ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC22/WG15 (Posix) Meeting, Paris, France: June 1990


				Meeting Report

	The meeting ran from 12-June to 15-June-90,  and was preceded on
	the 11-June by three Rapporteur Groups on  Security, Conformance
	and Internationalisation.

	Thirty delegates from the USA, UK, Denmark, France  and Holland,
	Germany, Austria, Canada and Japan attended the meeting.

	The plenary began  with a review  of thirty-two action items; it
	was decided to ask for written responses to future action items,
	and for these to be distributed prior to future meetings,  since
	some  responses  could only  be made  by experts  who could  not
	attend meetings.

	The WG15 convenor, Jim Isaak,  reviewed current work in the IEEE
	P1003 TCOS groups.  There had been some unhappiness with the PAR
	approval process and some of the new groups have little support.
	SEC approved the establishment	of a new committee to police PAR
	approval criteria - in the past no PAR had been refused - and to
	periodically review progress. The new committee promptly refused
	PARs for a proposed Name spaces & Directory services group,  and
	also for a  proposed Traditional  Interactive Multi-user  System
	(TIMS) group, until the language-independent version of  P1003.1
	(System Kernel) currently in development has been produced.  The
	new committee also gave notice	that the  1224 group (X.400 API)
	would be terminated if it failed to make progress.

	In reviewing the Posix Distributed System work the UK emphasised
	that while it is enthusiastic that interfaces be designed to the
	Networking layers,  it does not  want any protocol  development,
	this being the province of other ISO groups.

	The UK queried whether the transfer of the OSCRL work within ISO
	from SC21/WG5 to SC22/WG15 had	ever been officially confirmed -
	without this the OSCRL input to the ISO 9945 work can only be on
	a liason basis.

	The meeting  divided into  three sub-groups  to consider  and to
	resolve the disposition of comments on:
		. 9945-1.2
		. 9945-2
		. Synchronisation & Harmonisation of ISO & IEEE work.

	Steve Carter  (BellCore) gave a presentation to the plenary on a
	development of the c language - c++ - which would have a bearing
	on future WG15 work.  The aim was to have identical ANSI and ISO
	standards for c++, with a document ready for ISO ballot in 1993.
	The  c++  group are  currently	looking  for more  international
	representation.

	The  most  significant	outcome  of  the  meeting  followed  the
	submission by the USA of four documents for consideration as ISO
	CDs - these would be the drafts  output from the latest round of
	comments:
		. P1003.2a (Shell & Utilities) was accepted

	    but . P1003.4  (Real Time)
		. P1003.5  (Ada binding)
	    and . P1003.9  (Fortran binding) were rejected, on the basis
	that the next version of the ISO 9945-1 standard and its addenda
	were to be presented in a language-independent form, not in a c-
	language form.

	A resolution to the USA member body asking for more haste on the
	language-independent form of  both the base  document and of its
	addenda  was  approved	by  the  meeting.   Thirty-four  further
	resolutions   to  SC22	were  approved,   covering  the  various
	work-items of the group.  The meeting closed at 13:15 on Friday,
	15-June.


		UK delegation:
			Don Folland	(WG15 Chair)   (CCTA)
			Ian Newman	(WG15 Secretary)
						       (OSCRL Convenor)
			Martin Kirk	(WG15 Drafting Cttee)
						       (BT Research Lab)
			Kevin Murphy	(WG15 Security Rap. Group)
						       (BT)
			Jon Leigh	(WG15 Conformance Rap. Group)
						       (NCC)
			Dominic Dunlop	(9945-1 Sub-Group Chair)
						       (Standard Answer)
			David Cannon	(UK Chair)     (JNT/University
							      of Exeter)


	Dave Cannon
	21-June-1990