and corrected dates, 1989-1991.
UniForum 1993.
UNIX EXPO.
EUUG dates, locations, hotels, 1988-1991.
JUS UNIX Fair '88 dates.
AMIX date.
All dates put in same format as in the calendar posting.
Publications split into separate posting.


Access information is given in this article for the following:
user groups:    USENIX, /usr/group, UNIX Expo,
        EUUG, AUUG, NZUSUGI, JUS, KUUG, AMIX,
        DECUS UNIX SIG, Sun User Group (SUG),
        Apollo DOMAIN Users' Society (ADUS),
        AT&T and Sun V.4 Software Developer Conferences,
        Open Software Foundation (OSF).

Telephone numbers are given in international format, i.e., +n at
the beginning for the country code, e.g., +44 is England, +81 Japan,
+82 Korea, +61 Australia, +64 New Zealand, and +1 is U.S.A. or Canada.

UNIX is a Registered Trademark of AT&T.


USENIX is ``The Professional and Technical UNIX(R) Association.''

        USENIX Association
        P.O. Box 2299
        Berkeley, CA 94710
        U.S.A.
        [phone]
        {uunet,ucbvax,decvax}!usenix!office
        [e-mail]

USENIX sponsors two USENIX Conferences a year, featuring technical papers,
as well as tutorials, and with vendor exhibits at the summer conferences:

1989 Jan 30-Feb 3    USENIX    Town & Country Inn, San Diego, CA
1989 Jun 12-16    USENIX    Hyatt Regency, Baltimore, MD
1990 Jan 22-26    USENIX    Washington, DC
1990 Jun 11-15    USENIX    Marriott Hotel, Anaheim, CA
1991 Jan 21-25    USENIX    Dallas, TX
1991 Jun 10-14    USENIX    Opryland, Nashville, TN
1992 Jan 20-24    USENIX    Hilton Square, San Francisco, CA
1992 Jun 8-12    USENIX    Marriott, San Antonio, TX
1993 Jan    USENIX    somewhere in northeast of North America

They also sponsor workshops, such as

1988 Sep 26-27    U&Supercomp. W    USENIX, Pittsburgh, PA
1988 Oct 17-21    C++ Conference    USENIX, Denver, CO
1988 Nov 17-18    Large Install.    Syst. Adm. W II, USENIX, Monterey, CA
1989 Apr    Soft. Management W    USENIX, New Orleans, LA

Proceedings for all conferences and workshops are available at
the door and by mail later.

USENIX publishes ``;login:  The USENIX Association Newsletter''
bimonthly.  It is sent free of charge to all their members and
includes technical papers.  There is a USENET newsgroup,
comp.org.usenix, for discussion of USENIX-related matters.

In 1988, USENIX started publishing a new refereed quarterly
technical journal, ``Computing Systems:  The Journal of the USENIX
Association,'' in cooperation with University of California Press.

They also publish an edition of the 4.3BSD manuals and distribute the
2.10BSD software distribution.  They coordinate a software exchange for
appropriately licensed members.  They occasionally sponsor experiments,
such as methods of improving the USENET and UUCP networks (e.g., UUNET),
that are of interest and use to the membership.

There is a USENIX Institutional Representative on the IEEE P1003
Portable Operating System Interface for Computer Environments Committee.
That representative also moderates the USENET newsgroup comp.std.unix,
which is for discussion of UNIX-related standards, especially P1003.
There is also a USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee following several
standards bodies.  For more details, see the posting in comp.std.unix,
``Access to UNIX-Related Standards.''


/usr/group is a non-profit trade association dedicated to the promotion
of products and services based on the UNIX operating system.

        /usr/group
        4655 Old Ironsides Drive, Suite 200
        Santa Clara, California 95054
        U.S.A.
        tel: [phone]
        fax: [phone]

The annual UniForum Conference and Trade Show is sponsored by /usr/group
and features vendor exhibits, as well as tutorials and technical sessions.

1989 Feb 28-Mar 3    UniForum    Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA
1990 Jan 23-26    UniForum    Washington Hilton, Washington, DC
1991 Jan 22-25    UniForum    Infomart, Dallas, TX
1992 Jan 21-24    UniForum    Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA
1993 Mar 2-4    UniForum    Washington, D.C.

Proceedings for all conferences are available at the shows and later
by mail.

/usr/group publishes ``CommUNIXations,'' a member magazine that
features articles by industry leaders and observers, technical issues,
standards coverage, and new product announcements.

/usr/group also publishes the ``UNIX Products Directory,'' which lists
products and services developed specifically for the UNIX operating system.
``/usr/digest'' is also published by /usr/group.  This newsletter covers
product announcements and industry projections, and is sent biweekly
to General members of /usr/group and to non-member subscribers.

/usr/group has long been deeply involved in UNIX standardization,
having sponsored the ``/usr/group 1984 Standard,'' providing an Institutional
Representative to the IEEE P1003 Portable Operating System for Computer
Environments Committee, and sponsoring the /usr/group Technical Committee
on areas that P1003 has not yet addressed.  They have recently produced
an executive summary, ``Your Guide to POSIX,'' and a technical overview
``POSIX Explored,'' and funded production of a draft of a ``Rationale and
Notes'' appendix for IEEE 1003.1.


UNIX EXPO is an annual very large vendor exhibit in New York City
with tutorials and technical presentations.  It is held at the
Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, with lodging arrangements with
the Sheraton Centre Hotel, both in Manhattan.

1988 Oct 31-Nov 2    UNIX EXPO    Javits Conv. C, New York, NY

        National Expositions Co., Inc.
        15 West 39th Street
        New York, NY 10018
        U.S.A.

        [phone]
        Telex: 421130
        Fax: [phone]
        Reservations Department
        Sheraton Centre Hotel
        811 Seventh Avenue
        New York, NY 10019
        U.S.A.


EUUG is the European UNIX systems Users Group, which is currently
celebrating its tenth anniversary.  EUUG is closely coordinated with
national groups in Europe, and with the European UNIX network, EUnet.

        EUUG secretariat
        Owles Hall
        Buntingford
        Herts SG9 9PL
        England
        [phone]
        fax: [phone]
        uunet!mcvax!inset!euug
        [e-mail]

They have a newsletter, EUUGN (a previous version of this article
appeared in the latest one), and hold two conferences a year:

1988 Oct 3-7    Lisbon, Portugal
1989 Apr 10-14    Brussels, Belgium
1988 Oct 3-7    EUUG    Hotel Estoril Sol, Estoril, Portugal
        Chair:    Dr Peter Collinson    <[e-mail]>
1988 Apr 3-7    EUUG    Palais des Congres, Brussels, Belgium
        Chair:    Prof Marc Nyssen    <[e-mail]>
1989 Sep 18-22    EUUG    WU Vien, Vienna, Austria
        Chair:    eva Kuehn
1990 Apr 23-27    EUUG    Munich, Germany (tentative)
1990 Autumn    EUUG    south of France
1991 Spring    EUUG    Tromso?, Norway (tentative)



AUUG is the Australian UNIX systems Users Group.

        AUUG
        P.O. Box 366
        Kensington
        N.S.W.    2033
        Australia
        uunet!munnari!auug
        [e-mail]

Phone contact can occasionally be made at [phone]

AUUG holds at least one conference a year, usually in the spring
(August or September).  The next one will be

1988 Sep 13-15    AUUG    Melbourne

It will be the first three day meeting, will have a larger
equipment exhibition than any before, and will be professionally
organized for the first time.

They publish a newsletter (AUUGN) at a frequency defined to be every 2 months.


The New Zealand UNIX Systems User Group, Inc. (NZUSUGI) has an annual meeting
and publishes a newsletter, ``NUZ.''

        New Zealand UNIX Systems User Group
        P.O. Box 585
        Hamilton
        New Zealand
        [phone]



The Korean UNIX User Group (KUUG) has a software distribution service
and a newsletter.

        Korean UNIX User Group
        ETRI
        P.O. Box 8
        Daedug Science Town
        Chungnam 300-32
        Republic of Korea
        [phone]


The Japan UNIX Society has two meetings a year, and a newsletter.

        Japan UNIX Society (JUS)
        #505 Towa-Hanzomon Corp. Bldg.
        2-12 Hayabusa-cho
        Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102
        Japan
        [e-mail]
        [phone]

1988 Nov 10-11    UNIX Symposium    Osaka, Japan
1988 Dec 17-18  UNIX FAIR '88   Tokyo, Japan


AMIX - the Israeli UNIX user group, is a S.I.G. of the Israeli Processing
Association (IPA).  AMIX has a yearly conference:

1989 May 14-16    AMIX    Israel

        AMIX, c/o IPA
        P.O. Box 919
        Ramat-Gan
        Israel, 52109
        Tel: [phone]
        Tel: [phone]
        [e-mail]
        [e-mail]


There are similar groups in other parts of the world.  If such a group
wishes to be included in later versions of this access list, they
should please send me information.

There is a partial list of national organizations in the November/December
1987 CommUNIXations.



DECUS, the Digital Equipment Computer Users Society,
has a UNIX SIG (Special Interest Group) that participates
in its general meetings, which are held twice a year.

        DECUS U.S. Chapter
        219 Boston Post Road, BP02
        Marlboro, Massachusetts  01752-1850
        U.S.A.
        [phone]

The next DECUS Symposia are:

1988 Oct 17-21    DECUS S    Anaheim, California
1989 May 8-12    DECUS S    Atlanta, Georgia
1989 Nov 6-10    DECUS S    Anaheim, California
1990 May 7-11    DECUS S    New Orleans, Louisiana

See also the USENET newsgroup comp.org.decus.


The Sun User Group (SUG) is an international organization that promotes
communication among Sun users, OEMs, third party vendors, and Sun
Microsystems, Inc.  SUG sponsors conferences, collects and distributes
software, produces the README newsletter and T-shirts, sponsors local
user groups, and communicates members' problems to Sun employees and
management.

    Sun Microsystems User Group, Inc.
    2550 Garcia Avenue
    Mountain View, CA  94043
    U.S.A.
    [phone]
    [e-mail]
    sun!users

Their next annual conference is:

1988 Dec 5-7    SUG    Fontainebleau Hilton, Miami Beach, Florida


ADUS is the Apollo DOMAIN Users' Society:

    Apollo DOMAIN Users' Society
    c/o Andrea Woloski, ADUS Coordinator
    Apollo Computer Inc.
    330 Billerica Rd.
    Chelmsford, MA 01824
    [phone], x4448



AT&T and Sun Microsystems are holding a series of
Software Developer Conferences on System V Release 4.0,
related to the Sun/AT&T Applications Binary Interface (ABI).

1988 Sep 14-16    New York, NY
1988 Sep 27-29    Los Angeles, CA
1988 Oct 11-13    Tokyo, Japan
1988 Oct 25-27    London, England
1988 Nov  9-11    Boston, MA
1988 Nov 29-Dec 1    Chicago, IL
1988 Dec 13-15    Washington, DC
1988 TBA    Toronto, ON

For more information, call 1-800-387-6100.


The Open Software Foundation (OSF) is a vendor group formed 17 May 1988
by Apollo, Bull, DEC, HP, IBM, Nixdorff, and Siemens, and later joined
by Philips.  Excerpts from a press release of that date:

The Open Software Foundation (OSF) will develop a software environment,
including application interfaces, advanced system extensions, and a new
operating system, using X/Open(tm) and POSIX* specifications as the
starting point. ...  OSF membership is available to computer hardware
and software suppliers, educational institutions, and government
agencies around the world.  ...  The foundation has a management
organization, staff, and a funding comittment in excess of $90 million
to begin immediate operations.  Its initial development will be based
on technologies offered by the members and its own research, to be
carried out worldwide.

A research institute is being created to fund research for the
advancement of applications portability, interoperability standards,
and other advanced technologies for future foundation use.  An
academic advisory panel will provide guidance and input to the
institute.  The Institute's research will be conducted worldwide.

For more information, contact:

    Deborah Siegel
    Cohn & Wolfe
    [phone]

or

    [phone]
    Larry Lytle or Gary McCormack
    Open Software Foundation
    20 Ballard Way
    Lawrence, MA 01843

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 10

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:54:23 1988
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA04195; Sun, 11 Sep 88 17:54:23 EDT
From: <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix,comp.org.usenix,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Access to UNIX-Related Publications
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Expires: 2 Nov 88 21:45:37 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Date: 11 Sep 88 20:28:28 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive
Status: O

From: [e-mail]

This is the latest in a series of similar comp.std.unix articles,
intended to give summary information about UNIX-related publications;
to be accurate, but not exhaustive.  It's cross-posted to
comp.org.usenix and comp.unix.questions because there might be
interest there.

There are three related articles, posted at the same time as this one,
and with subjects
    Calendar of UNIX-related Events
    Access to UNIX User Groups
    Access to UNIX-Related Standards
The latter is posted only to comp.std.unix.

Corrections and additions to this article are solicited.  I keep track
of the conferences, groups, and publications that I attend, am a member
of, or subscribe to.  All others (the majority of the listings) I derive
either from listings elsewhere, or from contributions by readers.
In particular, the meeting schedules and descriptions of most of the
groups are provided by their members.  If a group doesn't have a
meeting schedule listed, it's because nobody has sent me one.  This is
a low-budget operation:  I publish what I have on hand when the time
comes (approximately monthly).

Changes since last posting:
This publications posting split off from UNIX User Groups posting.
Format made easier to use.


Access information is given in this article for the following:
magazines:    CommUNIXations, UNIX REVIEW, UNIX/WORLD, UNIX Today,
        Multi-User Computing Magazine, UNIX Systems, UNIX Magazine
newsletters:    ;login:, /usr/digest, EUUGN, AUUGN, NUZ
journal:    Computing Systems
bookstores:    Computer Literacy Bookshop, Cucumber Bookshop,
        Jim Joyce's UNIX Book Store, UNIX Book Service


The main general circulation (more than 10,000 copies per issue) magazines
specifically about the UNIX system are:

    UNIX REVIEW
    Miller Freeman Publications Co.
    500 Howard Street
    San Francisco, CA 94105
    U.S.A.
    monthly
    [phone]

    UNIX/WORLD
    Tech Valley Publishing
    444 Castro St.
    Mountain View, CA 94041
    U.S.A.
    monthly
    [phone]

    UNIX Systems
    Eaglehead Publishing Ltd.
    Maybury Road
    Woking, Surrey GU21 5HX
    England
    [phone]

    UNIX Today
    CMP Publications, Inc.
    600 Community Drive
    Manhasset, NY 11030
    U.S.A.
    newspaper
    [phone]

    Multi-User Computing magazine
    Storyplace Ltd.
    42 Colebrook Row
    London  N1 8AF
    England
    [phone]

    UNIX Magazine
    Jouji Ohkubo
    c/o ASCII Corp.
    [e-mail]
    [phone]
    fax: [phone]
    telex: 242-6875 ASCIIJ


The USENIX Association publishes a bimonthly newsletter, ``login:
The USENIX Association Newsletter,'' and a quarterly refereed technical
journal, ``Computing Systems: The Journal of the USENIX Association,''
(in cooperation with University of California Press), and an edition
of the 4.3BSD Manuals (with Howard Press).

    USENIX Association
    P.O. Box 2299
    Berkeley, CA 94710
    U.S.A.
    [phone]


/usr/group publishes a biweekly newsletter, /usr/digest,
a bimonthly member magazine, CommUNIXations, and the
UNIX Products Directory.

    /usr/group
    4655 Old Ironsides Drive, Suite 200
    Santa Clara, California 95054
    U.S.A.
    [phone]

Some of the above information about magazines was taken from the
November/December 1987 issue of CommUNIXations, which also lists
some smaller-circulation magazines and newsletters.


EUUG publishes a quarterly magazine, EUUGN.

        EUUG secretariat
        Owles Hall
        Buntingford
        Herts SG9 9PL
        England
        [phone]
        fax: [phone]
        uunet!mcvax!inset!euug
        [e-mail]


AUUG publishes a bimonthly newsletter, AUUGN.

        AUUG
        P.O. Box 366
        Kensington
        N.S.W.    2033
        Australia
        uunet!munnari!auug
        [e-mail]


NZSUGI publishes a newsletter, NUZ.

        New Zealand UNIX Systems User Group
        P.O. Box 585
        Hamilton
        New Zealand
        [phone]

Finally, Dominic Dunlop <[e-mail]> has pointed out several
publications that frequently include articles about the UNIX system or
the C language.  I've listed them below; the comments after each entry
are his.  I have excluded listings of magazines about specific hardware.

    AT&T Technical Journal
    AT&T Bell Laboratories
    Circulation Dept.
    Room 1K-424
    101 J F Kennedy Parkway
    Short Hills, NJ 07078
    Bimonthly
    $40/yr (US); $50/yr (overseas)
    [phone]
    While few issues are devoted to UNIX,
    most turn out to mention its applications.

    Byte
    McGraw-Hill Inc.
    Phoenix Mill Lane
    Peterborough, NH 03458
    Monthly
    $22/yr (US); $25/yr(Mex,Can); $37/yr (surface); $69/yr (air,Europe)
    [phone]
    Concentrates mainly on personal computers,
    but covers low end of UNIX market in some depth.

    The C Users Journal
    ``A service of the C Users Group.''
    R&D Publications Inc
    PO Box 97
    McPherson, KS 67460
    Eight issues per year
    $20/yr (US/Mex/Can); $30/yr (overseas)
    [phone]
    Mainly DOS-oriented; some UNIX.

    Unique
    ``The UNIX System Information Source.''
    Infopro Systems
    PO Box 220
    Rescue, CA 95672
    Monthly
    $79/yr (US,overseas); $99/yr (air)
    [phone]
    High-quality industry newsletter.
    Emphasis on marketing implications of technical developments.


The following information about bookstores was taken from the
November/December 1987 issue of CommUNIXations.  In the interests of
space, I have arbitrarily limited the selection listed here to those
bookstores or suppliers specifically dedicated to computer books, and
not part of other organizations.  They are listed here in alphabetical
order.

    Computer Literacy Bookshop
    2590 No. First St.
    San Jose, CA 95131
    U.S.A.
    [phone]

    Cucumber Bookshop
    5611 Kraft Ave.
    Rockville, MD 20852
    U.S.A.
    [phone]

    Jim Joyce's UNIX Book Store
    47 Potomac St.
    San Francisco, CA 94117
    U.S.A.
    [phone]

    UNIX Book Service
    35 Bermuda Terrace
    Cambridge, CB4 3LD
    England
    [phone]

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 11

From root  Tue Sep 13 18:29:55 1988
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA13945; Tue, 13 Sep 88 18:29:55 EDT
From: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Another UNIX publication
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: James B. O'Connor <uunet!fsc2086!jim>
Date: 11 Sep 88 18:02:45 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive
Status: O

From: James B. O'Connor <uunet!fsc2086!jim>


I recently started receiving the "UNIX JOURNAL" which is a newsletter from
FourGen Software.  The masthead reads:

The FourGen UNIX Journal is a publication of FourGen Software, Inc.
Subscriptions: $79.95 a year.  Contact: The FourGen UNIX Journal, 7620 242nd
St. S.W., Edmonds. WA 98020-5463.  Telephone: [phone].

The subtitle says it is "The Monthly Newsletter for those Developing,
Marketing, or Using UNIX/XENIX Software."

They list a UUCP address of ..!uunet!4gen!info.

I don't know if this qualifies as a "real" UNIX publication, but I thought I
would let you know it's out there.
---
James B. O'Connor        [phone] x651
Filtration Sciences Corp.      UUCP:  uunet!fsc2086!jim
105 West 45th Street           or      [e-mail]
Chattanooga, TN 37411


Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 12

From news  Tue Sep 20 05:13:25 1988
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA12319; Tue, 20 Sep 88 05:13:25 EDT
From: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Submission for "Access to UNIX User Groups and Publications"
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: David Fiedler <uunet!infopro!david>
Organization: InfoPro Systems, PO Box 220, Rescue, CA 95672
Date: 16 Sep 88 19:16:19 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive
Status: O

From: David Fiedler <uunet!infopro!david>

Dear John,

We just started a new publication called root. I would greatly appreciate
it if you would include information about it in your next posting. Edit
the attached press release as much as you feel is necessary...

Thanks in advance!

David Fiedler {ames,attmail,hoptoad,pyramid}!infopro!david
USMail: InfoPro Systems, PO Box 220, Rescue CA 95672 Phone: [phone]

[ As requested, this posting has been edited to death, down to the
usual length for a publication notice in my usual publications posting,
except I have left in the Special USENET Discount paragraph.

I suggest that interested parties write to the given address
for the unedited press release.  -mod ]

    root
    InfoPro Systems
    PO Box 220
    Rescue
    CA 95672-0220
    U.S.A.
    [phone]
    Telex: 151296379 INFOPRO
    fax: [phone]
    {ames,attmail,pyramid}!infopro!root

                     Special USENET Discount

The normal price of a one-year subscription to root will be $72.
An introductory price of $28 will be made available to subscribers who
mention this USENET posting. This will be the lowest price available
anywhere. The first issue of root will be available by the end of 1988,
and probably at the Monterey Usenix workshop in November.

[ This apparently refers to the USENIX Large System Installation
Workshop II, 17-18 November, Monterey, CA, [e-mail].  -mod ]

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 13

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Path: longway!std-unix
From: [e-mail]
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix,comp.org.usenix,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Access to UNIX User Groups
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 10 Nov 88 17:33:08 GMT
Expires: 12 Dec 88 21:45:37 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Lines: 512
Approved: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Xref: longway comp.std.unix:130 comp.org.usenix:286 comp.unix.questions:3554
Status: O

From: [e-mail]

This is the latest in a series of similar comp.std.unix articles,
intended to give summary information about UNIX User groups;
to be accurate, but not exhaustive.  It's cross-posted to
comp.org.usenix and comp.unix.questions because there might be
interest there.

There are three related articles, posted at the same time as this one,
and with subjects
    Calendar of UNIX-related Events
    Access to UNIX-Related Publications
    Access to UNIX-Related Standards
The latter is posted only to comp.std.unix.

Corrections and additions to this article are solicited.  I keep track
of the conferences, groups, and publications that I attend, am a member
of, or subscribe to.  All others (the majority of the listings) I derive
either from listings elsewhere, or from contributions by readers.
In particular, the meeting schedules and descriptions of most of the
groups are provided by their members.  If a group doesn't have a
meeting schedule listed, it's because nobody has sent me one.  This is
a low-budget operation:  I publish what I have on hand when the time
comes (approximately monthly).

Changes since last posting:
JUS dates for 1989.  Sun/AT&T V.4 dates corrected.

Access information is given in this article for the following:
user groups:    USENIX, /usr/group, UNIX Expo, /usr/group/cdn,
        EUUG, AFUU, /usr/group/uk, i2u,
        AUUG, NZUSUGI, JUS, KUUG, Sinix, CUUG, AMIX,
        DECUS UNIX SIG, Sun User Group (SUG),
        Apollo DOMAIN Users' Society (ADUS),
        AT&T and Sun V.4 Software Developer Conferences,
        Open Software Foundation (OSF).

Telephone numbers are given in international format, i.e., +n at
the beginning for the country code, e.g., +44 is England, +81 Japan,
+82 Korea, +61 Australia, +64 New Zealand, and +1 is U.S.A. or Canada.

UNIX is a Registered Trademark of AT&T.


USENIX is ``The Professional and Technical UNIX(R) Association.''

        USENIX Association
        P.O. Box 2299
        Berkeley, CA 94710
        U.S.A.
        [phone]
        {uunet,ucbvax,decvax}!usenix!office
        [e-mail]

USENIX sponsors two USENIX Conferences a year, featuring technical papers,
as well as tutorials, and with vendor exhibits at the summer conferences:

1989 Jan 30-Feb 3    USENIX    Town & Country Inn, San Diego, CA
1989 Jun 12-16    USENIX    Hyatt Regency, Baltimore, MD
1990 Jan 22-26    USENIX    Washington, DC
1990 Jun 11-15    USENIX    Marriott Hotel, Anaheim, CA
1991 Jan 21-25    USENIX    Dallas, TX
1991 Jun 10-14    USENIX    Opryland, Nashville, TN
1992 Jan 20-24    USENIX    Hilton Square, San Francisco, CA
1992 Jun 8-12    USENIX    Marriott, San Antonio, TX
1993 Jan    USENIX    somewhere in northeast of North America

They also sponsor workshops, such as

1988 Nov 17-18    Large Install.    Syst. Adm. W II, USENIX, Monterey, CA
1989 Apr 3-4    Software Management W    USENIX, Hilton, New Orleans, LA
1989 Oct 5-6    Dist. Systems W    USENIX, Marriott Marina, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
1989 Nov/Dec    Graphics W V    USENIX

Proceedings for all conferences and workshops are available at
the door and by mail later.

USENIX publishes ``;login:  The USENIX Association Newsletter''
bimonthly.  It is sent free of charge to all their members and
includes technical papers.  There is a USENET newsgroup,
comp.org.usenix, for discussion of USENIX-related matters.

In 1988, USENIX started publishing a new refereed quarterly
technical journal, ``Computing Systems:  The Journal of the USENIX
Association,'' in cooperation with University of California Press.

They also publish an edition of the 4.3BSD manuals and distribute the
2.10BSD software distribution.  They coordinate a software exchange for
appropriately licensed members.  They occasionally sponsor experiments,
such as methods of improving the USENET and UUCP networks (e.g., UUNET),
that are of interest and use to the membership.

There is a USENIX Institutional Representative on the IEEE P1003
Portable Operating System Interface for Computer Environments Committee.
That representative also moderates the USENET newsgroup comp.std.unix,
which is for discussion of UNIX-related standards, especially P1003.
There is also a USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee following several
standards bodies.  For more details, see the posting in comp.std.unix,
``Access to UNIX-Related Standards.''


/usr/group is a non-profit trade association dedicated to the promotion
of products and services based on the UNIX operating system.

        /usr/group
        4655 Old Ironsides Drive, Suite 200
        Santa Clara, California 95054
        U.S.A.
        tel: [phone]
        fax: [phone]

The annual UniForum Conference and Trade Show is sponsored by /usr/group
and features vendor exhibits, as well as tutorials and technical sessions.

1989 Feb 28-Mar 2    UniForum    Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA
1990 Jan 23-26    UniForum    Washington Hilton, Washington, DC
1991 Jan 22-25    UniForum    Infomart, Dallas, TX
1992 Jan 21-24    UniForum    Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA
1993 Mar 2-4    UniForum    Washington, D.C.

Proceedings for all conferences are available at the shows and later
by mail.

/usr/group publishes ``CommUNIXations,'' a member magazine that
features articles by industry leaders and observers, technical issues,
standards coverage, and new product announcements.

/usr/group also publishes the ``UNIX Products Directory,'' which lists
products and services developed specifically for the UNIX operating system.
``/usr/digest'' is also published by /usr/group.  This newsletter covers
product announcements and industry projections, and is sent biweekly
to General members of /usr/group and to non-member subscribers.

/usr/group has long been deeply involved in UNIX standardization,
having sponsored the ``/usr/group 1984 Standard,'' providing an Institutional
Representative to the IEEE P1003 Portable Operating System for Computer
Environments Committee, and sponsoring the /usr/group Technical Committee
on areas that P1003 has not yet addressed.  They have recently produced
an executive summary, ``Your Guide to POSIX,'' and a technical overview
``POSIX Explored,'' and funded production of a draft of a ``Rationale and
Notes'' appendix for IEEE 1003.1.


UNIX EXPO is an annual very large vendor exhibit in New York City
with tutorials and technical presentations.  It is held at the
Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, with lodging arrangements with
the Sheraton Centre Hotel, both in Manhattan.

1989 Nov 1-3    UNIX EXPO    Javits Conv. C, New York, NY

        National Expositions Co., Inc.
        15 West 39th Street
        New York, NY 10018
        U.S.A.
        [phone]
        fax: [phone]

        Reservations Department
        Sheraton Centre Hotel
        811 Seventh Avenue
        New York, NY 10019
        U.S.A.
        [phone]
        Fax: [phone]
        Telex: 421130


/usr/group/cdn is the Canadian branch of /usr/group, and holds an
annual spring conference and trade show modeled after UniForum,
usually at the Metro Toronto Convention Center.  They also hold
a UNIX in Government show in the winter in Ottawa.

Exhibitors and attendees can contact:
        Fawn Lubman
        Communications 2000
        4195 Dundas St. #201
        Etobicoke, Ontario M8X 1Y4
        Canada
        [phone]

        /usr/group/cdn
        241 Gamma St.
        Etobicoke, Ontario M8W 4G7
        Canada
        [phone]

1989 Jan 10-11    U in Gov. C&T    /usr/group/cdn, Ottawa, ON
1989 May    U 8x/etc C&T    /usr/group/cdn, Toronto, ON


EUUG is the European UNIX systems Users Group, which is currently
celebrating its tenth anniversary.  EUUG is closely coordinated with
national groups in Europe, and with the European UNIX network, EUnet.

        EUUG secretariat
        Owles Hall
        Buntingford
        Herts SG9 9PL
        England
        [phone]
        fax: [phone]
        uunet!mcvax!inset!euug
        [e-mail]

They have a newsletter, EUUGN (a previous version of this article
appeared in the latest one), and hold two conferences a year:

1988 Apr 3-7    EUUG    Palais des Congres, Brussels, Belgium
        Chair:    Prof Marc Nyssen
        <[e-mail]>
        [phone]
        fax: [phone]
        Medical Informaticas Dept.
        Vrije Universiteit Brussel
        Laarbeeklaan 103
        B-1090 Jette
        Belgium

1989 Sep 18-22    EUUG    WU Wien, Vienna, Austria
        Chair:    eva Kuehn
1990 Apr 23-27    EUUG    Munich, Germany (tentative)
1990 Autumn    EUUG    south of France
1991 Spring    EUUG    Tromso?, Norway (tentative)


AFUU is the Association Fran\*,caise des Utilisateurs d'UNIX,
or French UNIX Users' Group.  They are holding a small convention
in November and a large one in the spring with tutorials and a
vendor exhibit.

        AFUU
        11 Rue Carnot
        94270 Le Kremlin Bicetre
        France
        [phone]
        Telex: 263 887 F

1988 Nov 18    AFUU    Grenoble, France
1989 Feb 28-Mar 3    U Convention    AFUU, Paris, France

/usr/group/UK is the U.K. affiliate of /usr/group, and holds an annual
COMUNIX Conference in June in conjunction with the European UNIX User Show,
which is an achibition organised by EMAP INternation Exhibitions.

        Tracy MacIntyre
        Exhibition Manager
        EMAP International Exhibitions Ltd.
        Abbot's Court
        34 Farringdon Lane
        London EC1R 3AU
        United Kingdom
        [phone]

1989 Jun 7-9    COMUNIX    /usr/group/UK, Alexandra Palace, London
1989 Jun 7-9    Eur. U User Show    EMAP Int. Exh., Alexandra Palace, London


The Italian UNIX Systems User Group (i2u) holds an annual summer
Italian UNIX Convention, with tutorials and a vendor exhibition.

        Fulvio Fagiani
        c/o Ing. Olivetti & C. spa
        Via Rombon, 11
        20134 MIlano
        Italy
        [phone]
        fax: [phone]

1989 Jun    Italian U C    i2u, Italy

AUUG is the Australian UNIX systems Users Group.

        Tim Roper
        Secretary
        AUUG
        [e-mail]
        uunet!labtam.oz.au!timr

        AUUG
        P.O. Box 366
        Kensington
        N.S.W.    2033
        Australia
        uunet!munnari!auug
        [e-mail]

Phone contact can occasionally be made at [phone]

AUUG holds one major national Conference and Exhibition per year during
August or September, and regional, technical meetings in February or
March.  The next one will be

1989 Aug 8-11    AUUG    Hilton Hotel, Sydney

There will be tutorials on 8 August, and technical sessions the other
two days.  The vendor exhibition will be open from the afternoon of
8 August through the morning of 11 August.

They publish a newsletter (AUUGN) at a frequency defined to be every 2 months.


The New Zealand UNIX Systems User Group, Inc. (NZUSUGI) has an annual meeting
and publishes a newsletter, ``NUZ.''

        New Zealand UNIX Systems User Group
        P.O. Box 585
        Hamilton
        New Zealand
        [phone]



The Japan UNIX Society has three meetings a year, and a newsletter.
The JUS UNIX Symposium is held twice annually, once in the winter and
once in the summer.  It has technical presentations, tutorials,
and a vendor exhibit.  The JUS UNIX Fair is held once a year, and
has a vendor exhibit, tutorials, and seminars.

        Japan UNIX Society (JUS)
        #505 Towa-Hanzomon Corp. Bldg.
        2-12 Hayabusa-cho
        Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102
        Japan
        [e-mail]
        [phone]

        UNIX Fair '88 Association
        1-1-1 Hirakawa-chu,
        Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102
        Japan

1988 Nov 10-11    JUS UNIX Symposium    Osaka, Japan
1988 Dec 7-8    JUS UNIX FAIR '88    Tokyo, Japan
1989 Jul    JUS 13th Symposium    Tokyo
1989 Nov    JUS 14th Symposium    Osaka (or Kobe)
1989 Dec    JUS UNIX Fair '89    Tokyo


The Korean UNIX User Group (KUUG) has a software distribution service
and a newsletter.  They hold an annual Korean UNIX Symposium in the winter.

        Korean UNIX User Group
        ETRI
        P.O. Box 8
        Daedug Science Town
        Dae Jeon CIty
        Chungnam 301-350
        Republic of Korea

        Kee Wook Rim
        [e-mail]
        [phone] x4646
        fax: [phone]

1988 Dec 10    Korean U S    KUUG, Korea


The Singapore UNIX Association (Sinix) holds an annual Southeast Asian
Regional Computer Conference.

        James Clark
        Sinix
        c/o Computer Systems Advisers, Ltd.
        203 Henderson Industrial Park
        Wing B #1207-1214
        Singapore 0315
        [phone]
        fax: [phone]


The China UNIX User Group (CUUG) is the Chinese /usr/group affiliate.

        Xu Kongshi
        China UNIX User Group
        P.O. Box 8718
        Beijing, 100080
        People's Republic of China
        [phone]

AMIX - the Israeli UNIX user group, is a S.I.G. of the Israeli Processing
Association (IPA).  AMIX has a yearly conference:

1989 May 14-16    AMIX    Israel

        AMIX, c/o IPA
        P.O. Box 919
        Ramat-Gan
        Israel, 52109
        Tel: [phone]
        Tel: [phone]
        [e-mail]
        [e-mail]


There are similar groups in other parts of the world.  If such a group
wishes to be included in later versions of this access list, they
should please send me information.

There is a partial list of national organizations in the November/December
1987 CommUNIXations.



DECUS, the Digital Equipment Computer Users Society,
has a UNIX SIG (Special Interest Group) that participates
in its general meetings, which are held twice a year.

        DECUS U.S. Chapter
        219 Boston Post Road, BP02
        Marlboro, Massachusetts  01752-1850
        U.S.A.
        [phone]

The next DECUS Symposia are:

1989 May 8-12    DECUS S    Atlanta, Georgia
1989 Nov 6-10    DECUS S    Anaheim, California
1990 May 7-11    DECUS S    New Orleans, Louisiana

See also the USENET newsgroup comp.org.decus.


The Sun User Group (SUG) is an international organization that promotes
communication among Sun users, OEMs, third party vendors, and Sun
Microsystems, Inc.  SUG sponsors conferences, collects and distributes
software, produces the README newsletter and T-shirts, sponsors local
user groups, and communicates members' problems to Sun employees and
management.

    Sun Microsystems User Group, Inc.
    2550 Garcia Avenue
    Mountain View, CA  94043
    U.S.A.
    [phone]
    [e-mail]
    sun!users

Their next annual conference is:

1988 Dec 5-7    SUG    Fontainebleau Hilton, Miami Beach, Florida


ADUS is the Apollo DOMAIN Users' Society:

    Apollo DOMAIN Users' Society
    c/o Andrea Woloski, ADUS Coordinator
    Apollo Computer Inc.
    330 Billerica Rd.
    Chelmsford, MA 01824
    [phone], x4448



AT&T and Sun Microsystems are holding a series of
Software Developer Conferences on System V Release 4.0,
related to the Sun/AT&T Applications Binary Interface (ABI).

1988 Sep 14-16    V.4 Soft. Dev.    Hanover, NJ
1988 Sep 27-29     V.4 Soft. Dev.    Los Angeles, CA
1988 Oct 12-14     V.4 Soft. Dev.    Tokyo, Japan
1988 Oct 26-28     V.4 Soft. Dev.    London, England
1988 Nov 9-11    V.4 Soft. Dev.    Boston, MA
1988 Nov 29-Dec 1    V.4 Soft. Dev.    Chicago, IL
1988 Dec 6-8    V.4 Soft. Dev.    San Francisco, CA
1988 Dec 13-15    V.4 Soft. Dev.    Washington D.C.

If you would like to register, please call 1-800-247-1212, extension 151.

For more information:
    Melinda L. Marrs
    1-800-387-6100.
    [e-mail]
    Conference Coordinator
    Sun Microsystems, Inc.


The Open Software Foundation (OSF) is a vendor group formed 17 May 1988
by Apollo, Bull, DEC, HP, IBM, Nixdorff, and Siemens, and later joined
by Philips.  Excerpts from a press release of that date:

The Open Software Foundation (OSF) will develop a software environment,
including application interfaces, advanced system extensions, and a new
operating system, using X/Open(tm) and POSIX* specifications as the
starting point. ...  OSF membership is available to computer hardware
and software suppliers, educational institutions, and government
agencies around the world.  ...  The foundation has a management
organization, staff, and a funding comittment in excess of $90 million
to begin immediate operations.  Its initial development will be based
on technologies offered by the members and its own research, to be
carried out worldwide.

A research institute is being created to fund research for the
advancement of applications portability, interoperability standards,
and other advanced technologies for future foundation use.  An
academic advisory panel will provide guidance and input to the
institute.  The Institute's research will be conducted worldwide.

For more information, contact:

    Deborah Siegel
    Cohn & Wolfe
    [phone]

or

    [phone]
    Larry Lytle or Gary McCormack
    Open Software Foundation
    20 Ballard Way
    Lawrence, MA 01843

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 24

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Path: longway!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (John S. Quarterman)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix,comp.org.usenix,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Calendar of UNIX-related Events
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 10 Nov 88 17:36:32 GMT
Expires: 12 Dec 88 21:45:37 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail] (John S. Quarterman)
Lines: 117
Approved: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Xref: longway comp.std.unix:131 comp.org.usenix:287 comp.unix.questions:3555
Status: O

From: [e-mail] (John S. Quarterman)

This is a combined calendar of planned conferences, workshops, or standards
meetings related to the UNIX operating system.  Most of this information
came from the various conference organizers, although some was taken from
;login: (USENIX), 13, 1, Jan/Feb 1988, ;login: 13, 6, Nov/Dec 1988,
CommUNIXations (/usr/group), VII, 6, Nov/Dec 1987, and the /usr/group UNIX
Resources Guide.  Further information from EUUG and European national
groups will be included.

If your favorite meeting is not listed, it's probably because I don't know
about it.  If you send me information on it, I will probably list it both
here and in the appropriate one of the companion articles:
        Access to UNIX User Groups
        Access to UNIX-Related Publications
        Access to UNIX-Related Standards

Changes since last posting: JUS dates for 1989.  IEEE 1003.1 Minneapolis
meeting date.  New USENIX workshops.  AT&T/Sun corrected dates.

Abbreviations:
            C   Conference
        G, MD   Gaithersburg, Maryland
            S   Symposium
            T   Tradeshow
            U   UNIX
          V.4   System V Release 4.0
            W   Workshop

USENIX, EUUG, AUUG and DECUS sponsor conferences of the same names;
/usr/group sponsors UniForum.

UNIX is a Registered Trademark of AT&T Bell Laboratories.

[e-mail]         John S. Quarterman           uunet!longway!jsq

88/11/10 pg. 2        Calendar of UNIX-Related Events         comp.std.unix

year mon days     conference           (sponsor,) (hotel,) location

1988 Nov  9-11    V.4 Soft. Dev.       AT&T and Sun, Boston, MA
1988 Nov 10-11    U Symposium          JUS, Osaka, Japan
1988 Nov 15       POSIX Appl. W        NBS, G, MD
1988 Nov 16       POSIX FIPS Rev. W    NBS, G, MD
1988 Nov 17-18    Large Install.       Syst. Adm. W II, USENIX, Monterey, CA
1988 Nov 18       AFUU                 Grenoble, France
1988 Nov 29-Dec 1 V.4 Soft. Dev.       AT&T and Sun, Chicago, IL
1988 Dec 5-7      Sun User Group       Fontainebleau Hilton, Miami Beach, FL
1988 Dec 6-8      V.4 Soft. Dev.       AT&T and Sun, San Francisco, CA
1988 Dec 10       Korean U S           KUUG, Korea
1988 Dec 12-16    ANSI X3J11           Seattle, WA
1988 Dec 13-15    V.4 Soft. Dev.       AT&T and Sun, Washington, DC
1988 Dec 7-8      U FAIR '88           JUS, Tokyo, Japan

1989 Jan 9-13     IEEE 1003            Embassy Suites, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
1989 Jan 10-11    U in Gov. C&T        /usr/group/cdn, Ottawa, ON
1989 Jan 17       Terminal Int. Ext.   and Net. Serv. W, NBS, G, MD
1989 Jan 30-Feb 3 USENIX               Town and Country, San Diego, CA
1989 Feb 28-Mar 2 UniForum             Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA
1989 Feb 28-Mar 3 U Convention         AFUU, Paris, France
1989 Apr 3-4      Software Man. W      USENIX, Hilton, New Orleans, LA
1989 Apr 3-7      EUUG                 Palais des Congres, Brussels, Belgium
1989 Apr 10-11    ANSI X3J11           Phoenix, AZ
1989 Apr 24-28    IEEE 1003            Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN
1989 Apr 25-27    ISDN in Europe       IFIP-TC6, ICCC, The Hague, Netherlands
1989 May 8-12     DECUS S              Atlanta, Georgia
1989 May 14-16    AMIX                 Israel
1989 May 16       POSIX Appl. W        NBS, G, MD
1989 May          U 8x/etc C&T         /usr/group/cdn, Toronto, ON

[e-mail]         John S. Quarterman           uunet!longway!jsq

88/11/10 pg. 3        Calendar of UNIX-Related Events         comp.std.unix

1989 Jun          NZSUGI               New Zealand
1989 Jun          Italian U C          i2u, Italy
1989 Jun 12-16    USENIX               Hyatt Regency, Baltimore, MD
1989 Jul          JUS 13th S           Tokyo
1989 Jul 10-14    IEEE 1003            San Francisco, CA
1989 Aug 8-11     AUUG                 Hilton Hotel, Sydney
1989 Sep 18-22    EUUG                 WU Wien, Vienna, Austria
1989 Oct 5-6      Dist. Systems W   USENIX, Marriott Marina, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
1989 Oct 16-20    IEEE 1003            Brussels (or Amsterdam)
1989 Nov          JUS 14th S           Osaka (or Kobe)
1989 Nov 1-3      UNIX EXPO            Javits Conv. C, New York, NY
1989 Nov 6-10     DECUS S              Anaheim, California
1989 Nov/Dec      Graphics W V         USENIX
1989 Dec          JUS UNIX Fair        Tokyo

1990 Jan          U in Gov. C&T        Ottawa, ON
1990 Jan 22-26    USENIX               Washington, DC
1990 Jan 23-26    UniForum             Washington Hilton, Washington, DC
1990 Jan 29       IEEE 1003            New Orleans, LA
1990 Apr          IEEE 1003            Montreal, Quebec
1990 Apr 23-27    EUUG                 Munich, Germany (tentative)
1990 May 7-11     DECUS S              New Orleans, LA
1990 May          U 8x/etc C&T         /usr/group/cdn, Toronto, ON
1990 Jun 11-15    USENIX               Marriott, Anaheim, CA
1990 Autumn       EUUG                 south of France

1991 Jan 21-25    USENIX               Dallas, TX
1991 Jan 22-25    UniForum             Infomart, Dallas, TX
1991 Feb          U in Gov. C&T        Ottawa, ON
1991 Spring       EUUG                 Tromso?, Norway (tentative)
1991 May          U 8x/etc C&T         Toronto, ON
1991 Jun 10-14    USENIX               Opryland, Nashville, TN

1992 Jan 20-24    USENIX               Hilton Square, San Francisco, CA
1992 Jan 21-24    UniForum             Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA
1992 Jun 8-12     USENIX               Marriott, San Antonio, TX

1993 Jan          USENIX               northeast North America
1993 Mar 2-4      UniForum             Washington, D.C.

[e-mail]         John S. Quarterman           uunet!longway!jsq

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 25

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Path: longway!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Re: Access to UNIX-Related Publications
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 12 Nov 88 05:02:29 GMT
References: your article <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: uunet!vsi!friedl
Lines: 31
Approved: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Status: O

From: uunet!vsi!friedl

> Corrections and additions to this article are solicited.

>     The C Users Journal

They moved last month -- they are now at:

     The C Users Journal
    2120 W. 25th St, Suite B
    Lawrence, KS  66046-9972
    [phone]

You might also want to include:

    Dr. Dobbs Journal of Software Tools]
    M&T Publishing, Inc
    501 Galveston Dr.
    Redwood City, CA  94063
    [phone] voice
    Mostly DOS, some UNIX, quite technical
    monthly, $29.97 per year

     Steve

---
Steve Friedl    V-Systems, Inc.  [phone]    3B2-kind-of-guy
[e-mail]     {backbones}!vsi.com!friedl    attmail!vsi!friedl
------------Nancy Reagan on the worm: "Just say OH NO!"------------

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 26

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Path: longway!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (John P. Nelson)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Re: A "public domain" set of include files.
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 11 Nov 88 20:33:31 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail] (John P. Nelson)
Organization: GenRad, Inc., Concord, Mass.
Lines: 36
Approved: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Status: O

From: [e-mail] (John P. Nelson)

>I have been wondering, for some time, about the status of the files in the
>/usr/include directory.  It would seem to me, that these files are the
>property of AT&T, and as such, cannot be distributed without a licence.

While they fall under the copyright rules, they do NOT fall under the
more restrictive "TRADE SECRET" rules, because they are available to the
normal binary licensee.

>As an example, consider the following;
>    if ((ip->i_mode & IFMT) == IFDIR)
>        /* something */;
>
>This is a fairly standard piece of code.  When RMS et al, produce a CERTIFIED
>AT&T-free kernel, it would seem to me, that this code CANNOT be included in
>any of the utilities, because it is using AT&T definitions.

Not quite.  If the definitions of these macros is contained in the MANUALS
(i.e. the SPECIFICATION), then anyone can recreate the header files from
the specification without fear of infringing on AT&T's copyright.  The
same thing would NOT be true if it were to fall under the AT&T "trade secret"
source contract.  Of course, it would still be illegal to include verbatim
copies of AT&T's header files.

Therefore, UNIX clones are quite legally able to match the UNIX interface,
since copyright only protects a particular EXPRESSION of an idea, not the idea
itself.

--
     john nelson

UUCP:    {decvax,mit-eddie}!genrad!teddy!jpn
smail:    [e-mail]

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 27

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Path: longway!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: status report
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 9 Nov 88 18:47:06 GMT
Reply-To: uunet!unisoft!hlj (Hal Jespersen)
Organization: UniSoft Corp. R&D, 6121 Hollis St, Emeryville, CA 94608
Lines: 149
Approved: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Status: O

From: uunet!unisoft!hlj (Hal Jespersen)


        P1003.2 Working Group Status Report--October 1988

                  Hal Jespersen

               UniSoft Corporation

       November    6, 1988

       The P1003.2 POSIX Shell and Utilities Working Group met in
       Honolulu, Hawaii, October 24 through 28,    1988.

       The following were the highlights of the    meeting:

     1.  The P1003.2 Technical Editor, Maggie Lee, of Amdahl
         Corporation, resigned her position    because    of workload
         conflicts.    Maggie served in this position since April
         1987 and the Working Group    expressed their    sincere
         thanks for    all the    outstanding work she did on Drafts
         3 through 7.  Hal Jespersen will assume these duties
         as    editor until a suitable    replacement can    be found.
         An    arrangement of chapter editors feeding materials
         into an overall draft editor may be attempted.

     2.  The results of the    ``mock ballot''    against    Draft 7
         were processed almost the entire week.  The Working
         Group did an outstanding job of submitting    objections-
         --over 1400--on a very tight schedule; they repeated
         the feat by resolving almost all of them during the
         week.  As a result, Draft 8 will be a draft of
         considerably higher quality and will be a good start
         for the formal balloting process.

     3.  A schedule    for balloting was discussed.  The balloting
         group for 1003.2 closes in    early November;    the exact
         date is unknown (but it is    probably before    you're
         reading this report).  Draft 8 will be targeted for
         completion    of editing December 5, 1988, although the
         exceptionally high    volume of changes may delay this
         until the 12th.  Assuming that the    IEEE office
         receives it in mid-December, a balloting period of
         January 1 through February    15, 1989 is probable.
         Considering the experiences of P1003.1, it    is very
         likely that final approval    will not be reached before
         December, 1989, for approval at the January, 1990,
         Standards Board meeting.

     4.  Some of the significant changes to    appear in Draft    8:

           a.  A new Chapter 7 was accepted, based on software
           for application installation    developed by
           Digital Equipment Corp.


       P1003.2 Status Report 10/88                  2

           b.  The chapters    will be    rearranged slightly.
           Chapter 3 (Environment) will    be merged into 2
           (Definitions).  The C language bias of Draft    7
           will    be negated by establishing a new language-
           independent bindings    chapter    (just stubs for
           now).  The C    language bindings will appear in a
           separate chapter, clearly marked as destined    for
           removal in a    future draft, after a separate C
           bindings working group is established.  (At the
           meeting, it was discussed putting them into a
           ``normative appendix,'' but I have since found
           out that that isn't normal IEEE procedure, so
           they'll have    to be in real chapters to stay in
           the standard.)  A decision was made to not
           include an empty chapter for    Ada bindings, as an
           active working group    is already in progress for
           Ada,    so that    chapter    has a home of its own in
           their standard.  Separate chapters for C and
           FORTRAN development tools will point    back to    a
           new language-independent compiler-linker
           section.

           c.  The egrep and fgrep commands    have been merged
           into    a single new grep.

           d.  The xform command was removed as unnecessary.

           e.  The UUCP-oriented commands were moved to an
           appendix, awaiting balloting    group direction    for
           inclusion in    the standard.

           f.  Major surgery was performed on the hd command,
           which was also renamed xd, to avoid collisions
           with    vendor commands.

           g.  The strip command was added to the Software
           Development chapter.

     5.  A draft PAR for a ``User Portability Extension'' (UPE)
         was discussed.  This supplement to    1003.2 is intended
         to    provide    many of    the familiar interactive UNIX
         utilities,    such as    full screen editors, omitted from
         the original P1003.2 scope.  It will promote user
         portability, but there are    two caveats:  users are
         limited to    being traditional time-sharing UNIX users,
         such as program developers, and; the terminals
         supported are limited to asynchronous character-mode
         terminals,    such as    VT100's.  Advanced work    into
         windows or    mouse-based systems is specifically
         excluded.    The Working Group will spend the majority
         of    1989 on    this extension.     The PAR will be submitted


       P1003.2 Status Report 10/88                  3

         in    late November, 1988.

     6.  The NIST (formerly    NBS) confirmed plans to    issue a
         POSIX Shell and Tools FIPS    based on Draft 8 in
         December.    They are planning on accepting the entire
         draft with    the exception of some of the
         internationalization features and the nascent
         application installation material;    and, the software
         development options will remain optional.

       The next    meeting    is scheduled for January 9 - 12, 1989, in
       Fort Lauderdale,    Florida.  (Embassy Suites Hotel, 1000 SE
       17th Street.  [phone]; specify group rate    for ``IEEE
       P1003 meeting.)    Since the balloting against Draft 8 will
       still be    in its early stages, this is an    abbreviated meeting
       that will concentrate almost entirely on    the new    UPE
       supplement.  January 9 -    11 is for the full Working Group;
       January 12 is reserved for balloting coordination by the
       technical reviewers.

         Subsequent    meetings:

         April 24 -    28, 1989      St Paul, Minnesota.

         July 10 - 14, 1989          San Francisco, California.

         October 16    - 20, 1989    Brussels,    Belgium.

                     Hal Jespersen, Chair P1003.2
                     UniSoft Corp
                     6121 Hollis Street
                     Emeryville, CA 94608-2092
                     [phone], ext 448
                     {uunet,amdahl,sun}!unisoft!hlj



Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 28

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Path: longway!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (Jean-Pierre Radley)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix,comp.org.usenix,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Access to UNIX-Related Publications
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 12 Nov 88 23:50:34 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Jean-Pierre Radley)
Organization: TANGENT
Lines: 35
Approved: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Xref: longway comp.std.unix:135 comp.org.usenix:291 comp.unix.questions:3556
Status: O

From: [e-mail] (Jean-Pierre Radley)


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
> ...
>    UNIX Today
>    CMP Publications, Inc.
>    600 Community Drive
>    Manhasset, NY 11030
>    U.S.A.
>    newspaper
>    [phone]
> ...

I don't happen to have any issues of UNIX Today on hand. But I am
questioning the telephone number provided. 617 is Boston area. Manhasset
is in the 516 area code.

[ The number came from the newspaper; quite possibly their subscriptions
are handled by a different office or company.  -mod ]

How about also including the uucp addess for the various publications and
organizations listed?

[ Where known, I do so.  If you know of ones I haven't listed, perhaps
you could send them to me.  -mod ]

Editorial opinion: UNIX Today is fresh and well written and informative.
And also gratis for "qualified" *nix persons.
--
Jean-Pierre Radley        Honi soit        [e-mail]
New York, New York        qui mal            ...!hombre!jpradley!jpr
CIS: 76120,1341            y pense            ...!hombre!trigere!jpr

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 29

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Path: longway!std-unix
From: [e-mail]
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Re: A "public domain" set of include files.
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 16 Nov 88 05:29:43 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Lines: 24
Approved: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Status: O

From: [e-mail]

>... one of the things I would like to see, is a list of the 'necessary'
>files in these directories, and perhaps, public domain (or freeware) versions
>of these files...

There is a fundamental problem with this, in that those files can and often
do contain implementation-dependent information.  For example, <stdio.h>
must contain definitions of the getc and putc macros, which are intimately
tied to the implementation details of the rest of stdio.  For another
example, it's hard to imagine a portable version of <stdarg.h>, since its
whole purpose is to cover up implementation details.

>... Thus, people developing software (PD or otherwise), which
>in some way or another, uses these definitions, can know what to expect...

This is precisely what documentation, including standards, is supposed to
tell you.  (Admittedly, it doesn't always do this very well.)

                                     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
                                 uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]


Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 30

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Path: longway!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (Jean-Pierre Radley)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix,comp.org.usenix,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Access to UNIX-Related Publications
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 15 Nov 88 18:35:23 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Jean-Pierre Radley)
Organization: TANGENT
Lines: 33
Approved: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Xref: longway comp.std.unix:137 comp.org.usenix:292 comp.unix.questions:3557
Status: O

From: [e-mail] (Jean-Pierre Radley)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Jean-Pierre Radley)
questioned the telephone number given for Unix Today!
>>    UNIX Today
>>    ...
>>    [phone]
> ... 617 is Boston area. Manhasset is in the 516 area code.
>[ The number came from the newspaper; quite possibly their subscriptions
>are handled by a different office or company.  -mod ]

Well today I have a fresh copy of Unix Today!.
The 617-244-5333 number is that of their New England Editor.
The number for the publisher in Manhasset is 516-562-5000.

>How about also including the uucp address ...
>[ Where known, I do so. ... -mod ]

Unix Today! shows uucp addresses of the type ..uunet!utoday!PERSON,
where PERSON can be 'mikea' (Mike Azzara, the editor) and half-a-dozen
others listed in the paper.
I believe that anyone wanting subscription information can address an
inquiry to ..uunet!utoday!root.

[ Yes, the problem with that publication was that they didn't list
a *single* address, and I didn't care to pick one.  I will ask them
what they want listed.  -mod ]
--
Jean-Pierre Radley        Honi soit        [e-mail]
New York, New York        qui mal            ...!hombre!jpradley!jpr
CIS: 76120,1341            y pense            ...!hombre!trigere!jpr

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 31

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Path: longway!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!spdcc!ima!compilers-sender
From: ektools![e-mail] (Thomas B. Kinsman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.std.c,comp.compilers,comp.std.unix
Subject: Simple question - Who in the world...?
Keywords: ANSI-C, compliance
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 22 Nov 88 02:16:22 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: ektools![e-mail] (Thomas B. Kinsman)
Organization: Eastman Kodak, Dept. 47, Rochester NY
Lines: 17
Approved: [e-mail]
Xref: longway comp.std.c:364 comp.std.unix:138
Status: O


     [ Re-posted November 21, 1988 to a larger distribution. ]

     Does anyone know of any companies which test C compilers and
     sell the test results?  I am interested in finding out how
     well several compilers comply with the ANSI standard (as it
     stands).

     Thanks in advance.

     Thomas B. Kinsman
     ...rochester!kodak!ektools!thomas
--
Send compilers articles to ima!compilers or, in a pinch, to [e-mail]
Plausible paths are { decvax | harvard | yale | bbn}!ima
Please send responses to the originator of the message -- I cannot forward
mail accidentally sent back to compilers.  Meta-mail to ima!compilers-request

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 32

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Path: longway!std-unix
From: ramus#joseph#[e-mail]
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Re: Access to UNIX-Related Standards
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 21 Nov 88 21:21:22 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: uunet!NMFECC.ARPA!ramus#joseph#[e-mail]
Lines: 33
Approved: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Comment: From 070173 ramus joseph [e-mail] (ccc) on 11/21/88 at 13:18:06
Status: O

From: ramus#joseph#[e-mail]

The following information needs to be changed.
Robin O'Neill no longer works here.
Karen Sheaffer has a different phone number.
The correct information is listed below.


OLD LISTING (Volume 15, Number 19):

/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#[e-mail]


NEW LISTING:

/usr/group Working Group on Super Computing:
        Karen Sheaffer                  Jonathan Brown
        Sandia National Laboratory      Lawrence Livermore Laboratory
        P.O. Box 969                    P.O. Box 5509, L-560
        Livermore, CA  94550            Livermore, CA  94550
        415-294-3431                    415-423-4157
        [e-mail]      [e-mail]


  Thanks,  Joe Ramus,  Lawrence Livermore Lab

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 33

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Path: longway!std-unix
From: ramus#joseph#[e-mail]
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: January P1003 Meeting Notice
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 21 Nov 88 21:00:10 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: ramus#joseph#[e-mail]
Lines: 52
Approved: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Comment: From 070173 ramus joseph [e-mail] (ccc) on 11/21/88 at 12:53:00
Status: O

From: ramus#joseph#[e-mail]

How about a news broadcast to comp.std.unix regarding the
January meeting in Florida.

        Phone number for Hotel Reservations?
        IEEE special rates?

        Registration Fees?
        Where to send payment?

  Thanks,       Joe Ramus,  Lawrence Livermore Lab
                        [e-mail]

CC : 070173 ramus joseph e
     isaak@decvax.d
     [e-mail]

[ Most of this was in the posting on 1003.2 by Hal Jespersen.
The next IEEE 1003 meeting is 9-13 January 1989 at the

    Embassy Suites Hotel
    1000 SE 17th Street
    Fort Lauderdale, Florida
    [phone]
        >2700

Specify group rate for ``IEEE P1003 meeting'' by 17 December 1988.

Various subcommittees will be meeting for different subsets of that week:
details follow in another posting, from Shane P. McCarron, the Secretary.

The IEEE fee for attending a single meeting is $100.  Most people bring it
to the meeting, but you could probably mail it to either the meeting organiser:

    Judy Williams
    Classic Consulting
    #303 - 1493 Beach Park Blvd.
    Foster City, CA  94404
    [phone]

or the treasurer:

    Quin Hahn
    Control Data Corporation
    M/C HQC01P
    PO BOX 0
    Minneapolis, MN  55440-4700
    [phone]

-mod ]

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 34

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Path: longway!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (Shane P. McCarron)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: IEEE 1003 Draft Meeting Schedule
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 20 Nov 88 23:17:40 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: Shane P. McCarron <[e-mail]>
Lines: 70
Approved: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
X-Mailer: Elm [version 2.1 PL1]
Status: O

From: Shane P. McCarron <[e-mail]>

        Fort Lauderdale, FL IEEE TCOS-SS 1003 Meetings
        Jan. 9-13; Embassy Suites Hotel, 1100 SE 17th St.
        [phone] specify IEEE P1003 (by Dec. 17, 1988)

        Hosts:     Modcomp and Harris (or Harris and Modcomp)

Draft Meeting Schedule:
            M    T    W    Th    Fr    #/People
                                Expected
Registration        7:30am    8-5    8-5    8-5    8-4

WG15 US Tag        -    -    1-5    -    -    75
  (joint w/1003.0!)

1003.0    Guide        9-5    9-5    9-11    9-5    9-3    40

1003.1 System Interf.    1-5    1-4    -    1-5    -    15

1003.2 Shell/Utilities    9-5    8-5    8-5    (8-12)    -    45
                        TR session

1003.3 Test Methods    9-5    8-5    8-5    8-5    8-5    15-20

1003.4 Real Time    9-5    8-5    8-5    8-5    8-5    45-50

1003.5 Language Bind.    -    4-6    -    -    -    60
  /Ada            9-5    8-4    8-5    8-5    8-3    25
  /Fortran        9-5    -    -    -    -    25

1003.6 Security        9-5    8-5    8-5    8-5    8-3    50

1003.7 System Admin    9-5    8-5    8-5    8-5    8-3    30

1003.8 Networking    9-5    9-5    9-5    9-5    9-3    50-60

Transaction Process.    9-5    9-5    -    -    -    20

TCOS-Chair "happy hr"    5-7    -    -    -    -    30

TCOS-Future Activities     -    -    7-10    -    -    100
     Planning Session            (all invited)

Procedures & Ballot BOF    -    7:30-9    -    -    -    100

Ada/Real Time BOF     -    -    7:30+    -    -    60

TCOS-SS/SEC Meeting    -    -    -    6-10    -    20
 (no dinner!)

Logistics Committee    -    -    -    7AM    -    20

(public session?)    eve?    -    -    -    -    100?


   ----------------------------------------------------------------

Future 1003  meetings:

    April 24-28, Minn        (Tracking report is wrong)
    May 1-3, Canada for WG15    (US Delegation)

    July 10-14, San Fransisco

    (Final dates not yet set!:
     Oct. 2-20 -- somewhere in this window:
        WG15 meeting, and 1003 meetings in Brussels)

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 35

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Path: longway!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (Shane P. McCarron)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Standards Update, Part 1: Overview
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 10 Dec 88 23:24:34 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: Shane P. McCarron <[e-mail]>
Lines: 96
Approved: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Status: O

[ These Standards Updates are published after each IEEE 1003
meeting, and are commissioned by the USENIX Association.
Because the report, like the committees it reports on,
has become long and involved, it is being posted in parts,
currently nine, with perhaps more to follow.  Feel free
to reply or follow up to any part or to the whole thing.

Much of the information in the report was collected through
the USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee.  If you want to
participate, see the addresses in Part 1 below.  -mod ]


      An update on UNIX|= Standards Activities - Part 1

                          Overview

                      December 8, 1988

           Shane P. McCarron, NAPS International

This is the fourth in a series of articles on Unix related
standards activities.  In this edition I am going to cover a
slightly wider area than usual.  There have been
developments at the ANSI X3 level, the National Bureau of
Standards, and within the POSIX committees that all deserve
attention.  Because there is so much material this article
has been divided into a series for posting to Usenet. I will
apologize at the outset for the length of this series, but I
feel that all of the information is timely and important.
In addition to information on group activities, included
with each report is a contact person from whom you can get
more information about these developments, and the names of
Watchdog Committee members through whom you can relay your
opinions to the specific standards committees.

On the subject of the Watchdog Committee, this series is now
an activity of that group.  Last quarter I used the article
to solicit participation in the committee, and I am pleased
to report that we have a number of new associate members.
While I am not familiar with everyone now involved, I would
like to thank those who contributed heavily to this series:
Ted Baker, Mark Colburn, Doug Gwyn, Sol Kavy, Doris
Lebovits, Kevin Lewis.  We are still in search of members
for this group.  While we will accept all comers, we are
particularly interested in filling out our rather lean
international input department.  If you would like to be
involved in the Watchdog activities, or know of someone who
might be a good candidate, please contact:

          John S. Quarterman
          Texas Internet Consulting
          701 Brazos, Suite 500
          Austin, TX  78701-3243
          [phone]
          [e-mail]
or

__________

  |= UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T in the U.S. and
    other countries.


                           - 2 -

          Mark Colburn
          NAPS International
          117 Mackubin St.
          Suite 1
          St. Paul, MN  55102
          [phone]
          [e-mail]

IEEE P1003 - The POSIX Committees

The POSIX committees met October 24th - 28th in Honolulu,
Hawaii.  At this meeting there were a record breaking 200+
attendees and meetings for eight working groups.  Included
in this series are updates on each of the groups within
P1003, with the exception of IEEE P1003.6 and 1003.8.  We
are awaiting further information on those groups.

Please look to the subsequent postings in this series for
all of the reports.  If you have any comments or
suggestions, please contact me at:

          Shane P. McCarron
          NAPS International
          117 Mackubin St.
          Suite 6
          St. Paul, MN  55102
          [phone]
          [e-mail]
          uunet!bungia.mn.org!ahby

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 36

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Path: longway!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (Shane P. McCarron)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Standards Update, Part 2:  C Language Standard
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 11 Dec 88 00:07:13 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: Shane P. McCarron <[e-mail]>
Lines: 183
Approved: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Status: O

[ 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 2

                    C Language Standard

                     November 18, 1988

           Shane P. McCarron, NAPS International

C Language Standard

X3J11 (ANSI C standardization committee) met 26-30 Sep. 1988
at Sunnyvale, CA.  Principal business of the meeting was to
respond to comments received during the third round of
formal public review, which had closed earlier that month.
In addition to the 15 letters formally registered with
CBEMA's X3 Secretariat, 27 unregistered letters were
included.  There were 632 items contained in these 42
letters.  In order to address them all, the committee was
divided into response preparation subgroups, each of which
tackled a subset of the total list of items.  From time to
time, the whole committee reassembled to hear issues that
the subgroups were not able to completely resolve by
themselves.  In several cases a straw vote was taken to
determine the sense of the committee. The resulting
responses were formatted to produce the official X3J11
Response Document.

At the Sunnyvale meeting, several editorial changes to the
draft standard were approved. The working definition of
``editorial'' was:  A change is editorial if it clarifies
the original intent of the committee; it is substantive if
it changes the committee's intent.

There were several issues that were of particular interest
to the UNIX/POSIX community:

   o+ A change was made that clarified the ability of an
     application to portably reestablish a signal handler
     for the signal that caused entry to the handler.  This
     is indeed allowed under the standard.  The important
     passage reads:

          If the signal occurs other than as a result of
          calling the abort or raise function, the behavior

__________

  |= UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T in the U.S. and
    other countries.


                           - 2 -

          is undefined if the signal handler calls any
          function in the standard library other than the
          signal function itself (with a first argument of
          the signal number corresponding to the signal that
          caused the invocation of the handler) or refers to
          any object with static storage duration other than
          by assigning a value to a static storage duration
          variable of type volatile sig_atomic_t.

   o+ IEEE Std 1003.1-1988 (POSIX) requires that the fflush
     function specified by X3J11 have some additional
     semantics.  The committee confirmed that this was
     indeed allowed by ANSI C.

   o+ The IEEE P1003.1 working group had asked X3J11 to
     consider making the symbol "environ" a reserve external
     identifier.  This would mean that a ANSI C conforming
     portable application could not use the symbol.  This
     request was made because in traditional UNIX
     implementations application launch routines initialize
     this variable to be a pointer to the user's environment
     variable list, and this may not be what a strictly
     conforming ANSI C application would expect.  This issue
     was raised before the committee, but found no support
     for a change; the committee response for this was as
     follows:

          The ANSI C and IEEE 1003.1-1988 standards are not
          necessarily in conflict here, although it is true
          that in order to avoid the name-space conflict a
          mutually conforming implementation must rely on
          some mechanism such as `global symbolic equate' or
          a zero-size global object `environ' in a separate
          library module immediately preceding the module
          that defines storage for `__environ' (the name
          used by the C run-time startup code).  Implementor
          control over the way the linker operates, while
          inappropriate to require for the more universal C
          Standard (hence the constraint on uniqueness of
          external identifiers), is not unrealistic to
          expect for most POSIX implementations.  Several
          implementors have in fact indicated their
          intention to provide such a feature.

          Another solution, of course, would be to use
          separate run-time startup modules for strict
          ANSI-conforming and vendor-extended (possibly
          POSIX-conforming) implementations, perhaps via a
          compiler flag.  This may be useful anyway, for
          hiding extensions in certain standard headers.''


                           - 3 -

Because no substantive changes to the proposed standard
resulted from the third-round review process, X3J11 voted
unanimously to submit the standard as edited to reflect
approved editorial changes to CBEMA X3 as the proposed ANSI
C standard, pending completion of additional review as
described below.

The draft Response Document was reviewed first by a small
group of X3J11 members using electronic mail, then by a
group meeting at Plum-Hall in Cardiff, NJ on 20-21 Oct.
1988.  The responses were checked for completeness,
consistency, and accuracy, and occasionally the original
responses were changed to achieve those goals, or to meet
the additional requirement that no unauthorized substantive
change to the proposed standard could be promised by any
response.  Changes made at the review meeting were
subsequently edited into the master Response Document.  Two
significant areas of the standard were affected by editorial
changes resulting from the response review process: The
description of pointer arithmetic was substantially reworked
to avoid reliance on an assumption of byte addressability,
and the specification of the role of type qualifiers was
rewritten to clarify the significance of what was called the
``top type'' (now called ``type category'').

On 1 Nov. 1988, the draft proposed Standard itself was
reviewed by several X3J11 members in a meeting at Summit,
NJ.  Since the draft already contained the results of the
Sunnyvale meeting and response review meeting, very few
changes were found to be necessary at the draft review
meeting.

On 9 Nov. 1988, the Rationale Document (designed to
accompany the Standard) was reviewed by a group of X3J11
members meeting in Cambridge, MA.

On 14 Nov. 1988, copies of all three documents (Response,
Standard, Rationale) were express-mailed to the 15 X3-
registered commenters, who have 15 working days (from
November 18th) in which to reply to X3 if they feel that
their items were not properly addressed by X3J11.  The
commenters were encouraged to first discuss problems with
X3J11 members, in hopes of reducing the amount of negative
feedback to X3.

On 9 Dec. 1988, all three documents plus any feedback from
the commenters are to be submitted to CBEMA's X3 Secretariat
as the official X3J11 proposal for the ANSI Standard for
Programming Language C.  After review by X3, assuming no
problems arise the proposed Standard will then be submitted
to ANSI for official ratification as an ANSI standard.  It


                           - 4 -

seems probable that the final ANSI C standard will be
published some time during 1989.

The Watchdog contact person in X3J11 is Doug Gwyn.  He can
be reached at:

          Doug Gwyn
          US Army Ballistic Research Lab
          801 L Cashew Ct.
          Belair, MD  21014
          [e-mail]
          [phone]


Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 37

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Path: longway!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (Shane P. McCarron)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Standards Update, Part 3: NIST FIPS
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 11 Dec 88 01:12:11 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: Shane P. McCarron <[e-mail]>
Lines: 137
Approved: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Status: O

[ 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 3

    NIST (NBS) Federal Inforamtion Processing Standards

                     November 18, 1988

           Shane P. McCarron, NAPS International

National Institute of Standards and Technology

On August 30th, 1988 (4 days after publication of the last
article in this series) the NIST (formerly the National
Bureau of Standards) published their Federal Information
Processing Standard for POSIX.  I have written much about
this in the past, so I won't go into the details of it now.
Suffice it to say that this FIPS is finally approved, but
differs substantially from the approved IEEE standard in a
few key areas.  The NIST is now working to revise the FIPS
so that it is more in line with the real standard.  This new
FIPS should be announced in the Federal Register in early
January, and after time for public comment and review will
be formally approved.  The NIST expects approval sometime in
the summer of 1989.

In the last article I mentioned that the NIST had announced
their intent to create FIPS in a number of other areas.
They have now released a preliminary FIPS for System
Administration, and are about to release one for Shell and
Tools. They have also stated that by year's end they will
release a FIPS on utilities with User Interfaces (like vi).
While in the case of Shell and Tools the NIST is going to
use Draft 8 of the 1003.2 standard, there are no existing
formal standards in the other areas.  Instead of waiting for
standard bodies to develop mature documents, the NIST is
going to a number of different versions of UNIX, and picking
those things that look neat.  The System Administration FIPS
in particular is disturbing.  There are a number of
utilities in there from AIX (IBM's version of UNIX), Xenix
(SCO or Microsoft, I can't tell), and of course the SVID
(from AT&T).  This ensures that there is no existing system
that will conform to the FIPS on day one, and also shackles
the newly formed IEEE working group on System
Administration.

__________

  |= UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T in the U.S. and
    other countries.


                           - 2 -

I really don't know what the NIST is trying to achieve.  It
appears as if they are working toward their stated goal of
creating a full suite of specifications to flesh out the
Applications Portability Profile (a conceptual model of
portability specifications created by the NBS over the last
few years).  I used to think that they had some sort of
hidden agenda, but I don't believe that any more.  I used to
think that they were trying to railroad standards to make
sure that the government's needs were satisfied.  In this I
have also been proven wrong.  They have now shown their
ability to create standards at will, thereby invalidating
the work of the standards bodies before they can even begin.
This interesting turn of events proves that in their
previous heinous acts they were just being nice.  They could
have superceded the process altogether if they had really
wanted to!

It was bad enough when the work of the committees was being
affected by the arbitrary timelines imposed by the NIST, but
now they have created a framework within which any standard
on, say, System Administration will have to fall if it is to
be taken seriously by the vendor community.  What vendor in
its right mind would conform to a formal standard that was
not in line with the standard being required by all U.S.
federal agencies?  The obvious answer is "vendors that don't
want to sell to the government."  In other words - none.
Moreover, what vendor sponsored committee member is going to
propose something for a standard that would make their
employer not be able to sell to the federal government?
Again, none.

I have given the NIST an opportunity to rebut the comments
made above, and they are in the process of doing so.  I will
publish their comments as soon as I have them available.
However, I would guess that they will say something like
"These are just first cuts.  In the future we will modify
the FIPS to conform to standards produced by standards
making bodies."  That's great, but it really doesn't help.
First, it would be a disservice to the federal user
community to force them to change from an environment in
which they have become comfortable.  Second, it is a mistake
to assume that the vendors are going to want to conform to
one standard for a while, and then change over later.  If
there is a standard that is being required by a substantial
part of the user community, then that is the one to which
vendors are going to conform.  And if vendors conform to it,
it then becomes the existing practice that must be
formalized by standards bodies like IEEE P1003.  It's a
vicious circle, and in the end the losers are the users.
They are being handed an ill-considered standard;  one that
is being foist upon them just because some small group of


                           - 3 -

people, after consulting with a handful of their (rather
unique) user community, have decided that this is the way it
is going to be.

In defense of the NIST, I know that they are not trying to
destroy the standards making process.  In reality they are
just a bunch of people trying to do their jobs the best way
they know how.  It is unfortunate that in doing so they may
end up doing more harm than good.

The Watchdog committee has no contact person with the NIST.
For further information on NIST activities you can contact
me or Roger Martin.

          Roger Martin
          National Institute of Standards and Technology
          Software Engineering Group
          Technology Blvd.
          Room B266
          Gaithersburg, MD  20899
          [e-mail]
          [phone]


Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 38

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Path: longway!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Re: Standards Update, Part 3: NIST FIPS
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 11 Dec 88 06:35:18 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <uunet!brl.arpa!gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 31
Approved: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Status: O

From: [e-mail] (Doug Gwyn )

In article <[e-mail]> Shane P. McCarron <[e-mail]> writes:
>In defense of the NIST, I know that they are not trying to
>destroy the standards making process.  In reality they are
>just a bunch of people trying to do their jobs the best way
>they know how.  It is unfortunate that in doing so they may
>end up doing more harm than good.

I fully agree with your criticism of the way NIST has taken it upon
themselves to publish FIPS before the related standards in progress
are even semi-stable.  As a member of an agency that has to justify
not specifying compliance with applicable FIPS, I must say that far
from helping me procure standard-environment systems, NIST is making
it difficult to procure ANY system, let alone one that sufficiently
meets our needs.  FIPS-151 is a minor disaster that fortunately can
probably be straightened out before it is too late, but additional
FIPS for other 1003.* areas are definitely premature and interfere
with production of quality standardized environmental specifications.

If NIST had Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, and Rob
Pike (for example) writing their FIPS, then it wouldn't distress me
so much, because at least the FIPS would be reasonable specifications.
But they are FAR from being in a position to develop clean, usable
operating system environment specifications on their own.  Why are
they trying to do so?  It's completely subverting the standardization
process!

[ FIPS-151 is the one published in August 1988 about IEEE 1003.1.  -mod ]

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 39

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Path: longway!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (Shane P. McCarron)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Standards Update, Part 4: 1003.0 and 1003.1
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 11 Dec 88 16:40:23 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: Shane P. McCarron <[e-mail]>
Lines: 159
Approved: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Status: O

[ 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
          [e-mail]
          [phone]

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
          [phone]

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
          [phone]
          [e-mail]
          uunet!bungia.mn.org!ahby


Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 40

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Path: longway!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (Shane P. McCarron)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Standards Update, Part 5: IEEE 1003.2
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 11 Dec 88 16:44:10 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: Shane P. McCarron <[e-mail]>
Lines: 223
Approved: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Status: O

[ 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 5

                    POSIX 1003.2 Update

                     November 18, 1988

           Shane P. McCarron, NAPS International

1003.2 - Shell and Tools Interface

This working group never ceases to impress me.  In September
the group was given about three weeks to go over draft 7 of
the standard and review it as if it were a formal ballot.
This means that problems discovered in the draft must be
reported to the committee using the formal POSIX balloting
format, within the specified time limits, in order to be
considered.  A surprising number of people were able to work
very hard and come up with about 1500 objections to the 600
page document.

Okay, so a lot of people, given 3 weeks, can really find a
lot of problems with a somewhat immature document.  Maybe
not terribly impressive.  Then a group of 40 people meet in
Hawaii, not a place known to be conducive to work, and
manage to review every single objection and resolve them!
This is truly amazing, and I think everyone at that meeting
(including myself) deserves a medal.  Moreover, I would like
to take this opportunity to publicly eat the words I wrote
last quarter.  They may just pull it off!  The draft that
goes out for balloting in the formal IEEE process is
certainly in much better shape than the 1003.1 document was
when it first went out.  Also, P1003 learned a lot from the
.1 ballot, and that knowledge should help make the balloting
of .2 smoother.

Reaching back a bit for a transition, there were 1500
objections.  That is really quite a few, but its not as bad
as it sounds (unless you had to carry them around for a
week).  It is true that many changes were made to the
standard, and I couldn't tell you what most of them were.
What I can tell you is that they were primarily
inconsequential.  Some objections requested changes in
functionality or interface, pointing out existing or new
practice that should be standardized.  But all of the rest

__________

  |= UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T in the U.S. and
    other countries.


                           - 2 -

can be broken down to spelling or grammatical corrections,
requests for clarification, or questions about the necessity
of specifications or lack of same.  Some specific changes of
interest were:

   o+ Based on a decision from the previous meeting and
     several balloting objections, the fgrep and egrep
     commands have been removed from the standard, and the
     functionality that they provide is being encompassed in
     the definition of grep.  This new grep will have
     options -E and -F which will give it the exact
     functionality of egrep or fgrep, respectively.

   o+ The draft has a command in it called colldef.  Colldef
     allows the portable definition of collating sequences,
     which can then be used by utilities that do string
     comparisons with the C Standard function strcoll.  The
     theory goes that an implementation will provide
     applications with a means for creating collation
     sequence definitions (colldef), and then also allow the
     application to specify which collation sequence to use
     when calling utilities like sort (through the
     environment variable LC_COLLATE).

     It all sounds pretty good, but the definition of
     colldef was so incomplete and confusing that some
     balloters suggested it be removed from the standard
     altogether.  The definition of this utility now
     provides for a lot of additional functionality, and is
     much clearer than it used to be. While this part of the
     standard is not talked about much, I believe that it is
     probably the most important part.  The international
     aspects of POSIX are sort of obscure, but they will
     allow for more portable applications, and also allow
     for some previously unheard of uses for utilities like
     sort.

   o+ A closely related utility, xform, was placed in the
     standard to allow for the transformation of strings by
     a shell script just as can be done using the strxfrm
     function in Standard C.  After much discussion in the
     small group, this command was removed from the draft.
     While there was some dissenting opinion, the majority
     thought that this would have very limited usefulness to
     a portable shell application.  As I was the dissenter,
     I can say that I wanted it in because there is no other
     way to portably compare strings in the shell from an
     international perspective.  If a user enters something
     and then later you want them to enter it again, you
     cannot portably compare those strings without the xform
     utility.  Alas, you win some...


                           - 3 -

   o+ An interesting development was the decision that the C
     language functions in the standard be moved into a
     chapter for C Language interfaces, and that their
     original position in the document be reserved for the
     language independent descriptions of some of the
     functions.  In the end it may be that some of the
     functions are really not ones that need to exist in
     other languages, and as such should not be in the
     language independent section.  This event is
     interesting because it shows the intent of this working
     group, and indeed all of the POSIX working groups, to
     describe their standards in a language independent
     manner.  This was a requirement of the international
     community, and I am glad to see that it is being
     carried out.

   o+ In what I consider a victory for the users of the
     world, the UUCP style commands in the standard have
     been moved out of the document and into an appendix.
     These commands, uuxqt and uuname, have been in the
     standard for about a year, but no one could really
     figure out why.  As described there was no underlying
     transport mechanism or protocol defined, so they could
     not possibly have been reliable in any event.  They
     were placed in the standard as a spear; something that
     you could throw out and have no idea if it worked or
     not.  The working group has now realized that this is
     not really a service to the application developer, and
     has moved the commands (and concepts) into an appendix.
     Depending on the feeling of the balloting group, these
     commands will either be fleshed out into a full
     definition of the UUCP "networking" system, or removed
     from the standard altogether.  It may be that these
     concepts will fit into the P1003.8 standard on
     networking, but I doubt it.  While it is probably the
     most widely used form of electronic networking on UNIX
     systems, it is not really something that should be
     carried into the future.

   o+ While the UUCP commands are gone, the message sending
     command sendto is still in the standard.  This command
     allows an application to send text to an address with
     an implementation defined format to be deposited in an
     implementation defined location and delivered in an
     implementation defined manner.  No kidding.  That's
     what it says.  It also used to say sendto -r would try
     to read from your personal implementation defined
     storage location, but that it might not do anything.
     Fortunately, the working group couldn't figure out a
     single reason why a portable application would want to
     read mail.  While this is usually not enough cause to


                           - 4 -

     remove something from a standard, when coupled with the
     danger that it might not do anything if executed, the
     evidence seemed to lean toward removal.  This option
     has been axed.

   o+ There is now a section of the standard on application
     installation.  Actually, there has always been a
     section for that, but until now it has been full of
     stuff that wasn't really worth reading.  The new
     definition is a little bit complex, but it seems to be
     fine.  It allows for an application, on installation,
     to determine what system resources are available, and
     to then sort of dynamically inform itself about them.
     There is also a system resource database, and all sorts
     of other neat stuff.  I don't have a handle on all of
     it yet, so stay tuned.  If I decide I hate it, I will
     be sure to let you know.

There were all sorts of other changes made to the draft, but
they are primarily editorial, and are of course all subject
to review by the balloting group.

The schedule for balloting goes something like this:
Assuming the document gets to the balloting group in mid-
january, the period will close in mid-february.  Then all of
the received objections will have to be resolved or
commented on, and it will be recirculated.  This may happen
several times before the document is finalized.  Since each
recirculation/resolution period takes 3 to 4 months, it
could be early 1990 before we see a ratified standard.

In the mean time, since the working group doesn't have
anything to do with a standard while it is going through
balloting, work will progress on the new User Portability
Extensions supplement.  The idea here is that a supplement
to 1003.2 will be released soon after the initial standard.
This supplement will describe the traditional UNIX utilities
that have user interfaces (e.g. vi).  Note that the
utilities to be described are the traditional ones, and have
nothing to do with windowing/mouse interfaces.  Work on that
topic is progressing in other areas.

I am the Watchdog committee contact for 1003.2:

          Shane P. McCarron
          NAPS International
          117 Mackubin St.
          Suite 6
          St. Paul, MN  55102
          [phone]
          [e-mail]
          uunet!bungia.mn.org!ahby


Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 41

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Path: longway!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (Shane P. McCarron)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Standards Update, Part 6: IEEE 1003.4
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 11 Dec 88 16:46:40 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: Shane P. McCarron <[e-mail]>
Lines: 68
Approved: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Status: O

[ 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 6

                    POSIX 1003.4 Update

                     November 18, 1988

           Shane P. McCarron, NAPS International

1003.4 - Real Time Extensions to POSIX

In the past I have written some things about this committee
that were pretty critical.  I saw them as progressing too
slowly to have the impact I hoped they would have.  I know
that nothing I wrote or said motivated them, but I am now
happy to report the following:  1003.4 is almost ready to go
to mock ballot!  Apparently it all came together in the last
couple of months, and they are now ready to ask a wider
group for an opinion.  They plan, at the January meeting, to
go through all of their working papers and appendices,
integrate them into the draft, and them submit it for a mock
ballot before the April meeting.  The results of the trial
ballot will tell them how much more work they need to do
before going to formal ballot.  If all goes well, they
should be able to ballot after the July, 1989 meeting.
Given the way ballots tend to go, that would mean a
completed standard in early to mid 1990.  This is
particularly exciting since previously dates in 1991 had
been bandied about.  Getting this standard out a full year
earlier is astounding.

Many people are probably curious as to what is contained in
a Real Time standard.  Well, many things that didn't make it
into 1003.1, for starters.  Here is a partial list:
Asynchronous I/O, Shared Memory, IPC, Asynchronous Event
Notification, Process Memory Locking, Timers, Priority
Scheduling, Semaphores, Synchronous I/O, and Realtime Files

Some of these are going to be particularly contentious.  In
particular Events and Memory Locking could be a problem.
The mock balloting should flush out these issues so it can
be cleaned up before formal balloting in the fall.

The Watchdog committee contact for 1003.4 is Sol Kavy:  He
can be reached at:

__________

  |= UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T in the U.S. and
    other countries.


                           - 2 -

          Sol Kavy
          Hewlett-Packard
          19477 Pruneridge
          Cupertino, CA  95014
          [e-mail]
          hpda!sol
          [phone]


Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 42

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Path: longway!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (Shane P. McCarron)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Standards Update, Part 7: IEEE 1003.5
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 12 Dec 88 08:00:11 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: Shane P. McCarron <[e-mail]>
Lines: 147
Approved: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Status: O

[ 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 7

                    POSIX 1003.5 Update

                     November 18, 1988

           Shane P. McCarron, NAPS International

1003.5 - Ada Language Binding

This group is interesting.  They have now distributed draft
1 of their standard to the working group, but they are very
close to finishing.

The primary goal of the P1003.5 working group is to produce
an Ada language binding for the operating system services
interface defined by the P1003.1 standard.  This work has
progressed to the stage of circulating draft chapters within
the group.  These chapters are to be reviewed at the next .5
meeting (in January).

The last .5 meeting was 7-9 September 1988 in Minneapolis,
Minnesota.  One of the issues discussed there was improving
coordination with the rest of P1003.  The last two P1003
meetings conflicted with major Ada meetings, so that .5
chose to meet separately.  This has not been good for
communication.  Fortunately, there are no major conflicts
with the Fort Lauderdale meeting, and we will attempt to
synchronize future meetings with the rest of the P1003
working groups.

Major issues which were discussed at the September meeting
included: (1) the relationship of Ada I/O and POSIX I/O, and
how this relates to P1003.0; (2) (missing) support for Ada
in the P1003.2 standard; (3) real-time features required by
Ada, and whether P1003.4 will provide these; (4) changes to
.1 between draft 12 and the final version that will require
changes to the .5 draft chapters; (5) the relationship of
Ada tasks to POSIX processes; (6) whether the organization
of the P1003.5 document should mirror the .1 document.

One of the central problems they face is reconciling the
relationship between Ada tasks and POSIX processes.  Unlike
POSIX processes, Ada tasks share a common logical address

__________

  |= UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T in the U.S. and
    other countries.


                           - 2 -

space.  If they map Ada tasks onto distinct POSIX processes,
they need a way to share memory and file handles (opened
after fork) between processes, which is not provided in .1.
(Support for shared memory is on the .4 agenda, but the
final form remains uncertain.)  Moreover, there are
applications of Ada tasks that require task switching,
creation, and termination to be performed much faster than
may be possible for POSIX processes.

On the other hand, we might implement tasks as multiple
threads of control within a process, but then they run into
other problems.  Unfortunately, multiple threads of control
within a process cannot be supported well without some
cooperation from the OS.  For example, a blocking system
call by one thread should not block other threads.  For
another example, what happens when one task is in the middle
of a system call and another one forks?  (For now, P1003.5
agreed that Fork/Exec should be allowed, but that their
effects in a multitasking Ada program are implementation
dependent.)

The concept of POSIX support for "light-weight processes" is
appealing.  The group will explore the applicability of such
a solution.  In order to broaden the base of interest, we
have agreed to sponsor a "Birds of a Feather" discussion on
this issue at the Ft.  Lauderdale meeting.

Another major problem is reconciling POSIX signals with Ada
semantics.  The .5 group has done some preliminary work on
this.  The concept most closely corresponds to an
asynchronous Ada exception, but this construct is of
questionable legality.  The legal Ada mechanism appears to
be entry calls, but this presents other problems.  Much work
remains.

A third problem area is data representation, and character
sets in particular.  POSIX already has problems with
international character sets, arising from special uses of
certain glyphs, and from an implicit assumption that
characters are represented as bytes.  Ada makes this worse,
since it specifies a very specific standard character set
(ASCII).  The .5 group proposes to recognize POSIX
characters (and strings) as distinct from the Ada versions,
and to provide transfer functions for situations where one
must be converted to the other.

Due to a comflict with the ACM Tri-Ada conference, 1003.5
was not able to meet with the rest of the POSIX committees
in Hawaii.  However, several individual members volunteered
to attend as liaison with the other groups.  This will
probably turn out to have been very helpful in resolving


                           - 3 -

some questions about division of responsibility.  The
Watchdog Committee contact met with both 1003.1 and 1003.4
during the week.

It became clear during the 1003.1 meeting that but should
move ahead boldly to create a true Ada interface.  Further,
it appeared that due to Ada's strong typing requirements
(required by ISO) than the present .1 standard, and might
well influence the form of the future .1.

Meetings with the .4 revealed that support for Ada's real-
time requirements might be provided by that group, but not
necessarily in a suitable form or soon enough.  In
particular, the subject of lightweight processes, which
might be used to implement Ada tasks, is not on the .4
agenda.  This leaves the subject open to be addressed by .5.

These, and observations by other .5 members serving as
liaisons are likely to influence the direction of work when
the group next gets together.

The Watchdog committee contact for 1003.5 is Ted Baker.  He
can be reached at:

          Ted Baker
          Department of Computer Science
          Florida State University
          Tallahassee, FL 32306
          [phone]
          [e-mail]
          [e-mail]


Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 43

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Path: longway!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (Shane P. McCarron)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Standards Update, Part 8: IEEE 1003.7 (system administration)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 12 Dec 88 08:02:10 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: Shane P. McCarron <[e-mail]>
Lines: 84
Approved: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Status: O

[ 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 8

                    POSIX 1003.7 Update

                     November 18, 1988

           Shane P. McCarron, NAPS International

1003.7 - System Administration

This new working group met as a Birds of a Feather session
during the Hawaii meeting.  During that session the group
convenor outlined the goals and solicited input from the
attendees.  At a subsequent meeting in Monterey (in
conjunction with the Usenix Large System Administration
Workshop) the group took the input from that meeting and the
work that had been going on off line and began producing a
draft document.

So, what is the purpose of this body?  To define a portable
user interface for System Administration Utilities which
would allow users to administer systems in a portable way,
and allow developers to build system administration tools on
top of consistent underlying commands and libraries.  Since
the work of this body will overlap with almost every other
P1003 working group (and possibly other groups outside of
POSIX), coordination is a major part of the standard
development effort.  Also, because the charter of this group
is so broad (what is an administrative tool, anyway?), it is
going to take quite a while to complete the standard.

Just to give you a rough idea of what is going to covered by
this group, here are some possible areas:  machine startup,
process management, network, software licensing management,
user management, password management, etc...  At the meeting
in Hawaii it quickly became apparent that the scope of this
group is too large to accomplish anything in a reasonable
period of time.  Some of the time at the Monterey meeting
was spent narrowing the scope of the group to a more
manageable size.  The group tried to identify items which
could form a basic set of libraries and commands, and could
be finalized in a two to three year time frame.  After the
initial standard is released, there may be continuing work
into areas that the first cut was not able to address.

__________

  |= UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T in the U.S. and
    other countries.


                           - 2 -

When I last wrote about this group, I was very critical of
its charter and the possibility of it succeeding.  I think
it only fair to relate that a number of people wrote me and
said that I was too judgemental, and that I should take a
wait and see attitude.  Bowing to the will of the people, I
am not going to draw any conclusions about the working group
at this time.  After the January meeting, when they have
formalized the areas they are going to address, I will
relate all of that information and you can decide if what
they are doing is a good thing.  In the interim, if you want
more information, or would like to share your opinions with
me, please drop me a line.

The Watchdog Committee's contact on 1003.7 is Mark Colburn.
Her can be reached at:

          Mark Colburn
          NAPS International
          117 Mackubin St.
          Suite 1
          St. Paul, MN  55102
          [phone]
          [e-mail]


Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 44

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Path: longway!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (Shane P. McCarron)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Standards Update, Part 9: IEEE 1003.3 (POSIX Guide)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 12 Dec 88 08:04:38 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: Shane P. McCarron <[e-mail]>
Lines: 107
Approved: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Status: O

[ 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 9

                    POSIX 1003.3 Update

                     November 18, 1988

           Shane P. McCarron, NAPS International

1003.3 - Testing and Verification

This POSIX working group met along with the others in
Honolulu in October.  The agenda included a status report on
NIST activities, review of previously assigned action items,
developing a strategy for future work with other P1003
(POSIX) working groups, revision of Draft 7.1 document, and
assigning new action items.

Roger Martin (NIST* & P1003.3 Chair) gave a status report on
the current NIST FIPS** and their Conformance Testing
Policies for the POSIX FIPS.  He stated that this "Initial"
POSIX FIPS has been approved and they intend to revise the
FIPS now that the P1003.1 Standard is finalized.  The NIST
Test Suite, PCTS, has been provided to NTIS (National
Technical Information Service) for public distribution at a
price of $2500 and is being distributed since September 5,
1988.  Its distribution was awaiting FIPS approval.  Roger
Martin also presented a proposed schedule for a series of
Application Portability Workshops sponsored by NIST.  He
described a workshop that had taken place in September 1988
covering Shell & Tools, System Administration and X Windows.
One of the areas to be covered in a future Application
Portability Profile FIPS and workshop include the Terminal
Interface Extension.  The workshops are intended for
implementors and users.

The remainder of the meeting concentrated on rewriting and
restructuring the Draft 7.1 document, including test
assertions.

__________

  |= UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T in the U.S. and
    other countries.

  * NIST was formerly the National Bureau of Standards, NBS

 ** FIPS is Federal Information Processing Standard
    developed by NIST


                           - 2 -

During the week of meetings one small group of Test
Assertion Reviewers                   continued to update
the 1003.3 Draft 7.1 assertions.

Two other small groups concentrated on rewriting and
restructuring 1003.3 Draft 7.1 document. One group's
emphasis was the development of a 1003.3 Generic Test Method
chapters (i.e. terminology, testing levels, generic PCTS
output). The second group's emphasis was in developing
1003.1 specific Test Method sections.

The P1003.3 group is gearing up for balloting this standard
in early 1989.  Each P1003.3 member is part of the "mock"
ballot group, identifying and formulating any possible
objections.

The group defined the following ballot schedule:
11/18/88  1003.3 Draft 8.0 "MOCK" BALLOT
12/31/88  "MOCK" BALLOT CLOSED
1/9-13/89  REVIEW "MOCK" BALLOT RESULTS AT NEXT MEETING
2/15/89    1003.3 Draft 9.0 IEEE BALLOT
4/3/89     1003.3 BALLOT CLOSED

Future work of the P1003.3 committee was also addressed.
The P1003.3 Working Group wants to influence the other P1003
Working Groups into writing testable standards. To achieve
this, a liaison program will be implemented to have members
from P1003.3 working in a liaison fashion in each of the
other working groups.

The P1003.3 working group Project Authorization (PAR) will
need to be revised in order for the group to develop an
overall Test Method standard and the development of specific
standards for each appropriate 1003 activity.

The Watchdog committee contact for 1003.3 is Doris Lebovits.
She can be reached at:

          Doris Lebovits
          AT&T
          Rm 5-211
          190 River Rd,
          Summit, NJ  07901
          [e-mail]
          attunix!lebovits
          [phone]


Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 45

From news  Sun Sep 11 17:45:59 1988
Path: longway!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Tasks of Volunteers for USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 12 Dec 88 08:07:38 GMT
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Lines: 142
Approved: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Status: O



                    Tasks of Volunteers

                            for

            USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee

Policy Committee

The Policy Committee makes policy decisions,  and  currently
consists of Alan G. Nemeth (USENIX President), John S. Quar-
terman (USENIX Institutional Representative to  IEEE  1003),
Shane  P.  McCarron  (IEEE  1003  Secretary),  and Grover P.
Righter (well-known IEEE 1003 participant).

     There are a few organisational positions:

Volunteer Organiser
     This person, currently Mark Colburn, is responsible for
     coordinating who is watching which committee.  Ideally,
     there will be at least one person  watching  each  IEEE
     1003  subcommittee, each /usr/group Technical Committee
     Working Group, X3J11, and special delegates to OSF  and
     Sun/AT&T.  These people need to know of each other, and
     people need to be found and  delegated  for  committees
     that are not covered.

Report Editor
     Shane McCarron has been writing quarterly  reports  for
     USENIX  after  each IEEE 1003 meeting for almost a year
     now.  Each Watchdog Committee member should  provide  a
     written  report  after  each  meeting for Shane to edit
     into a combined report.

Working Committee

The Watchdog Committee is neither a standards  body  in  the
sense of IEEE 1003 or X3J11, nor a pre-standards body in the
sense of the /usr/group Technical Committee.  Its purpose is
to keep track of standards bodies, not to become one.

     A typical Watchdog Committee volunteer should be  some-
one  who  is already attending a standards committee's meet-
ings, and who is willing to  add  USENIX  functions  to  the
tasks  already  being  performed.  USENIX does not pay these
volunteers, nor even reimburse expenses.

                     December 12, 1988

                           - 2 -

     There are five basic tasks that  a  volunteer  for  the
USENIX Watchdog Committee might be called on to do.

reporting
     The most basic task is to provide a written  report  to
     the  report  editor about significant activities in the
     committee being watched.  See the accompanying descrip-
     tion of what should be in such a report.

influencing
     Encourage written proposals by members of the committee
     being  watched,  and  otherwise  promote reasonable and
     productive technical discussion.

ombudsman
     Introduce ideas  or  even  proposals  from  people  and
     groups  who  can't  attend  meetings.  This may be done
     either at the discretion of the watcher or sometimes at
     the request of the Policy Committee.

recruiting
     Try to find people who should be participating in stan-
     dards  activities  and  encourage  them  to do so.  For
     example, if a particular technical area is  being  con-
     sidered in a committee, and you know of a group that is
     doing major work in that area, informing that group  of
     the  discussion  and  enouraging  them  to get involved
     would be good.

speaking for USENIX
     The least common task will be to speak for  USENIX.   A
     volunteer  may do this only when authorised to do so by
     the Policy  Committee,  and  needs  to  make  sure  the
     affected  standards group understands when this is hap-
     pening.

     The Policy Committee  may  decide  that  direct  action
needs  to be taken in a standards body, perhaps by presenta-
tion of a proposal, or by arguing  for  or  against  another
proposal.   In  this  case, the Policy Committee may ask the
watching volunteer(s) to  do  so  (the  volunteers  may,  of
course,  decide  not to do so).  Or the Policy Committee may
send one of its members to do so.

     The only specific directive from the  USENIX  Board  of
Directors  is to attempt to prevent standards from prohibit-
ing technical innovation, so most direct action  will  prob-
ably be related to that.  However, the Policy Committee also
has a  free  hand  to  take  any  other  action  that  seems
appropriate.

                     December 12, 1988

                           - 3 -

Contacts

To volunteer, or for further information, please contact:

USENIX Institutional Representative
     John S. Quarterman
     [e-mail]
     [phone]
     Texas Internet Consulting
     701 Brazos, Suite 500
     Austin, TX  78701-3243

Watchdog Volunteer Organiser
     Mark Colburn
     [e-mail]
     [phone]
     NAPS International
     117 Mackubin St.
     Suite 1
     St. Paul, MN  55102

Watchdog Report Editor
     Shane P. McCarron
     [e-mail]
     uunet!bungia.mn.org!ahby
     [phone]
     NAPS International
     117 Mackubin St.
     Suite 6
     St. Paul, MN  55102

                     December 12, 1988


Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 46

From news  Tue Dec 13 19:58:41 1988
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA07762; Tue, 13 Dec 88 19:58:41 EST
From: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Reports from Volunteers of the USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Date: 13 Dec 88 20:33:12 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive
Status: O


                  Reports from Volunteers

                           of the

            USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee

     Each volunteer on the USENIX Standards Watchdog  Commi-
tee  should  provide  a  written report to the report editor
after each standards  meeting.   These  need  to  be  rather
high-level  reports,  unlike  either the official minutes of
the meeting,  or  the  reports  of  events  that  appear  in
/usr/group's  CommUNIXations  magazine.   More how, why, and
who, than just what.

     Specific kinds of desirable information include:

Issues:
     Things  that  are  new,  important,  controversial,  or
     chronically  discussed.   Although the Policy Committee
     may suggest some specific things to watch  for,  mostly
     picking  issues  to report is left to the discretion of
     the volunteer.

Arguments:
     on each side of the issues.

Parties:
     Who is promoting each side, preferably phrased as types
     of  parties,  such as vendors, users, user groups, etc.
     But when in doubt, give  names  and  details;  let  the
     report editor worry about paraphrasing for publication.

Recommendations:
     What you think should  be  watched  closely,  what  you
     think  should  happen, and what you think USENIX should
     do about it.

Opinions:
     Whatever else you think people should know.

                     December 13, 1988


Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 47

From news  Tue Dec 13 20:15:18 1988
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA10029; Tue, 13 Dec 88 20:15:18 EST
From: Doug Gwyn  <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Re: Standards Update, Part 5: IEEE 1003.2
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Date: 12 Dec 88 17:42:03 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive
Status: O

From: [e-mail] (Doug Gwyn )

In article <[e-mail]> Shane P. McCarron <[e-mail]> writes:
>This new grep will have options -E and -F ...

Eek!  I thought the original 1003.2 intent was to permit implementation
in a monocase command-line environment.  Has that been discarded?

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 48

From news  Wed Dec 14 18:24:32 1988
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA00609; Wed, 14 Dec 88 18:24:32 EST
From: Dave Sill <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: USENIX Standards Updates
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: Dave Sill <[e-mail]>
Organization: Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, VA
Date: 12 Dec 88 15:26:53 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive
Status: O

From: Dave Sill <[e-mail]>

First, let me say that I respect Shane McCarron, value his opinions on
standards-related issues, and appreciate USENIX's efforts to promote
standards awareness.

But...

The latest Standards Update was far too editorial.  In fact, it seems
to have become more of a soapbox for Mr. McCarron than an attempt to
make the masses aware of recent progress in standardization.  In
particular, Part 3, NIST (NBS) Federal Information Processing
Standards contained about one and a half paragraphs reporting what
NIST has done recently and expects to be doing in the future, but four
and a half paragraphs of opinion on the worthiness of their approach.

Apparently Mr. McCarron has trouble making the distinction between
journalism and editorialization.  The Standards Update should be just
that: an update of the progress of standardization efforts.  There are
other, more appropriate, forums, such as this mailing list/newsgroup,
for Mr McCarron's opinions.

This problem has already been brought to his attention.  In Part 8,
POSIX 1003.7 Update, he writes:
    "When I last wrote about this group, I was very critical of
    its charter and the possibility of it succeeding.  I think
    it only fair to relate that a number of people wrote me and
    said that I was too judgemental, and that I should take a
    wait and see attitude.  Bowing to the will of the people, I
    am not going to draw any conclusions about the working group
    at this time.  After the January meeting, when they have
    formalized the areas they are going to address, I will
    relate all of that information and you can decide if what
    they are doing is a good thing.  In the interim, if you want
    more information, or would like to share your opinions with
    me, please drop me a line."

Exactly, Mr. McCarron, relate the information and let the reader form
his own opinion.

=========
The opinions expressed above are mine.

"Money is congealed energy."
                    -- Joe Campbell

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 49

From news  Wed Dec 14 18:46:27 1988
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA03443; Wed, 14 Dec 88 18:46:27 EST
From: John S. Quarterman <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Re: USENIX Standards Updates
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]>, <[e-mail]>,
    <[e-mail]>, <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: John S. Quarterman <[e-mail]>
Organization: USENIX Association
Date: 14 Dec 88 21:13:12 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive
Status: O

From: John S. Quarterman <[e-mail]>

There seems to be a misunderstanding about the purpose of the Standards
Updates that Shane McCarron writes.  As the USENIX Institutional
Representative, who commissioned them, let me attempt to clarify
that purpose.

These reports are part of the involvement of the USENIX Association in
standards activities, which was explained in some detail in the article
which I posted immediately after the most recent set of update
articles, on volunteers for the USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee.
There is another document that is specifically about the kind of
information desired for these reports, and I have just posted it,
as well.  Those are comp.std.unix Volume 15, Numbers 45 and 46.

However, to address the specific common misconception:

    Exactly, Mr. McCarron, relate the information and let
    the reader form his own opinion.

The facts are adequately related in the minutes of the various
standards committee meetings, and these reports are not intended to
duplicate those documents, which anyone can subscribe to directly from
IEEE and the other standards bodies.  What they *are* intended to do is
to provide context that does *not* appear in the minutes, such as
relations with other committees, plans (whether actual, tentative, or
rejected), the various sides of controversial issues, and the potential
effects of all these.  Brief summaries of what was accomplished at the
most recent meetings and schedules of future meetings are also part of
this context, but are far from all that the reports were commissioned
to report.  The basic goal of the reports is to provide information to
the USENIX membership and to the general public about standards and the
standards process, so that more of those who should be involved will
become involved.

This kind of contextual information involves opinions, either Shane's
or someone else's.  The reports are supposed to be editorials, not just
journalism.  Readers may not agree with opinions in them.  I encourage
those who disagree to submit articles pointing out what they think is
incorrect about the reports (anything from factual errors to being too
judgemental to long-windedness), and expressing their own opinions.
Even those who agree might want to post clarifications, elaborations,
or additions.

In addition, chairs or secretaries (or members) of committees are free
to post rebuttals, or, better, to compose and post their own reports
(whether strictly factual or including opinions) about their committees.
The chair of IEEE 1003.2 has done this (Volume 15, Number 28).  I encourage
others to do so.

John S. Quarterman, USENIX Institutional Representative to IEEE 1003.

[ These reports were commissioned specifically for comp.std.unix/std-unix
and for ;login:, the Newsletter of the USENIX Association.  As moderator
of that newsgroup and mailing list, I once again encourage other postings.
Readers are also welcome to contact me, Shane, or other posters directly.
-mod ]

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 50

From news  Wed Dec 14 19:06:26 1988
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA06229; Wed, 14 Dec 88 19:06:26 EST
From: Shane P. McCarron <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Re: Standards Update, Part 5: IEEE 1003.2
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: Shane P. McCarron <[e-mail]>
Date: 14 Dec 88 07:08:03 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive
Status: O

From: Shane P. McCarron <[e-mail]>

> From: [e-mail] (Doug Gwyn )
>
> Eek!  I thought the original 1003.2 intent was to permit implementation
> in a monocase command-line environment.  Has that been discarded?

I have been in the .2 group since their first real meeting, and that
was never discussed as an option.  If we are codifying existing
practice, then this clearly cannot be achieved.  While requiring a
single grep is not "codifying existing practice", it does permit
existing practice, while still giving a view to the future.

--
Shane P. McCarron            UUCP: [e-mail]
Systems Analyst                ATT: [phone]

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 51

From root  Mon Jan  2 01:41:23 1989
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA09191; Mon, 2 Jan 89 01:41:23 EST
From: Shane P. McCarron <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Standards Update, Part 10:  IEEE 1003.6;  Security
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: Shane P. McCarron <[e-mail]>
Date: 1 Jan 89 17:54:23 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive
Status: O

[ 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 10

                    POSIX 1003.6 Update

                     December 18, 1988

           Shane P. McCarron, NAPS International

1003.6 - Security Extensions to POSIX

The 1003.6 committee met with the other POSIX committees in
Hawaii.  At this meeting they decided to divide the work
into different groups.  The groups were addressing: Audit,
Definitions, P1003.6 Scope, DAC, and Privileges.

Each small working group met every day, and on the morning
of the final day of the meeting a wrap-up session was held
to update all the members of each working group's progress.
The following information was presented:

   o+ Audit

       1.  Goals:

              - Satisfy TCSEC Requirement.

              - Reduce the amount of changes to POSIX as
                much as possible.

              - Primarily to make audit trail entries.

              - Portability for audit
                administration/analysis packages/private
                applications.

              - Audit Data Interchange Format.

       2.  Areas of Investigation:

              - Definitions

              - Event/Classes (what are they?)

__________

  |= UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T in the U.S. and
    other countries.


                           - 2 -

              - Pre/Post Selection Criteria

              - SSO Interface

              - Subsystem Interface

              - Record/File Format

              - IDs (audit ids,...)

       3.  Future:

              - Detailed Input Requested

              - Interim Event/Classes

              - BNF for Audit Token Grammar

     Note that the administration interface issues have been
     considered to be a HANDS-OFF right now.

   o+ Definitions

     The following information was presented:

       1.  The structure of the definitions will be similar
           to 1003.1 structure: terminology section,
           conformance section, general terms, general
           concepts and acronyms.

       2.  The draft 0 definitions were based on four
           documents: ISO, ECMA, IEEE Std 1003.1-1988, and
           the Orange Book.

       3.  The GOAL of this group is to assure that 1003.6
           definitions are consistent and relevant to 1003.6
           areas without overstepping or duplicating
           existing definitions from other 1003.x groups.
           In case some of the 1003.6 definitions conflict
           with 1003.X ones, the action will be to propose a
           redefinition of the term.

   o+ P1003.6 Scope

     The proposed Scope was discussed and the conclusion was
     that it needed reworking. The area of I&A was
     considered not addressed, as well as trusted recovery
     (which the real-time people may need) and others.  In
     the draft a lot of the issues that will not be
     supported right now are marked so because of lack of
     experience or not enough technical maturity.  The


                           - 3 -

     important point is not if we have the experience or
     not, it is to be aware of areas where users want
     security, areas where the committee thinks security
     should be provided, and point them out in the Scope.
     If areas become a problem later, they can be dealt with
     at that time.

     For the next draft of the 1003.6 document, the table of
     contents will contain: Scope, Definitions, Feature
     Overview, Existing 1003.1 Functions, Existing 1003.2
     Commands, Section for Each Feature, and an Appendix.

     The Feature Overview covers a discussion, functional
     interface summary and command summary of each feature.
     Then in the feature section there will be the
     functions, commands, descriptions and security
     specifications.

     In the appendix there will be a rationale that maps to
     the document sections.

     It was remarked that all the future features such as
     Networking and System Administration should be
     annotated in an appendix as areas that will be covered
     as extensions.

   o+ Discretionary Access Controls

     This group was the one with the most activity,
     generating a lot of conflicting ideas even within
     itself.  However, they did resolve to put together
     first the Rationale section of the document and work on
     the agreeable parts, then later debate the contentious
     ones.  One of the conflicting topics was default Access
     Control Lists.  This is probably needed, but apparently
     will not be within the scope of the standard.

   o+ Privileges

     Privileges is a topic wrought with philosophy, and
     computer professionals love to be philosophers.  In
     spite of this, definitions of privilege and certain
     types of privileges were completed.  A paper from IBM
     was taken as a framework for the privilege section.
     During the meeting a few operations were identified as
     necessary, although the list is far from complete:
     getpriv, setpriv, enable/disable_priv, droppriv.

Another issue brought to the whole group was
Internationalization, and the decision was not to address it
as long as they can.  This is unfortunate, as the charter of


                           - 4 -

POSIX is to be as international as possible.  The 1003.1
committee learned the hard way that internationalization
cannot just be stapled on later.  It must be in there from
day one or it becomes extremely difficult to make it work.
In the case of security, labeling is an area in which
internationalization is a must.  If it is not placed in
there initially, it may never get in.

The upshot of all this is that the small groups produced the
guidelines for the next meeting and the topics that are
going to be covered for the near future.

This group has targeted mid-1990 for a complete draft ready
to ballot.  The Usenix Standards Watchdog Committee contact
for this group is Anna Maria de Alvare.  She can be reached
at:

          Anna Maria de Alvare
          Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories
          PO Box 808
          L-303
          Livermore, CA  94450
          [phone]
          [e-mail]
          uunet!lll-lcc.llnl.gov!annamaria


Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 53

From root  Mon Jan  2 01:53:51 1989
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA09938; Mon, 2 Jan 89 01:53:51 EST
From: Shane P. McCarron <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Standards Update, Part 11: IEEE 1003.8; Networking
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Date: 1 Jan 89 18:01:24 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive
Status: O

[ 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 11

                    POSIX 1003.8 Update

                     December 18, 1988

           Shane P. McCarron, NAPS International

1003.8 - Networking Extensions to POSIX

IEEE P1003.8's charter (not yet formally approved by IEEE,
but pending) is to help develop an IEEE POSIX networking
standard.  This was the committee's first formal meeting,
and it was devoted mostly to organizational matters,
particularly on setting specific technical goals and how to
divide the work into subcommittees.

This working group has emerged out of the work done by the
/usr/group Technical Committee's subcommittee on networking.
Once this committee has been formally formed, the /usr/group
networking committee will be considered to merge with the
P1003.8 committee, and meet concurrently whenever P1003.8
does.  Ultimately, the /usr/group committee is likely to
disband completely in favor of P1003.8.

The charter ("project authorization request", or PAR) was
reviewed briefly:

                           SCOPE

  1.  Define Network Services required by portable
      applications consistent with existing and emerging
      standards such as OSI.

  2.  Define interfaces to the network services defined
      above, and where possible, language and protocol
      independent programming interfaces.

  3.  Identify the requirements for new network
      services/protocols and liason with appropriate
      standards bodies (national and international) and
      interested organizations when appropriate.

__________

  |= UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T in the U.S. and
    other countries.


                           - 2 -

                          PURPOSE

Define and/or adopt a set of paradigms to permit the
implementation of portable applications in a network
environment.

Areas to be addressed by this committee include:

  A.  Interoperability between POSIX applications and non-
      POSIX applications.

  B.  Bindings to OSI application layer services.

  C.  Identification of language requirements not
      appropriate to applications portability, and liason
      with appropriate standards bodies to ensure that
      action is taken where appropriate.

  D.  The evaluation and definitions, where require, of
      binding to lower layer OSI services.

  E.  The requirements to ensure interoperability among
      POSIX-based distributed applications and services.

  F.  Network Services profile definitions for portable
      applications (POSIX).

Subcommittee Organization

A poll was held to find out what the most important topics
were as far as the group was concerned.  These turned out to
be: process to process communication, directory services,
network management, transparent file access, and remote
procedure call.  Three main subcommittees were formed to
look at some of these tasks.  Roughly, these committees were
"interprocess communication", "remote procedure call", and
"transparent file access".

Directory services and network management were recognized as
important, but also as cutting across other functional
areas.  Also, it was noted that there were not in attendance
enough people with sufficient expertise in these topics to
form a useful body of opinion on proposals in these areas.

Transaction processing was generally felt to be within the
domain of the committee, but as a special case of remote
procedure call.  It was noted that others who were not on
the committee may feel otherwise.

The committee split up into subcommittees for a day to
refine the definitions of the most important end products


                           - 3 -

identified for the committee to concentrate on.

Specific Technical Goals

The following is a summary of what the committee as a whole
agreed on as a result of the input from the individual
subcommittees.

   o+ Transparent File Access

     It was decided that the products should be client-only
     interfaces.  Three products were identified:

       1.  Full POSIX-semantic transparent file access
           interface.  This would include previous
           /usr/group DFS Committee work on DFS (distributed
           file system).

       2.  Administrative interface to support (1).

       3.  Subset-semantic transparent file access
           interfaces.  This could be vendor (e.g., MS-DOS,
           Apple, etc.) or protocol (e.g., FTAM) specific.

     Work items identified so far include:

       1.  Definition of file operations

       2.  Liason to system administration; definitions of
           transparent file access specific system
           administrative utilities and/or interfaces

       3.  Liason with directory working group

       4.  "Appropriate approach" to the protocol invention
           problem

     This group expects to finish relatively quickly (6
     months or so was the estimate given), because it was
     felt that a significant amount of the work needed to
     produce standards in this area is already done by
     definition (the P1003.1 standard).

   o+ Remote Procedure Call:

     The RPC folks apparently did not define their charter
     so much as identify issues that need to be addressed.
     The following was their list of issues along with
     tentative resolutions (if any):


                           - 4 -

       1.  Level of service

       2.  POSIX-to-POSIX versus POSIX-to-other (address
           POSIX-to-other)

       3.  Language binding (initial target: C)

       4.  TP support

       5.  Connection re-use

       6.  Call-back/recursion

       7.  Compiler language

       8.  Data canonicalization

       9.  Authentication

      10.  Our scope versus X.500

      11.  Standard suite of services need to confer with
           X3T5 on possible charter issues

      12.  Idempotency - execute once only guaranteed

      13.  Long running processes - keepalive/timeouts
           probably needed

      14.  Crash recovery

      15.  Real Time issues - no real time interface

      16.  Directory services

      17.  Multiple protocol stacks

     The subgroup chose not to identify the next step in the
     process (apparently meaning that they will wait for
     proposals).

   o+ Interprocess Communication:

     Four products were identified:

       1.  Simple Protocol-Independent Network Interface

           Features:

          * Bidirectional byte stream virtual circuits


                           - 5 -

          * Connectionless message exchange

          * Read/write support

          * Protocol-independent naming

          * Asynchronous communication services

          * Support for both client and server processes

          * POSIX-to-non-POSIX support

           Issues:

          * How to resolve names in a protocol-independent
            manner?

          * What should the individual functions look like?

       2.  Simple Structured Data Network Interface

           Features:

           All of (1), with extensions for data description
           and machine-independent representation.

          * Description of the syntactic structure of the
            data; when you send the data, you reference the
            structure.

          * Not all functions from (1) may work (such as,
            read/write)

           Issues:

          * Structure alternatives: ASN.1, ...

          * C data structures (stub compilers)

       3.  Protocol-Option-Extended Network Interface

           Features:

          * Provides the ability to access protocol
            dependent options

          * Migration path to potential future protocols

          * POSIX-to-any


                           - 6 -

          * Virtual circuits, datagrams

           Issues:

          * Limited lifespan (?)

          * Limited utility

          * Usefulness as a migration tool

          * Relationship to (1)

       4.  OSI application level interface

           Features:

          * A family of interfaces with consistent style and
            syntax which provides OSI application level
            services, e.g.  FTAM, VT, ACSE, ROSE, ...

           Issues:

          * Complexity

          * Prioritization (which ones to focus on first)

     One issue that surfaced very quickly in the network IPC
     discussions was the differences and relative merits of
     sockets and XTI.  Some went as far as to say that the
     differences were significant enough to guarantee
     "religious wars" over the issue, and/or make any kind
     of progress impossible in the area of product (3).

     Whatever the cause, a majority (8/0/3/3) of
     participants expressed interest in working on product
     (1), with products (3) and (4) having a relatively weak
     level of interest.

     The committee will get down to serious business at the
     next meeting (in January; 5 days).  For the next
     meeting, proposals are being solicited in all areas.
     The Usenix Standards Watchdog Committee contact on this
     committee is Stephen Head.  He can be reached at:

               Stephen Head
               Hewlett Packard
               263 Mackintosh St.
               Fremont, CA  94539
               [phone]
               [e-mail]
               uunet!hpda!smh

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 54

From root  Mon Jan  2 02:03:49 1989
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA10669; Mon, 2 Jan 89 02:03:49 EST
From: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: POSIX document: How do I get a copy?
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: uunet!drd!mark (Mark Lawrence)
Date: 20 Dec 88 18:37:37 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive
Status: O

From: uunet!drd!mark (Mark Lawrence)

All of a sudden, I find myself defending a specification for a POSIX
compliant O/S for the target platform of a system I am developing.  I
need to get ahold of the latest draft standard of POSIX so that I can
spout particulars.  I would appreciate any ptrs (by e-mail, please)
to where I write or call with plastic in hand.

Domo, y'all.
           ...sun!tulsun\
         ...uunet!apctrc!drd!mark   [e-mail]
...rutgers!okstate!romed/           [phone]

[ As previously announced in this newsgroup, the IEEE 1003.1
Full Use Standard (not a draft) was published in October 1988.

Bulk orders may be made from the IEEE Computer Society in Los Angeles at

        [phone]

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

Or contact:

        IEEE Service Center
        445 Hoes Ln.
        Piscataway, NJ 08854
        [phone]

To get on the mailing lists for drafts of the other IEEE 1003
subcommittees, contact

        James Isaak
        Chairperson, IEEE/CS P1003
        Tel.: [phone]
        Fax.: [phone]
        decvax!isaak
        [e-mail]
        Digital Equipment
        ZK03-3/Y25
        110 Spit Brook Rd.
        Nashua, NH  03062-2698

-mod ]

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 55

From news  Wed Jan  4 22:21:27 1989
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA22721; Wed, 4 Jan 89 22:21:27 EST
From: Dave Sill <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Re: USENIX Standards Updates
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: Dave Sill <[e-mail]>
Organization: Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, VA
Original-Date: Fri, 16 Dec 88 10:42:08 est
Date: 4 Jan 89 21:23:23 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive
Status: RO

From: Dave Sill <[e-mail]>

>From: John S. Quarterman <[e-mail]>
>The facts are adequately related in the minutes of the various
>standards committee meetings, and these reports are not intended to
>duplicate those documents, which anyone can subscribe to directly from
>IEEE and the other standards bodies.

I must confess that I've assumed all along that the purpose of the
Updates was to summarize the various minutes so Usenix members and
readers of this group wouldn't have to subscribe to them directly, as
well as including any other relevant standards-related information.

>The basic goal of the reports is to provide information to
>the USENIX membership and to the general public about standards and the
>standards process, so that more of those who should be involved will
>become involved.

I totally agree that this is the goal.

>[...] This kind of contextual information involves opinions, either
>Shane's or someone else's.  The reports are supposed to be
>editorials, not just journalism.

Yes, opinions are important; but not just Shane's.  What I want to
read about is the opinions of the movers and shakers in
standardization and the prevailing opinions of the user community.
I don't think we can expect Shane's opinions to be an accurate
representation of such a large and diverse group.  Also, I disagree
that reporting on controversial subjects and opinions either implies
or requires editorialization.  These Updates are not just stating
common or representative opinions, they are taking sides and promoting
the opinion of one individual.

Let me reiterate a point I made at the opening of my previous posting.
I respect Shane McCarron and value his opinions.  I just wish he'd
express them under separate cover.  Let comp.std.unix/std-unix be the
forum for personal opinion and the Standards Updates be an objective
report of the developments and issues.

=========
The opinions expressed above are mine.

"Without the wind, the grass does not move.
 Without software, hardware is useless."

                    -- The Tao of Programming

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 56

olume-Number: Volume 15, Number 56


Path: longway!std-unix
From: [e-mail] (Mark H. Colburn)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: PAX - Portable Archive Interchange
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 6 Jan 89 05:20:12 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: Mark H. Colburn <[e-mail]>
Lines: 49
Approved: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)

From: Mark H. Colburn <[e-mail]>

               PAX - Portable Archive Interchange

This notice is to announce the availability of version 1.1 of Pax,
a public domain archiving utility.

Pax is an archiving utility that reads and writes tar and cpio formats,
both the traditional ones and the extended formats specified in IEEE 1003.1.
It handles multi-volume archives and automatically determines the format
of an archive while reading it.  Three user interfaces are supported:
tar, cpio, and pax.  The pax interface was designed by IEEE 1003.2 as a
compromise in the chronic controversy over which of tar or cpio is best.

Pax was written by Mark Colburn.  The USENIX Association provided some
support for this implementation project.  As a result, the Pax utility
is being distributed free of charge and may be redistributed by others
in either source or binary form.

The source for Pax is being posted to comp.sources.unix on USENET and will
also be available by anonymous FTP on the Internet from uunet.uu.net,
moon.honeywell.com and from ucbarpa.berkeley.edu.  The source to Pax will
also be available via anonymous UUCP from jhereg.mn.org, the author's home
machine, and possibly other sites.

Copyright (c) 1989 Mark H. Colburn.
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted
provided that the above copyright notice is duplicated in all such
forms and that any documentation, advertising materials, and other
materials related to such distribution and use acknowledge that the
software was developed by Mark H. Colburn and sponsored by The
USENIX Association.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

For more information about Pax, please contact the author:

Mark Colburn
NAPS International
117 Mackubin St., Suite 1
St. Paul MN   55102
[phone]
[e-mail]

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 57

From root  Mon Jan  9 03:01:48 1989
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA07037; Mon, 9 Jan 89 03:01:48 EST
From: John S. Quarterman <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Re: USENIX Standards Updates
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]>, <[e-mail]>,
    <[e-mail]>, <[e-mail]>,
    <[e-mail]>, <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: John S. Quarterman <[e-mail]>
Organization: USENIX
Date: 4 Jan 89 21:23:23 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive

From: John S. Quarterman <[e-mail]>

>I must confess that I've assumed all along that the purpose of the
>Updates was to summarize the various minutes so Usenix members and
>readers of this group wouldn't have to subscribe to them directly, as
>well as including any other relevant standards-related information.
...
>Also, I disagree that reporting on controversial subjects and
> opinions either implies or requires editorialization.

Minutes of IEEE 1003 meetings tend to be quite long, and there
are many of them.  Reducing them to a quickly legible size would
involve massive selection.  That selection itself would involve
opinions of an editor.  Such opinions would be implicit, but they
would be there, even in this apparently most neutral approach.

Because such opinions would be implicit, there would be danger
of their being taken as fact by people who did not read the full
minutes.

Simple summaries of minutes would have another disadvantage:
the minutes tend to be very laconic and often do not record
larger issues such as all the arguments on both sides of a
discussion (some of which may have appeared in previous minutes,
in the rationale, or may simply not have been recorded), or
the context of a discussion or decision in a larger controversy,
or some of the implications of a decision for other standards or
external groups.  This kind of information is not widely available,
and it is one of the main things that is wanted in these reports.
The USENIX board has wanted to have this kind of information available
since at least 1984, and a mechanism has only recently been found.

>Yes, opinions are important; but not just Shane's.  What I want to
>read about is the opinions of the movers and shakers in
>standardization and the prevailing opinions of the user community.

Other such opinions have been explicitly solicited in previous articles.
Such opininions can be either submitted directly to the moderator of
comp.std.unix or the editor of ;login: for posting, or they can given
to Shane for inclusion in the reports he writes.  Volunteers on the
watchdog committee are also explicitly asked to provide opinions of
their own.

>I don't think we can expect Shane's opinions to be an accurate
>representation of such a large and diverse group.

I know of no one's opinions that can be so regarded.

>These Updates are not just stating common or representative opinions,
>they are taking sides and promoting the opinion of one individual.

One person's common or representative opinion is another person's
controversial issue.  However, the reports are *intended* to take sides.
People who take other sides are, once again, encouraged to speak up
with their own discussions of the issues.

>Let comp.std.unix/std-unix be the forum for personal opinion and the
>Standards Updates be an objective report of the developments and issues.

Thank you for your input.

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 58

From root  Mon Jan  9 03:09:06 1989
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA10778; Mon, 9 Jan 89 03:09:06 EST
From: [e-mail] (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: file availability
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Organization: IEEE P1003 Portable O.S. Interface for Computer Environments
Date: 8 Jan 89 14:26:07 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive

Some new files are in the comp.std.unix directory on the UUNET machine.
They are accessible by UUCP for UUNET subscribers by doing
    uucp uunet!remotefilename localfilename
and over the Internet by anonymous ftp (login anonymous, any password).

The public domain implementation program recently announced of PAX,
the Portable Archive Interchange, is in
    comp.std.unix/pax/Announcement
    comp.std.unix/pax/[1-6]
It will also appear under comp.sources.unix shortly.

The reports written by Shane McCarron for USENIX and posted in this
newsgroup are collected in
    comp.std.unix/reports/[1-4]
with articles posted as followups in response as
    comp.std.unix/reports/[1-4].followups
These may also be retrieved as
    comp.std.unix/reports/1988.01
    comp.std.unix/reports/1988.01.followups
    comp.std.unix/reports/1988.04
    comp.std.unix/reports/1988.09
    comp.std.unix/reports/1988.09.followups
    comp.std.unix/reports/1988.12
    comp.std.unix/reports/1988.12.followups
The articles that describe what the reports are commissioned to be
are in
    comp.std.unix/reports/README

Hal Jespersen's October report on IEEE P1003.2 is in
    comp.std.unix/reports/1988.10.P1003.2

An announcement of the USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee and related
articles are in
    comp.std.unix/watchdog

As always, all past articles are archived in
    comp.std.unix/mod.std.unix.v[1-9]
    comp.std.unix/volume.v1[1-5]
with the current volume in
    comp.std.unix/archive

In addition, all articles from volumes 11-15 are also in individual files
with numeric names in the directories
    comp.std.unix/v1[1-5]
E.g., the pax announcement was Volume 15, Number 57, so it's in
    comp.std.unix/v15/57
Lists of numbers and subjects may be found in
    comp.std.unix/v1[1-5]/subjects

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 59

From news  Thu Jan 12 19:57:11 1989
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA19232; Thu, 12 Jan 89 19:57:11 EST
From: Dominic Dunlop <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Re: USENIX Standards Updates
Summary: Participate!  (Except that tells you only about one group)
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: riddle!domo (Dominic Dunlop)
Organization: Sphinx Ltd., Maidenhead, England
Date: 11 Jan 89 14:49:17 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive

From: [e-mail] (Dominic Dunlop)

I'm all in favour of Usenix' effort to summarise progress and by-play
in a number of standaridisation forums.  It has been commented firstly that
the summaries show the effect of editorial decisions, and secondly that
editorial input -- whether explicit or implicit -- is a necessary part of
the production of any summary -- particularly a useful summary.  I can't
find any fault in either of those statements.

The only way to know exactly what is going on in any one forum is to
participate in its activities yourself.  If the activities of a particular
group are vitally important to you, I urge you to participate.  You'll find
yourself being roped into the work of the group, and that's all to the
good -- Parkinson's Law applies in committee work as in other aspects of
life.  You'll also get to have some interesting meals with interesting
people in interesting places.  (The same applies to drinks, if that appeals
to you.)  What's more, participate now, and you may get to write reports
for Usenix, so involving yourself in the editorial process!  In my
experience, the most difficult aspect of participation is getting somebody
to pick up the tab -- although some people with more devotion than I have
been known to pay out of their own pockets in order to attend!

The trouble with participating in a group is that you get to know only
about the activities of that group, and possibly those peripheral areas
of other group which ahve an effect your own work.  There simply are not
enough hours in the day (or synapses in the brain, particularly after
experiencing some of those drinks) for any one person to participate
even in all the activities taking place under the Posix umbrella, never
mind getting involved with other bodies such as ANSI, EWOS (who?), ISO,
JIS...  (and anyway, the expense would be horrendous).

As a result, in order to get anything like a global picture of what's going
on, it's essential to rely on summaries.  To make a large and pontifical
generalisation, it seems to me that one of the main ways in which things
get done in this world is through decisions made on the basis of a
knowledge of summaries, rather than through an intimate knowledge of the
details of a particular aspect of a particular situation.  Politicians are
briefed on many topics by experts; managers act on the basis of reports
from their juniors; people send money in response to pictures of a disaster
on TV.  All of these sources of information involve an editorial element,
and it's that which makes them more, rather than less, useful.  More power
to Usenix' elbow for its much-needed initiative in applying this concept to
standards activities.

(Another reason that things get done is that driven people just go ahead
and do them anyway...)
--
Dominic Dunlop
[e-mail]  [e-mail]

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 60

From news  Fri Jan 13 14:11:13 1989
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA01852; Fri, 13 Jan 89 14:11:13 EST
From: John S. Quarterman <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Missing
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Date: 7 Jan 89 20:42:20 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive

From: [e-mail] (John S. Quarterman)

[ Due to a logistical problem on UUNET, Numbers 14-23 in Volume 15 of
comp.std.unix were not archived.  They were originally posted in September.
If anyone has copies they can send me, I would appreciate it.  -mod ]

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 61

From news  Fri Jan 13 19:17:01 1989
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA14754; Fri, 13 Jan 89 19:17:01 EST
From: <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: ICX89
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Date: 13 Jan 89 19:35:52 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive

[ This is an outtake from the next calendar postings.  Noticing
the submission date, I decided I'd better post it now.  -mod ]

ICX89 is the First International Conference on Advanced Computing,
and is being organised by the IEEE Student Branch and the Department
of Electronics of the Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria (USM).
``This first conference will be devoted to the UNIX operating
system and related topics.  This subject was chosen to establish
the universal character of this event, as UNIX is now considered.''
There will be a plenary, technical sessions, tutorials, and vendor
and book exhibitions.  Official languages will be English and Spanish,
with simultaneous translation.

Submissions of technical papers or abstracts should be by three
paper copies or by electronic mail by 15 January 1989.  Preliminary
notification of acceptance will be by 15 February 1989.
Final versions of the papers should be written according  to
the IEEE transaction format, and are are due by 14 April 1989.
Final official notification will be sent by 15 May 1989.

1989 Jun 19-23    ICX89    IEEE, USM, Valparaiso, Chile

Submissions:

        Prof. Leopoldo Silva B.
        Department of Electronics
        [e-mail]
        uunet!uchdcc!usmcsd!lsb

Other correspondence:

        ICX89
        Organizing Committee
        [e-mail]
        uunet!uchdcc!usmcsd!icx89
        [phone] AX 359
                Telex: 330622 UTFSM CX
                Fax: [phone]

        Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria
        P.O. Box 110-V
        Valparaiso
        Chile

From news  Mon Jan 16 21:57:04 1989
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA08775; Mon, 16 Jan 89 21:57:04 EST
From: Mark H. Colburn <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Revised Pax Announcement
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: Mark H. Colburn <[e-mail]>
Date: 16 Jan 89 16:09:08 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive

From: Mark H. Colburn <[e-mail]>

John -

This announcement has three changes to it:

1) Merchantability is now spelled correctly.
2) moon.src.honeywell.com is now listed correctly, rather than
   moon.honeywell.com.
3) The package is now described as "freely distributable," rather than
   "public domain."  Keith pointed out that the copyright invalidates
   the public domain comment, or vice-versa.

--
Mark H. Colburn                  "They didn't understand a different kind of
NAPS International                smack was needed, than the back of a hand,
[e-mail]                something else was always needed."
---------------------------------- CUT HERE ----------------------------------

               PAX - Portable Archive Interchange



This notice is to announce the availability of version 1.1 of Pax,
a freely distributable archiving utility.

Pax is an archiving utility that reads and writes tar and cpio formats,
both the traditional ones and the extended formats specified in IEEE 1003.1.
It handles multi-volume archives and automatically determines the format
of an archive while reading it.  Three user interfaces are supported:
tar, cpio, and pax.  The pax interface was designed by IEEE 1003.2 as a
compromise in the chronic controversy over which of tar or cpio is best.

Pax was written by Mark Colburn.  The USENIX Association provided some
support for this implementation project.  As a result, the Pax utility
is being distributed free of charge and may be redistributed by others
in either source or binary form.

The source for Pax is being posted to comp.sources.unix on USENET and will
also be available by anonymous FTP on the Internet from uunet.uu.net,
moon.src.honeywell.com and from ucbarpa.berkeley.edu.  The source to Pax
will also be available via anonymous UUCP from jhereg.mn.org, the author's
home machine, and possibly other sites.

Copyright (c) 1989 Mark H. Colburn.
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted
provided that the above copyright notice is duplicated in all such
forms and that any documentation, advertising materials, and other
materials related to such distribution and use acknowledge that the
software was developed by Mark H. Colburn and sponsored by The
USENIX Association.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

For more information about Pax, please contact the author:

Mark Colburn
NAPS International
117 Mackubin St., Suite 1
St. Paul MN   55102
[phone]
[e-mail]

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 63

From jsq  Tue Jan 17 23:27:33 1989
Received: by uunet.UU.NET (5.59/1.14)
    id AA27935; Tue, 17 Jan 89 23:27:33 EST
From: John S. Quarterman <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: End of comp.std.unix Volume 15
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Organization: USENIX
Date: 18 Jan 89 04:26:34 GMT
Apparently-To: std-unix-archive

This is the last article in the USENET newsgroup comp.std.unix,
also known as the mailing list [e-mail].  Volume 16
will begin immediately.

Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 64