Usenet 1994 January

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Usenet 1994 January / usenetsourcesnewsgroupsinfomagicjanuary1994.iso / sources / std_unix / volume.16 / text0012.txt < prev next >

Wrap

Internet Message Format | 1989-08-11 | 15.1 KB

From: helene@attunix.att.com ________________________________________________________________________ IEEE P1003.2 subject: IEEE P1003.2 Meeting date: January 31, 1989 Minutes from January 9-11, 1989 from: Helene Armitage P1003.2 Secretary (201) 522-6233 attunix!helene Meetings_Minutes 1. Introduction The IEEE P1003.2 Working Group met in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, January 9-11, 1989. 1.1 Approval_of_Minutes The minutes for the last two meetings, Denver, Colorado, and Honolulu, Hawaii, were reviewed and approved as distributed. 1.2 Review_of_Action_Items No action items were carried from the Hawaii meeting. 1.3 Announcements Donn Terry raised a concern about the overlap in meeting times of the P1003.1 and P1003.2 Working Groups for members interested in participating in both groups. A show of hands indicated that only one of current P1003.2 meeting participants was interested in attending both working group meetings. Marc Teitelbaum scheduled a BOF to discuss issues with the shell for Tuesday evening at 8:00. 2. Status_Report_on_P1003.2_Draft_8_Formal_Ballot Draft 8 went out on schedule in mid-December! February 13, 1989 is the due date for ballot objections against Draft 8 to be submitted to the IEEE office. The address to obtain a copy of Draft 8 and to return ballots is: P1003.2-N071 Page 2 of 6 Bob Pritchard IEEE STDS OFFICE 445 Hoes Lane Piscataway, NJ 08855-1331 (201) 562-3809 Hal Jespersen reported that we are still in need of one or more technical editors for both Draft 8 and the User Portability Extension (UPE) work. Balloters are encouraged to send Don Cragun (sun!dwc) an electronic copy of their ballot. Although this is not part of the formal ballot, it will save time and potential transcription errors in production of the resulting document. Technical Reviewers met on Thursday, January 12th to discuss the review process and how to handle overlapping ballot objections against their chapters. 3. Status_of_NIST_FIPS Rick Kuhn distributed a draft of the NIST FIPS for POSIX Shell and Tools. It is based on Draft 8 with some exceptions. Rick pointed out that 6 months after the date of publication of this POSIX Shell and Tools FIPS it may become effective. Rick welcomed comments on this Draft FIPS to be sent to the following address: Rick Kuhn National Institute of Standards and Technology Tech Bldg B266 Gaithersburg, MD 20899 Kuhn@swe.icst.nbs.gov (301) 975-3337 4. The_User_Portability_Extension The majority of the Ft. Lauderdale meetings were spent discussing scope, command selection, and specific commands for a ``User Portability Extension'' (UPE) PAR to P1003.2. Hal provided a working draft of the UPE for use during the meetings. An official PAR for the UPE has not yet been submitted. Progress of the UPE will depend on obtaining a technical editor for the effort. 4.1 Scope_for_the_UPE A discussion of scope for the UPE in the large group decided two major issues: P1003.2-N071 Page 3 of 6 o The UPE will require a P1003.2 base. o Optional commands, and commands required for conformance to the UPE will be decided on an individual basis and clearly defined in the extension. The following scope was accepted by making minor changes to the wording of the scope presented in the working draft. The 1003.2 Working Group will begin to increase the scope of its work through the definition of a ``User Portability Extension.'' This extension will be published as an optional facility in a future supplement to the base 1003.2 standard. Its scope is limited by two constraints: 1. The ``users'' in this context are limited to the group of users who are familiar with the style of interaction characteristic of historically-derived systems based on one of the UNIX operating systems. Typical users would include program developers, engineers, or general purpose time sharing users. 2. The environment to be supported may be a multi-user time sharing system supporting character-oriented display terminals. Alternatively, it may be a collection of single-user systems interconnected via local area networks or telephone lines, but with similar user interfaces. The standard does not include support tailored for bit-mapped or graphics display terminals, although it is expected that such terminals could emulate the character orientation required by this environment. P1003.2-N071 Page 4 of 6 4.2 UPE_Command_Selection The Working Group modified the original meeting agenda (attached) to work in the large group Monday afternoon selecting command categories and commands for the UPE. The following categories and commands resulted: EXTEND EXISTING UTILITIES FOR INTERACTIVE US Selected Features Potential Features: command line editing $seconds, $random history (dynamic environment variables history completion arg list expansion interactive definition of PS1, PS2, ... file name completion job control (^z, stopped jobs) shell script debugging EDITING FILES Selected Commands Potential Commands: ex emacs patch vi DISPLAYING FILES Selected Commands Potential Commands: expand, unexpand col head spell pg/more/less split strings tail QUERY THE USER ENVIRONMENT (PROCESSES, FILES, DISK USAGE) Selected Commands Potential Commands: df cal du dc man tput ps users w who MANAGE THE USER ENVIRONMENT Selected Commands Potential Commands: clear logout compress, uncompress, zcat, (including compression algorithm) newgrp P1003.2-N071 Page 5 of 6 passwd script INTERACTING WITH OTHER USERS (INCLUDING MAIL) mesg mailx/mail/mh shar (including format), unshar talk uuencode, uudecode write REMOTE LOGIN, FILE TRANSFERS AND EXECUTION cu/tip/telnet uucp/rcp/ftp uuname uustat uux/rsh/rcmd SCHEDULE AND CONTROL BACKGROUND TASKS AND PERIODICALLY-SCHEDULED WORK at batch crontab nice renice PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT Selected Commands Potential Commands: csplit cscope ctags cb/indent nm lint SOURCE/REVISION CONTROL (PLUS INTERNAL FORMAT) sccs/rcs OTHER IMPORTANT USER PORTABILITY FEATURES (This is a place-holder for future work.) The command names separated by slashes are multiple instances of similar functionality. The Working Group was not able to narrow down the choice at this meeting; some of these will undoubtedly be controversial decisions. P1003.2-N071 Page 6 of 6 Following is a list of the commands that were considered and rejected during the command selection discussion. As is the case with any rejected or potential command (listed in column 2 above), these commands will not be included in the UPE unless a participant specifically writes a proposal, including rationale, to be re-considered and re-voted by the large group. apropos prof calendar sdb/dbx cflow tabs colrm tset correct ul crypt uptime (maybe for P1003.7) cxref uulog (maby for P1003.7) dircmp uupick error uuto login uutrigger m4 news/msgs nl 4.3 Small_Working_Groups Three small working groups were formed to begin addressing the specifics of commands in the categories defined above. Much of this work was based on the working draft pages provided by Hal. Group leaders agreed to provide Hal with formatted electronic copies of the work completed in the small groups by the end of the week. A brief summary of the work is listed here, see attached foils for the specific work presented during the large group discussion. o Interacting With Other Users, Group Leader - Scott Sutter o mesg: Improved wording, implementation details will be omitted. o write: /etc/utmp will not be discussed in the specification. o talk: Network specifics will be omitted. o mailx: Network specifics will be omitted. o Displaying Files, Group Leader - Neil Winton o expand, unexpand: expand foo | unexpand -a should display identically to cat foo. o head: Multi-file behavior needs clarifying. P1003.2-N071 Page 7 of 6 o strings: BSD treats a.out files specially, UPE will probably say that the behavior of strings for object files is implementation defined. o tail: A cut down version was proposed to improve portability and clarity, synopsis will be - tail [+num] [-num] [-f] [file]. o pg, more, less: Plan to define a new command most based on a subset of less. most will be defined to support block mode terminals, will have an option to disable shell and editor escapes, will not include key mapping or redefinition of prompts. o Querying the User Environment, Group Leader - Neil Winton o df: Will be defined with a single portable option -P which will produce output in the form: device tot_kb kb_used kb_free %_used Size will be in multiples of 1024 bytes. Disk usage greater than 100% will be displayed as 100*. o du: Single portable option -P will give sizes in bytes. o file: After further discussion in the large group, it was ultimately rejected from inclusion in the UPE because the algorithm could not be specified in a useful, portable way. o man: Small group recommended a minimal output of NAME and SYNOPSIS be required for each command in P1003.2. Further discussion in the large group indicated potential problems with this approach. o ps: Not possible on a P1003.1 conforming system; a portable -P option will be defined where possible. o Schedule and Control Background Tasks, Group Leader - Ken Faubel o at: Based on System V with the following synopsis: at [-lr] [-n jobname] [-f filename] [-t yymmddhhmm[.ss]] timespec Due to problems associated with internationalization, `at noon next Tuesday` syntax will not be required. P1003.2-N071 Page 8 of 6 o batch: Will be specified in terms of at o crontab: Based on System V version. o nice, renice: Based on System V and BSD4.3, but may have no effect. There was a discussion of asking P1003.1 to consider adding a nice() function to allow this to work in a portable manner. o sccs/rcs: The small group proposed an extended SCCS based solution with the BSD sccs interface command, and an enhanced SCCS file format to include some of the nice RCS features. This generated much discussion in the large group. Based on a straw vote Wednesday in the large group, there was support for inclusion or omission of both SCCS and RCS in the UPE, but little support for the proposed "hybrid." 5. Liaison_Reports_on_other_Working_groups Martha Nalebuff reported on the status and command selection for P1003.1 supplement. The following items were targeted for the first supplement in June 1989: fsync telldir seekdir trunc ftrunc fchmod putenv clearenv fchown The following items are targeted for the second supplement in January 1990: ftw walkfs setconf ipc get and set priority, symbolic links getty select or poll type mechanism The following items have been rejected and will not be considered in either supplement: P1003.2-N071 Page 9 of 6 chroot nice getpass rhangup sigstack crypt 6. Proposed_UPE_Ballot_Schedule Wednesday afternoon in the large group we set the following target dates for P1003.2 UPE work and balloting: DATE | MEETING | FOCUS __________|____________________________|________________________________ April 89 | Minneapolis | UPE Chapter Freeze July 90 | San Jose | UPE Command List Freeze October 90| Brussels | Continue to review UPE command specifications January 90| New Orleans | UPE Mock Ballot April 90 | Research Triangle Park, NC| UPE Ballot 7. Action_Item_Assignments 1. Small group leaders should send electronic copies of the UPE command specifications worked on during the Ft Lauderdale meetings to Hal Jespersen (sun!unisoft!hlj) by January 13, 1989. 2. Hal Jespersen or Don Cragun should distribute sample P1003.2 macro source to interested members of the P1003.2 committee. 8. Future_Meeting_Schedule The next P1003.2 meeting will be April 24-28, 1989 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Since we have been unable to secure a technical editor for the UPE, the agenda for the next meeting is somewhat tenative, but may include: two days resolving sticky ballot objections against Draft 8 (Thursday and Friday), and three days reviewing the UPE draft (Monday through Wednesday). Tentative subsequent meetings (note: this list was updated after the announcement that was made on Friday during the Florida meeting): April 24-28, 1989 Minneapolis July 10-14, 1989 San Jose October 16-20, 1989 Brussels January 1990 New Orleans P1003.2-N071 Page 10 of 6 April 1990 Research Triangle Park, NC July 1990 Seattle/Portland October 1990 Albuquerque Helene Armitage Atts. Attachment A-Agenda Attachment B-Meeting Foils Volume-Number: Volume 16, Number 11