P1003.12 solicits comments

[Keith Sklower]

Submitted-by: sklower at okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Sklower)

The POSIX process-to-process communications working group (P1003.12)
would like to solicit outside comment.

The committee wishes to publish an interface at the level of exposed
detail exhibited by both sockets and XTI.  Previously, the committee
had been of the opinion that although both sets of existing practice
were relatively similar, each had technical flaws.  Furthermore,
each had a user community unwilling to give theirs up and adopt
the other.

The working solution the commitee had been pursuing was to combine
the the best features of the two interfaces, changing the names and
semantics of the primitives, so that some amount of re-coding would
be necessary.  The committee was using as its model the level of
modification done to the job control and termios facilities of P1003.1

There has recently been vociferous opposition to this plan, arguing
that vendors would have to support THREE interfaces (sockets, XTI
and POSIX) and it would be better to have the P1003.12 committee
issue IEEE standard versions of the existing two, with possible
backwards compatible extensions and improvements.

We invite you to submit your reactions to dot12 at okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU
for consideration by the committee.  It would be helpful to some of us
if you would say something about your background or experience with
either of XTI or sockets.

Volume-Number: Volume 22, Number 19