Standards Update, Part 4: 1003.0 and 1003.1

[Shane P. McCarron]

[ 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 at 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

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    other countries.


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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


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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 at bungia.mn.org
          uunet!bungia.mn.org!ahby


Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 40