Standards Update Part 4: 1003.5
David E. Emery
dee at linus.MITRE.ORG
Tue May 16 04:14:41 AEST 1989
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To: baker at nu.cs.fsu.edu, std-unix at longway.TIC.COM, shane at bungia.mn.org
Cc: posix-ada-committee at grebyn.com
From: dee at linus.MITRE.ORG (David E. Emery)
Standards Update Part 4: 1003.5
An update on UNIX|= Standards Activities
January 1989 IEEE 1003 Meeting, Ft. Lauderdale
1003.5 - Ada Bindings to POSIX
This quarter's 1003.5 report points out some problems
that are really endemic to the entire standards making
process. To wit, the people involved in making standards
are rarely those who end up using them. The user community
does not (generally) have the wherewithal or time to join
standards committees and attend standards committee
meetings. POSIX, like all other standards, suffers from
this problem.
In the case of 1003.5, the problem manifests itself in
a new way. While there are few members of the committee,
the vendor and end user community are about evenly
represented. This would seem to be an advantage.
Unfortunately, the Ada vendor and user community is not a
UNIX oriented community. The members of this committee,
while very knowledgeable about Ada and its requirements, may
not be as well verse in traditional UNIX semantics as one
would like.
This may change as the DoD (and the entire US Federal
Government) becomes more interested in POSIX. Until that
time, 1003.5 is going to suffer from a dearth of UNIX
oriented members. This may cause them to produce a standard
that, while strong in Ada terms, is weak when it comes to
its relationship to POSIX based systems.
The Ada language binding group has a goal of having a
standard Ada binding for P1003.1 by the end of 1989, with
balloting to take place some time in the fall. The first
draft of this standard was available for the January meeting
of the POSIX committees, and it is going to take quite a bit
of work to get it ready for a fall ballot. This committee
is really in desparate need of some warm bodies - preferably
with Ada and UNIX backgrounds.
---------------
I don't think this is a very fair characterization of our working
group. It may have been true at Minneapolis (where most of the 1003.5
officers, for various reasons, were unable to attend), but many of us
have a pretty solid Unix background. It is true that we sometimes
have to educate the 'uninitiated'. It is also true that we need more
bodies, particularly people literate in both Unix and Ada. However,
there is a substantial interest in Ada on Unix, indicated by the large
number of vendors (Verdix, Telesoft, Alsys, Meridian, DDC and Tartan
Labs <this list is probably not complete, either>).
However, I take significant exception to the implication that the
1003.5 committee "does not understand Unix." This is particularly
true when you look at the expressed attitude of the rest of 1003, that
"we don't care about Ada", or at best "we don't have time to learn
Ada". We have a major problem when Ada and Unix clash, a problem I
don't think that the rest of P1003 can appreciate (given their narrow
C focus).
dave
emery at mitre.org
[ The report was based on the Minneapolis meeting.
It's good to see some counter opinions, though. -mod ]
Volume-Number: Volume 16, Number 41
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