Standards Update, U.S. TAG to ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC22 WG15

[Jeffrey S. Haemer]

Submitted-by: jsh at usenix.org (Jeffrey S. Haemer)

           An Update on UNIX*-Related Standards Activities

                          September 27, 1990

                 USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee

                   Jeffrey S. Haemer, Report Editor

U.S. TAG to ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC22 WG15

Susanne Smith <sws at calvin.wa.com> reports on the July 19, 1990 meeting
in Danvers, MA:

1.  Overview

Before you ask, ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG15 is ISO POSIX.  The U.S. TAG is
the United States Technical Advisory Group, which formulates the U.S.
position on WG15 issues, and chooses the members of the U.S.
delegation to the international WG15 meetings.

This meeting began at 8:00 A.M.  and ended before noon.  This must be
a record -- not just for the TAG, but for any standards group meeting.
There were three major business items:

   - language independence,

   - document circulation procedures (yawn), and

   - rapporteurs.

This short agenda, coupled with a determination to avoid an extra
meeting, like the Denver meeting we were forced into in June, kept the
discussion on track all morning.

ISO POSIX: Winners and Losers

The vote for 9945-1.2 (1003.1a draft 5) was unanimously in favor
without substantive comments.  If all goes well there just may be an
IEEE version of 9945-1 available in Seattle.  Let's all cross our
fingers.  Now that it's September I think we need to cross our toes as
well.

My last report mentioned the formatting problems with the 9945-1
document.  The TAG had decided to request the formation of an ad hoc
committee in Paris to try to resolve these problems.  WG15 resolved to

__________

  * UNIXTM is a Registered Trademark of UNIX System Laboratories in
    the United States and other countries.

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instruct the WG15 convener, Jim Isaak, to request written editorial
requirements from the ITTF (formerly the Central Secretariat) and
IEEE, and forward these to SC22.  The emphasis here should be on
written requirements.

WG15 refused to register 1003.4, real-time extensions, as a CD
(committee document, formerly DP, draft proposal) because it is not a
language-independent specification.  They were also concerned that the
standard might have to change once there is a language independent
version of 1003.1.

1003.5, Ada binding, and 1003.9, FORTRAN binding, suffered a similar
fate for different reasons.  1003.5 and 1003.9 were held off until at
least the October WG15 meeting because G15 had not seen the 1003.5 and
1003.9 documents, and were reluctant to register something they hadn't
seen before.  And again, they were concerned that these standards
might have to be re-written once there is a language independent
version of 1003.1.

Administrivia

Skip to the next section if you're easily bored or just not interested
in bureaucracy.

Why, you ask, was WG15 being asked to register something they had not
seen before?  Here are the steps that have to complete before a
document gets circulated:

  1.  The committee and SEC approve its release.

  2.  The TAG approves its circulation.

  3.  The committee chair delivers the document to the TAG chair, Donn
      Terry.

  4.  The TAG chair forwards the document to the WG15 convener, Jim
      Isaak.

  5.  The WG15 convener distributes the document.

1003.5 and 1003.9 were approved by the TAG for circulation to WG15
during the April meeting in Snowbird.  This left six weeks for for the
documents to be circulated and read. The problem was that the TAG
chair did not receive the documents in time to have them circulated
before the meeting.  To avoid this problem in the future, the TAG is
going to ask the SEC to assign an action item to the committee chair
so that there is a method to track this task.

In other news:

September 27, 1990 Standards Update U.S. TAG to ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC22 WG15


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   - The TAG procedures were entered and marked up, and will be
     included in the next mailing.

   - The meeting in Seattle will start our new meeting schedule of
     Sunday from 6 to 10 P.M., all Thursday, and again Friday if
     necessary.

Are You Ready for UNIX in VDM?

We cannot delay language independence for 1003.1 any longer.  It's now
really holding up international progress on important POSIX efforts.
But what format or technique should we use?  ISO rules seem to require
an ISO-standard method, which could restrict us to VDM (Vienna
Definition Method), but no one thinks VDM will work.  Paul Rabin and
Steve Walli have been working on a method, but the TAG worries that a
non-standard method will create problems like those we've suffered
through with document formats (see last TAG report).  In order to
avoid rejection later we will circulate the new method in SC22 and
WG15 for review and comment.  To make this circulation useful, Donn
Terry is listing specific questions for SC22 and WG15 to answer.
[Editor: I believe that ISO rules only restrict us to VDM if we
produce a formal definition, i.e., something from which one could do
correctness proofs.  Of course, rules and politics are not always the
same thing and using VDM might help grease the skids.  Still, we
should stop and ask if not using VDM would hold us up any more than
using VDM.]

The TAG will also ask the WG15 convener to schedule an ad hoc meeting
on language independence, during the October WG15 meeting, to help
move it along.

``Rap, a-rap, a-rap, they call me the rapporteur.''

Rapporteurs are technical experts on specialized aspects of a
particular standards effort.  Their scope is usually broader than an
individual standard, and they usually coordinate efforts in several
standards bodies.  WG15 has three rapporteur groups, one each for
conformance, internationalization, and security.  We send a
representative to each.

The conformance-testing rapporteur group will be looking at 1003.3
draft 12 (conformance testing), and the OSF-UI-X/Open Phoenix project
as potential base documents for the ISO 9945-series documents.  The
Phoenix project is developing a conformance-testing platform.  We will
not have to decide whether we want to submit 1003.3 as a new work item
in this area until 1991.

Ralph Barker asked that UniForum be allowed to send him and one
UniForum Internationalization Technical Committee member to the next
internationalization rapporteur group meeting.  This person would be
subject to subcommittee approval but selected by UniForum.  Worry

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about the fact that the TAG would not choose this person evaporated
when it became clear that Donn Terry would continue as
internationalization rapporteur and that the UniForum members would
just be an addition.

The TAG appointed Al Weaver security rapporteur to fill the vacancy
Terry Dowling left when he resigned in January.

Summary

The most important development is that the synchronization proposal
discussed in the last report is already dead.  This proposal was to
have fed balloting responses from IEEE into WG15, and vice-versa,
allowing WG15 approval to follow on the heels of IEEE approval.  Now,
while the IEEE is advancing, everything in WG15 is blocked by 1003.1
language independence.

September 27, 1990 Standards Update U.S. TAG to ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC22 WG15


Volume-Number: Volume 21, Number 147