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