ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15 N801
July 21, 2000
9907-15 (Member Bodies): Provide input to REV on any implementation of alternative command syntax for the “dd” command.
CLOSED. Canada has no input to offer on this action item.
9907-16 (Canada): Recommend action to the Austin Group for resolving Issue 3.
CLOSED. Ten years have now passed since this issue was first raised. At that time it was thought that a problem could arise if a non-POSIX conforming system, using path names that included characters outside of the portable file name character set, were to produce a pax archive, it could not be reliably restored on a strictly POSIX-conforming system, thus reducing data portability. That may very well still be the case. However, we have not heard of any reported problems of this nature in ten years and therefore this issue can now be considered closed, overcome by events.
9907-20 (Canada): By 31Dec99, provide a written proposal to REV to resolve Issue 10.
CLOSED. Canada has no further written proposal to provide to REV beyond the reference to the existing Canadian national collation standard that had previously been provided. Canada notes that the originator of this issue is no longer a participant in WG15 and therefore recommends that this issue be closed.
9907-21 (Member Bodies): Review and comment regarding Style Issues arising from draft 1 of the Austin Group revision document.
CLOSED. Canada supports the addition of page numbers in printed (or other "paged" representations such as PDF) versions and hypertext links in electronic (*ML) versions of the documents. However it would be desirable if these were maintained automatically rather than manually and it would not be desirable to have either embedded hypertext links in printed versions or page numbers in on-line (*ML) versions as these could confuse the reader and impair readability. It appears from the wording of the proposed recommendation that "page number ... cross-references ... must be correct in any alternative presentations" which could be interpreted to include an on-line HTML presentation where they would be inappropriate.
9907-26 (Member Bodies): Raise the issue of the C Revision which introduces incompatibilities with the POSIX standard and locales to their SC22 and WG14 advisory bodies to request that they take the steps necessary to get the C standard corrected to maintain compatibility between the C and POSIX standards.
CLOSED. Despite opposition from the Canadian POSIX Working Group, Canada voted to approve FDIS 9989 (C Language) as follows: "Canada approves the standard. During the review a small defect with the definition of "strftime" function, the details of which are in the hands of the document editor. It is our position that this is an editorial correction that we would like to see fixed before the document is published."
At our April, 1998 WG15 meeting "All agreed that annual face-to-face meetings were required, with substantial email business in the interim. There was much discussion on where such an annual meeting might be held; the US proposed in conjunction with SC22, Denmark and UK would prefer in conjunction with PASC (or perhaps TOG). The agreement is to alternate/rotate between these (SC22/PASC/TOG)." Since then we've held two meetings and exchanged 200+ emails, many of them administrative in nature. While our reduced workload is partly responsible, we still have action items open from over two years ago! Clearly annual meetings are inadequate, as we seem either unwilling or incapable of conducting substantial email business in the interim. Canada believes that we should return to more frequent meetings and suggests February 2001 in conjunction with PASC and TOG and September/October 2001 in conjunction with SC22. While more frequent than annual, this is still less than our previous semi-annual schedule. In the meantime we can continue to attempt to conduct more business electronically and re-adjust our meeting schedule should this prove more successful than it has to date.