ahby@bungia.bungia.mn.org (Shane P. McCarron) (12/11/88)
[ These Standards Updates are published after each IEEE 1003
meeting, and are commissioned by the USENIX Association.
Because the report, like the committees it reports on,
has become long and involved, it is being posted in parts,
currently nine, with perhaps more to follow. Feel free
to reply or follow up to any part or to the whole thing.
Much of the information in the report was collected through
the USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee. If you want to
participate, see the addresses in Part 1 below. -mod ]
An update on UNIX|= Standards Activities - Part 1
Overview
December 8, 1988
Shane P. McCarron, NAPS International
This is the fourth in a series of articles on Unix related
standards activities. In this edition I am going to cover a
slightly wider area than usual. There have been
developments at the ANSI X3 level, the National Bureau of
Standards, and within the POSIX committees that all deserve
attention. Because there is so much material this article
has been divided into a series for posting to Usenet. I will
apologize at the outset for the length of this series, but I
feel that all of the information is timely and important.
In addition to information on group activities, included
with each report is a contact person from whom you can get
more information about these developments, and the names of
Watchdog Committee members through whom you can relay your
opinions to the specific standards committees.
On the subject of the Watchdog Committee, this series is now
an activity of that group. Last quarter I used the article
to solicit participation in the committee, and I am pleased
to report that we have a number of new associate members.
While I am not familiar with everyone now involved, I would
like to thank those who contributed heavily to this series:
Ted Baker, Mark Colburn, Doug Gwyn, Sol Kavy, Doris
Lebovits, Kevin Lewis. We are still in search of members
for this group. While we will accept all comers, we are
particularly interested in filling out our rather lean
international input department. If you would like to be
involved in the Watchdog activities, or know of someone who
might be a good candidate, please contact:
John S. Quarterman
Texas Internet Consulting
701 Brazos, Suite 500
Austin, TX 78701-3243
(512) 320-9031
jsq@longway.tic.com
or
__________
|= UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T in the U.S. and
other countries.
- 2 -
Mark Colburn
NAPS International
117 Mackubin St.
Suite 1
St. Paul, MN 55102
(612) 224-9108
mark@naps.mn.org
IEEE P1003 - The POSIX Committees
The POSIX committees met October 24th - 28th in Honolulu,
Hawaii. At this meeting there were a record breaking 200+
attendees and meetings for eight working groups. Included
in this series are updates on each of the groups within
P1003, with the exception of IEEE P1003.6 and 1003.8. We
are awaiting further information on those groups.
Please look to the subsequent postings in this series for
all of the reports. If you have any comments or
suggestions, please contact me at:
Shane P. McCarron
NAPS International
117 Mackubin St.
Suite 6
St. Paul, MN 55102
+1 (612) 224-9239
ahby@bungia.mn.org
uunet!bungia.mn.org!ahby
Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 36std-unix@longway.TIC.COM (Moderator, John S. Quarterman) (04/23/89)
An update on UNIX|= Standards Activities - Part 1
Overview
February 20, 1989
Shane P. McCarron, NAPS International
This marks the fifth in a series of articles about the Unix
Standards community. Before we get too far here, I would
like to apologize for the lateness of this particular
report. While it should have been out in mid-February, it
is now late March and I am just completing the editing.
Hopefully this type of delay will not be seen again.
THe big news this quarter is that the ANSI C Standard
X3.159-1989 has been approved by the X3 Secretariat. This
means that the X3 people are satisfied with the technical
merit of the standard, as well as with the procedures that
were followed in completing it. Once it has been formally
reviewed by ANSI, we will have an American National standard
for the C language. This is good and bad. The C Language
standard has a few glaring flaw that make it all but
impossible to write a truly portable application. I am
certain that it is possible to write a mostly portable
application with little difficulty, but that wasn't really
the goal of the standard. More on this later.
This quarter we have reports from a number of committees.
They are in various states of repair, with varying levels of
detail. I have received little feedback from you about how
much detail should be included in the reports.
Consequently, it has been left up to the Usenix Watchdog
Committee contacts to generate as much or as little material
as they see fit. If you have comments on this, please send
them to me or directly to the contact person whose report
you are commenting on.
As always, we are looking for a few good people to represent
us in standards committees. If you would like to work with
us in trying to bring the world of standards to light,
please contact the Standards Watchdog Committee's Volunteer
Coordinator, Marc Teitelbaum <marc@okeeffe.berkeley.edu>.
__________
|= UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T in the U.S. and
other countries.
- 2 -
Please look to the subsequent postings in this series for
all of the reports. If you have any comments or
suggestions, please contact me at:
Shane P. McCarron
NAPS International
117 Mackubin St.
Suite 6
St. Paul, MN 55102
+1 (612) 224-9239
ahby@bungia.mn.org
uunet!bungia.mn.org!ahby
Publisher's note: Shane has moved and taken a new job.
We are currently looking for a new report editor.
Interested applicants please send electronic mail to
jsq@usenix.org or talk to Marc Teitelbaum at the IEEE 1003
meeting in Minneapolis, 24-28 April. -John S. Quarterman
Volume-Number: Volume 16, Number 31std-unix@longway.TIC.COM (Moderator, John S. Quarterman) (04/23/89)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix From: uunet!BRL.MIL!gwyn > THe big news this quarter is that the ANSI C Standard > X3.159-1989 has been approved by the X3 Secretariat. This > means that the X3 people are satisfied with the technical > merit of the standard, as well as with the procedures that > were followed in completing it. Once it has been formally > reviewed by ANSI, we will have an American National standard > for the C language. This is good and bad. The C Language > standard has a few glaring flaw that make it all but > impossible to write a truly portable application. I am > certain that it is possible to write a mostly portable > application with little difficulty, but that wasn't really > the goal of the standard. More on this later. This so-called information is completely misleading and certainly did NOT come from the "X3J11 watchdog" (me). The proposed ANS for the C programming language was approved by letter ballot at the X3 level, but a public comment letter turned up that had been misplaced by the X3 Secretariat, necessitating further consideration by X3J11 and a possible additional X3 ballot (if the correspondent feels that his issues were not adequately addressed by X3J11 and formally submits remarks to that effect to X3). Until we get past this stage (which will require up to six more weeks, depending on events), the proposed standard will not be submitted to ANSI for ratification. The good news is that ISO WG14 has agreed to support the proposed ANS for C with no modifications as the ISO standard also. (This agreement was linked to a guarantee from X3J11 that BSI concerns about identifying further specific instances of implementation- dependent behavior would be addressed early in the post-standard "interpretations" phase.) As to "glaring flaws", I am aware of no such thing. It is quite easy to write a maximally portable application in Standard C. I don't know what Shane thinks the problem is, but I reported nothing of the kind and totally repudiate his pronouncement. - Douglas A. Gwyn Volume-Number: Volume 16, Number 33