std-unix@longway.TIC.COM (Moderator, John S. Quarterman) (09/01/89)
An Update on UNIX* and C Standards Activities
August 1989
Jeffrey S. Haemer, Report Editor
USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee
IEEE 1003.0: POSIX guide Update
An anonymous correspondent reports of the April, 1989 meeting:
The April session of 1003.0 was fruitful. The most significant
accomplishment was the proposal and development of definitions the
committee feels it needs to describe an open systems environment
properly and adequately. Five definitions were developed:
o+ open system environment
o+ application environment
o+ application environment description
o+ application environment profile
o+ POSIX open system environment
Group consensus was that the first four would be submitted to the JTC1
Application Portability Study Group as a draft proposal for its work.
The committee added the caveat that these were draft definitions,
subject to change. A key clarification by these definitions was the
distinction between an application profile and an open system
environment: a profile is a subset of the environment.
The guide document, being developed by 1003.0, is nearly mature.
Significant strides were made in the architecture section, which
focuses on the operating system interface, languages, and network
services. In the following months, 1003.0 will turn its attention to
database management, data interchange, and graphics. The user
interface section will be closely coupled to the work of the newly
formed, IEEE 1201.1 (Xwindows) working group. Similarly, the the
transaction processing section will track the on-line transaction
processing (OLTP) group (1003.11).
There is some worry about the length of the guide -- currently 135
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* UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T in the U.S. and other
countries.
Jeffrey S. Haemer, Editor USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee
August 1989 Standards Update - 2 - IEEE 1003.0: POSIX guide
pages and growing. If the document becomes unwieldy, some attention
will be turned to scaling it down.
The committee also created an Internationalization study group, to cut
across groups and help increase inter-group coordination in this area.
The study group intends to become a full working group in Brussels,
this October.
Jeffrey S. Haemer, Editor USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee
Volume-Number: Volume 17, Number 16