CANADIAN POSIX WORKING GROUP Date: April 21, 1995 Supersedes: N/A Title: Canadian POSIX Working Group Report on ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15 N532 Action Items (Whistler Meeting) Source: CPWG Action Requested: Forward to the May 8-10, 1995 Meeting of SC22/WG15 in Enschede, the Netherlands CANADIAN POSIX WORKING GROUP REPORT ON ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15 N532 ACTION ITEMS (WHISTLER MEETING) 9410-06 Member bodies: Comment to WG15 RIN draft position on ISO 10646 impact on POSIX standards (open action item 9310-47,9405-23) Canada has no comments to offer at this time. 9410-08 Patric Dempster: Reorganize SD-3 to split open and resolved issue (open action item 9405-31) Completed. SD-3 dated 1994-10-28 reflects this split. 9410-16 Member bodies: Notify Project Editor of the names of the participants for the Synchronization AdHoc by December 31, 1994. Canada is unable to participate in the Synchronization AdHoc. 9410-19 Member bodies: Provide input on identification of existing conformance testing activities to the WG15 RGCT Rapporteur (See N526, section 5.1) No existing Canadian conformance testing activities have been identified. 9410-22 Member bodies: Submit names to be included in the synchronization Email list to Keld Simonsen by 18 Nov. 1994. There were no names to be included. (See 9410-16 above.) 9410-27 Member bodies: Review documents listed in 9410-27. Completed. No documents were listed for review. 9410-30 Member bodies: Review SC22/WG15 N511 and provide any feedback to the SC22/WG15 Email distribution list. Canada has no feedback to offer at this time. 9410-32 Member bodies: Provide attendee list for October 1995 meeting to Barry Needham by the May 1995 WG15 meeting. Completed. David Blackwood and Patric Dempster will both be attending the October 1995 WG15 meeting. 9410-35 Member bodies: Look at the technical aspects of SC22/WG15 N444 and the applicable portion of SC22/WG15 N515, in time for the May 1995 SC22/WG15 meeting. N444 is not sufficiently specific. It mixes topics, does not explain how ISO member bodies can add, change, or delete material in the repository and does not explain the ISO to CEN relationship sufficiently. We believe it may be possible for inappropriate modification to occur as it lacks clear rules for version control. This document is a good starting point but Canada would like to see significant improvement in these areas before it progresses further. 9410-37 Member bodies: Indicate a preference as to which part of Canada should be considered for the Fall 1997 meeting by the May 1995 meeting. Canada is also scheduled to host the SC22 plenary in the fall of 1997 in Ottawa, Canada. It is Canada's preference to have WG15 meet the following week in the same city. Additional Comments: David Blackwood will be the Canadian head of Delegation to WG15 and the Canadian rapporteur to RGCPA, replacing Arnie Powell who is not able to continue his participation in the standards process at this time. Canada wishes to thank Arnie for his valuable contributions over the years and wishes him well in his future endeavors. The Canadian POSIX Working Group has been reduced to about six active members. Consequently we are unable to sustain the same level of participation in WG15 activities as we have in the past. This decline is perhaps reflective of similar reductions in participation at other levels, and is an issue that will have to be addressed if additional POSIX related standards are to progress in a timely fashion. At the last meeting of the Canadian POSIX Working Group the new JTC1 Electronic Document Formatting requirements were discussed. This discussion uniformly condemned JTC1 for the approach taken in this matter because it not only ignores the existence of the POSIX family of standards but also other ISO standards such as SGML which just as easily could have been specified for this requirement. The insistence on the use of the proprietary Microsoft MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Word for Windows (or Novell WordPerfect for Windows), and Microsoft RTF is considered to be unreasonable, unjustified, and a personal affront to those who have worked on developing vendor independent open systems standards. Canada asks WG15 to protest this decision most strongly and requests that a timetable be established for conversion to SGML and the distribution of a recommended SGML tag set. -- David J. Blackwood Systems Integration Manager Room 1139, 400 Cumberland Street Inter-Office Communications Section Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0L8 Office Communications Division Voice: 613 957-9305 Fax: 613 952-1095 Revenue Canada Internet: dave@revcan.ca