helene@attunix.att.com (02/01/89)
From: helene@attunix.att.com
________________________________________________________________________
IEEE P1003.2
subject: IEEE P1003.2 Meeting date: January 31, 1989
Minutes from January 9-11,
1989 from: Helene Armitage
P1003.2 Secretary
(201) 522-6233
attunix!helene
Meetings_Minutes
1. Introduction
The IEEE P1003.2 Working Group met in Ft. Lauderdale,
Florida, January 9-11, 1989.
1.1 Approval_of_Minutes
The minutes for the last two meetings, Denver, Colorado, and
Honolulu, Hawaii, were reviewed and approved as distributed.
1.2 Review_of_Action_Items
No action items were carried from the Hawaii meeting.
1.3 Announcements
Donn Terry raised a concern about the overlap in meeting
times of the P1003.1 and P1003.2 Working Groups for members
interested in participating in both groups. A show of hands
indicated that only one of current P1003.2 meeting
participants was interested in attending both working group
meetings.
Marc Teitelbaum scheduled a BOF to discuss issues with the
shell for Tuesday evening at 8:00.
2. Status_Report_on_P1003.2_Draft_8_Formal_Ballot
Draft 8 went out on schedule in mid-December! February 13,
1989 is the due date for ballot objections against Draft 8
to be submitted to the IEEE office. The address to obtain a
copy of Draft 8 and to return ballots is:
P1003.2-N071
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Bob Pritchard
IEEE STDS OFFICE
445 Hoes Lane
Piscataway, NJ 08855-1331
(201) 562-3809
Hal Jespersen reported that we are still in need of one or
more technical editors for both Draft 8 and the User
Portability Extension (UPE) work.
Balloters are encouraged to send Don Cragun (sun!dwc) an
electronic copy of their ballot. Although this is not part
of the formal ballot, it will save time and potential
transcription errors in production of the resulting
document.
Technical Reviewers met on Thursday, January 12th to discuss
the review process and how to handle overlapping ballot
objections against their chapters.
3. Status_of_NIST_FIPS
Rick Kuhn distributed a draft of the NIST FIPS for POSIX
Shell and Tools. It is based on Draft 8 with some
exceptions. Rick pointed out that 6 months after the date
of publication of this POSIX Shell and Tools FIPS it may
become effective. Rick welcomed comments on this Draft FIPS
to be sent to the following address:
Rick Kuhn
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Tech Bldg B266
Gaithersburg, MD 20899
Kuhn@swe.icst.nbs.gov
(301) 975-3337
4. The_User_Portability_Extension
The majority of the Ft. Lauderdale meetings were spent
discussing scope, command selection, and specific commands
for a ``User Portability Extension'' (UPE) PAR to P1003.2.
Hal provided a working draft of the UPE for use during the
meetings. An official PAR for the UPE has not yet been
submitted. Progress of the UPE will depend on obtaining a
technical editor for the effort.
4.1 Scope_for_the_UPE
A discussion of scope for the UPE in the large group decided
two major issues:
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o The UPE will require a P1003.2 base.
o Optional commands, and commands required for
conformance to the UPE will be decided on an individual
basis and clearly defined in the extension.
The following scope was accepted by making minor changes to
the wording of the scope presented in the working draft.
The 1003.2 Working Group will begin to increase the scope of
its work through the definition of a ``User Portability
Extension.'' This extension will be published as an
optional facility in a future supplement to the base 1003.2
standard. Its scope is limited by two constraints:
1. The ``users'' in this context are limited to the group
of users who are familiar with the style of
interaction characteristic of historically-derived
systems based on one of the UNIX operating systems.
Typical users would include program developers,
engineers, or general purpose time sharing users.
2. The environment to be supported may be a multi-user
time sharing system supporting character-oriented
display terminals. Alternatively, it may be a
collection of single-user systems interconnected via
local area networks or telephone lines, but with
similar user interfaces. The standard does not
include support tailored for bit-mapped or graphics
display terminals, although it is expected that such
terminals could emulate the character orientation
required by this environment.
P1003.2-N071
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4.2 UPE_Command_Selection
The Working Group modified the original meeting agenda
(attached) to work in the large group Monday afternoon
selecting command categories and commands for the UPE. The
following categories and commands resulted:
EXTEND EXISTING UTILITIES FOR INTERACTIVE US
Selected Features Potential Features:
command line editing $seconds, $random
history (dynamic environment variables
history completion arg list expansion
interactive definition of PS1, PS2, ... file name completion
job control (^z, stopped jobs) shell script debugging
EDITING FILES
Selected Commands Potential Commands:
ex emacs
patch
vi
DISPLAYING FILES
Selected Commands Potential Commands:
expand, unexpand col
head spell
pg/more/less split
strings
tail
QUERY THE USER ENVIRONMENT (PROCESSES, FILES, DISK USAGE)
Selected Commands Potential Commands:
df cal
du dc
man tput
ps users
w
who
MANAGE THE USER ENVIRONMENT
Selected Commands Potential Commands:
clear logout
compress, uncompress, zcat,
(including compression algorithm) newgrp
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passwd script
INTERACTING WITH OTHER USERS (INCLUDING MAIL)
mesg
mailx/mail/mh
shar (including format), unshar
talk
uuencode, uudecode
write
REMOTE LOGIN, FILE TRANSFERS AND EXECUTION
cu/tip/telnet
uucp/rcp/ftp
uuname
uustat
uux/rsh/rcmd
SCHEDULE AND CONTROL BACKGROUND TASKS
AND PERIODICALLY-SCHEDULED WORK
at
batch
crontab
nice
renice
PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT
Selected Commands Potential Commands:
csplit cscope
ctags cb/indent
nm lint
SOURCE/REVISION CONTROL (PLUS INTERNAL FORMAT)
sccs/rcs
OTHER IMPORTANT USER PORTABILITY FEATURES
(This is a place-holder for future work.)
The command names separated by slashes are multiple
instances of similar functionality. The Working Group was
not able to narrow down the choice at this meeting; some of
these will undoubtedly be controversial decisions.
P1003.2-N071
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Following is a list of the commands that were considered and
rejected during the command selection discussion. As is the
case with any rejected or potential command (listed in
column 2 above), these commands will not be included in the
UPE unless a participant specifically writes a proposal,
including rationale, to be re-considered and re-voted by the
large group.
apropos prof
calendar sdb/dbx
cflow tabs
colrm tset
correct ul
crypt uptime (maybe for P1003.7)
cxref uulog (maby for P1003.7)
dircmp uupick
error uuto
login uutrigger
m4
news/msgs
nl
4.3 Small_Working_Groups
Three small working groups were formed to begin addressing
the specifics of commands in the categories defined above.
Much of this work was based on the working draft pages
provided by Hal. Group leaders agreed to provide Hal with
formatted electronic copies of the work completed in the
small groups by the end of the week. A brief summary of the
work is listed here, see attached foils for the specific
work presented during the large group discussion.
o Interacting With Other Users, Group Leader - Scott
Sutter
o mesg: Improved wording, implementation details
will be omitted.
o write: /etc/utmp will not be discussed in the
specification.
o talk: Network specifics will be omitted.
o mailx: Network specifics will be omitted.
o Displaying Files, Group Leader - Neil Winton
o expand, unexpand: expand foo | unexpand -a should
display identically to cat foo.
o head: Multi-file behavior needs clarifying.
P1003.2-N071
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o strings: BSD treats a.out files specially, UPE
will probably say that the behavior of strings for
object files is implementation defined.
o tail: A cut down version was proposed to improve
portability and clarity, synopsis will be - tail
[+num] [-num] [-f] [file].
o pg, more, less: Plan to define a new command most
based on a subset of less. most will be defined
to support block mode terminals, will have an
option to disable shell and editor escapes, will
not include key mapping or redefinition of
prompts.
o Querying the User Environment, Group Leader - Neil
Winton
o df: Will be defined with a single portable option
-P which will produce output in the form:
device tot_kb kb_used kb_free %_used
Size will be in multiples of 1024 bytes. Disk
usage greater than 100% will be displayed as 100*.
o du: Single portable option -P will give sizes in
bytes.
o file: After further discussion in the large group,
it was ultimately rejected from inclusion in the
UPE because the algorithm could not be specified
in a useful, portable way.
o man: Small group recommended a minimal output of
NAME and SYNOPSIS be required for each command in
P1003.2. Further discussion in the large group
indicated potential problems with this approach.
o ps: Not possible on a P1003.1 conforming system; a
portable -P option will be defined where possible.
o Schedule and Control Background Tasks, Group Leader -
Ken Faubel
o at: Based on System V with the following synopsis:
at [-lr] [-n jobname] [-f filename] [-t
yymmddhhmm[.ss]] timespec
Due to problems associated with
internationalization, `at noon next Tuesday`
syntax will not be required.
P1003.2-N071
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o batch: Will be specified in terms of at
o crontab: Based on System V version.
o nice, renice: Based on System V and BSD4.3, but
may have no effect. There was a discussion of
asking P1003.1 to consider adding a nice()
function to allow this to work in a portable
manner.
o sccs/rcs: The small group proposed an extended SCCS
based solution with the BSD sccs interface command, and
an enhanced SCCS file format to include some of the
nice RCS features.
This generated much discussion in the large group.
Based on a straw vote Wednesday in the large group,
there was support for inclusion or omission of both
SCCS and RCS in the UPE, but little support for the
proposed "hybrid."
5. Liaison_Reports_on_other_Working_groups
Martha Nalebuff reported on the status and command selection
for P1003.1 supplement. The following items were targeted
for the first supplement in June 1989:
fsync
telldir
seekdir
trunc
ftrunc
fchmod
putenv
clearenv
fchown
The following items are targeted for the second supplement
in January 1990:
ftw
walkfs
setconf
ipc
get and set priority,
symbolic links
getty
select or poll type mechanism
The following items have been rejected and will not be
considered in either supplement:
P1003.2-N071
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chroot
nice
getpass
rhangup
sigstack
crypt
6. Proposed_UPE_Ballot_Schedule
Wednesday afternoon in the large group we set the following
target dates for P1003.2 UPE work and balloting:
DATE | MEETING | FOCUS
__________|____________________________|________________________________
April 89 | Minneapolis | UPE Chapter Freeze
July 90 | San Jose | UPE Command List Freeze
October 90| Brussels | Continue to review UPE command specifications
January 90| New Orleans | UPE Mock Ballot
April 90 | Research Triangle Park, NC| UPE Ballot
7. Action_Item_Assignments
1. Small group leaders should send electronic copies of
the UPE command specifications worked on during the Ft
Lauderdale meetings to Hal Jespersen (sun!unisoft!hlj)
by January 13, 1989.
2. Hal Jespersen or Don Cragun should distribute sample
P1003.2 macro source to interested members of the
P1003.2 committee.
8. Future_Meeting_Schedule
The next P1003.2 meeting will be April 24-28, 1989 in St.
Paul, Minnesota. Since we have been unable to secure a
technical editor for the UPE, the agenda for the next
meeting is somewhat tenative, but may include: two days
resolving sticky ballot objections against Draft 8 (Thursday
and Friday), and three days reviewing the UPE draft (Monday
through Wednesday).
Tentative subsequent meetings (note: this list was updated
after the announcement that was made on Friday during the
Florida meeting):
April 24-28, 1989 Minneapolis
July 10-14, 1989 San Jose
October 16-20, 1989 Brussels
January 1990 New Orleans
P1003.2-N071
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April 1990 Research Triangle Park, NC
July 1990 Seattle/Portland
October 1990 Albuquerque
Helene Armitage
Atts.
Attachment A-Agenda
Attachment B-Meeting Foils
Volume-Number: Volume 16, Number 11