jsq@ut-sally.UUCP (John Quarterman) (07/16/85)
From: John Quarterman (moderator) <jsq@ut-sally.UUCP> Topic: IEEE P1003 "UNIX Standards" committee statement of scope and purpose I've received the following from the chair of the committee for posting. A.003.2 15JAN85 Scope and Purpose of the IEEE P1003 Working Group "To define a standard operating system interface and environment based on the UNIX Operating System documentation to support application portability at the source level. (UNIX is a trademark of Bell Labs)" This effort entails three major components: 1. Definitions - Terminology and objects referred to in the document. In the case of objects, the structure, operations that modify these, and the effects of these operations need to be documented as well. (Sample Term: Pipe, Sample Object: File Descriptor) 2. Systems Interface and Subroutines (C-Language Binding) This area includes: A. The range of interface & subroutines in the /usr/group document B. IOCTL/TermIO C. IFDEF Specifications D. Real Time (Contiguous files, synchronization, shared data, priority scheduling, etc.) E. Device interface, including Termcaps/TermIO F. Job Control, Windowing G. Network Interface (but not Protocol) H. Distributed Systems I. Device Drivers J. Error Handling & Recovery 3. User interface issues, including: A. Shell, Command Set, Syntax B. Portability - Media/Formats C. Error Handling & Recovery In all of these areas, consideration will be given to defining the impact on security, international usage (language and character sets, etc.), and application needs such as transaction processing. The following areas may require review and commentary, perhaps even revisions and updates, but are outside of the scope of the current effort: Network Protocols, Graphics, DBMS, Record I/O. Two areas are explicitly outside of the scope of the group: Binary compati- bility/exchange of software in executable form, and the end-user interface (where ease-of-use is a critical issue). Target "consumers" of the documents are: Systems implementations (including AT&T Licensees, those developing compatible systems, and those implementing "hosted" systems), and application implementors - for areas 1 and 2. With Area 3, multivendor systems integrators and shell users are also identified as document consumers. All of these efforts will not occur at once. The initial document for balloting will be based on Section 1 and 2-A and B above. As this goes through the balloting process, additional areas in 2 and 3 will be readied for balloting. At this point, it is not clear if this will represent separate revisions of a common document, separate "chapters" or "modules" of a common document, or separate standards documents. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The moderated newsgroup mod.std.unix is for discussions of UNIX standards, in particular of the draft standard in progress by the IEEE P1003 "UNIX Standards" Committee. Submissions to the newsgroup to: ut-sally!std-unix Comments about the newsgroup to: ut-sally!std-unix-request Permission to post to the newsgroup is assumed for mail to the former address, but not for mail to the latter address, nor for mail to my personal addresses. The newsgroup is gatewayed to an ARPA Internet mailing list, accessible as std-unix@ut-sally.ARPA or std-unix-request@ut-sally.ARPA. -- John Quarterman, UUCP: {ihnp4,seismo,harvard,gatech}!ut-sally!jsq ARPA Internet and CSNET: jsq@ut-sally.ARPA, soon to be jsq@sally.UTEXAS.EDU