BSI IST/5/-/15 (Posix Panel) Unconfirmed Minutes of Meeting 31-May-91 Attendees: Paul Roper: NP Paul Cheshire: Sema Group Don Hay: Haytec Associates Dave Cannon: University of Exeter Martin Kirk: X/Open Eric Davie: CCTA Ray Walker: DISC Colin O'Driscoll: NCC John Merrells: BSI QA David Brownbridge: Praxis Apologies: Vince Rich: Encore Dominic Dunlop: University of Oxford Agenda: The agenda was agreed as circulated. 0. Minutes The minutes of the previous meeting were accepted with the following amendments: . Apologies for the February meeting had been received from Paul King. . to Minute item 2, [Progress of ISO WG15 & P1003]: 'Item 11' should read 'Item 14'. . add an additional line: 'Item 40: Identify people to report on c++ and PCTE. Hugh Davis volunteered to report on PCTE. 1. Matters Arising There was no mention in the February minutes of the email distribution facility set up by MK at X/Open. MK volunteered to write a one-page paper detailing the service for distribution with these minutes, to ensure that all interested parties were aware of it. Action: Martin Kirk It was noted that Panel documents P122 and P123 as distributed had pages missing in some copies. Secretary to recirculate both documents. [Post-meeting note: P113 is identical in content to P122 - we can save trees/copying costs by reprinting just P123]. Action: Vince Rich Actions from the February meeting were summarised: . Chair to report to IST/5 the recommendation of the Panel that DISC should fund UK expert participation in IEEE meetings: IST/5 were not hopeful of a positive response. . Chair to report the emergence of Unicode to IST/5: IST/5 were aware of potential problems in this area. . Chair to explore the possiblity of a Cobol binding to Posix with IST/5: IST/5 felt that Language bindings were the province of the individual language group. . Chair to report likely attendance of an ISO/IEC JTC1/ SC22/WG15 meeting in New Zealand to Convenor of WG15: Done. Two attendees (MK & Don Folland) were likely from the UK. . Chair to report to IST/5 that the Panel were happy with ANSI development of the c++ standard. Done. IST/5 wanted appropriate control over the development of the ISO standard. . Chair to advise the WG15 Convenor of circulation of the wrong draft of the P1003.4 standard for approval as PDAD. Done. UK vote of approval was conditional on D10 or later forming the body of the document. IST/5 advised the Panel that it shall be designated IST/5/-/15 in all future documents. Action: Vince Rich The issue of a possible Cobol binding was reopened: RW felt that the large amount of business software written in Cobol merited a Cobol binding. MK said that X/Open's XPG4 specified only a Cobol language requirement, not a binding, but would check for interest in a binding with X/Open. Discussion moved to other organisations who may be interested in a Cobol binding: DH offered to check with ICL and PC with his contacts in IBM. Action: Martin Kirk (X/Open), Don Hay (ICL), Paul Cheshire (IBM). 2. Progress of Posix Standards a) ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15 progress: A report of the Rotterdam meeting was tabled and will be circulated with these minutes. DC reported the Japanese delegation's attempt to have approved a resolution to move WG15 to the proposed new SC under JTC1. This had no support and an alternative resolution (proposed by the UK) to commend that WG15 stay under SC22 was adopted. The other main outcome of the Rotterdam meeting was the approval of ten new NPs, including Conformance Testing, Networking, etc. The PDAD for 1003.4 was recommended for approval by SC22 after the various comments had been addressed. Resolutions #112 and #113 out of Rotterdam congratulated and commended the work of the OSCRL RG, especially that of Ian Newman and Herman Weegenaar, for the successful completion of their task. A number of resolutions requiring action were made at the Rotterdam meeting. The Panel will be formally asked to respond to these when the Rotterdam minutes are published; this list is prior warning: Resolution: #115: Participation in Profiling Activities: Member bodies were to encourage participation in these activities by software developers. Action: Panel members #117: Request to SGFS regarding OSE Profiles: Andrew Walker (X/Open) has offered to be WG15's liason to the SGFS meeting in Berlin. Action: Andrew Walker #119: RG on Coordination of Profile Activities (RGCPA): National bodies are required to nominate their participating experts. Action: Panel members - Volunteers required! #130: Conformance Testing: Member bodies are requested to make interested parties aware of the CT workshops. Action: Panel members #149: Reply to SC22 Request N891: Kevin Murphy is nominated as WG15 liason to SC21 WG1. Action: Chair to advise Kevin Murphy. #151: Meeting Locations: The UK has been requested to host one of the WG15 meetings in March/April '93 or either meeting in 1994. Action: Chair to seek BSI IST/5 authorisation. Action: Panel members to seek potential hosts to cover meeting costs. Rotterdam WG15 approved a number of action items; again this list is prior warning: Action: 9105:9 National Bodies to nominate an official WG15 liason to SC22/WG11. Action: Panel members - Volunteer may be required (if Paul Rabin [US] is unable to do so.) 9105:19 Member bodies to review and comment on JTC1/TSG1 report. [RW passed a copy of ISO/IEC JTC1 N1335 to the Panel for circulation with these minutes] Action: Panel members - R & C please. b) IEEE TCOS progress: A report was tabled and is circulated with these minutes [SC22 WG15 N157]. This details the current status of the IEEE Posix groups. 1238 Report (PC): An updated report was tabled and is circulated with these minutes. The first draft of 1238 will be in the June IEEE mailing, and the IEEE meeting in Santa Clara in July will amend this draft following a teleconference on its content. (Details of participation in teleconference in 1238 report). 1238.1 (FTAM) The functional definition is now in place and 1238 has had some useful input from X/Open, but the X/Open FTAM document is inadequate as a base for 1238.1 because it is a 'c' binding and is XTI oriented. 1238.1 will have a Posix LIS binding and will be OSI-stack oriented. The 1238 group is looking at a PAR for the Manufacturing Message Specification (MMS). MMS is a multi-part standard, the base parts being in IS 9506. MMS is a service and protocol specification for comms between shop-floor devices. The core part of the standard deals with those MMS functions common to all classes of communication. 1238 will concern itself with the kernel aspects. (MAP & TOP use MMS as part of their set of protocols. 1003.7 Report (MK): 1003.7 was one of the first groups to be vetted by the IEEE Project Management Committee (PMC) and gain approval. It has become clear that certain aspects of P1003.7 work are more advanced than others; the group is considering sub-dividing its work into a set of functional slices, and PMC has approved this approach. This will enable effort to be focussed on to smaller areas, which will total 14 or 15 in all. Only three will be active at any time, and the first three will be: . Printer Management (including the security issues raised at Rotterdam, ref IS 10175). . Software Management. . User Environment Management. PARs will be devised to cover these sub-divisions, and work on them will begin probably in October. 1201: This group has discussed the merits of a PAR to cover GUIs, and debated between standardising on both or neither of OpenLook and Motif. The decision was not to proceed with a PAR - yet. The issue will return. 3. Rapporteur Group Reports a) Security - No report. Action: Chair to contact Kevin Murphy for status. b) Verification Report (C'D): 1003.3.1 is recommended as NP to JTC1. (Rotterdam Resolution #129). C'D ran through the RG report, tabled and circulated with these minutes. The Panel discussed the merits of CT suites. It was important that ISO should develop a CT standard so that conformance was not the province of the IEEE. Currently there is not the rigour in Posix CT as there is in other ISO conformance requirements. Is it reasonable to use the existing Posix CTs since they test a sub-set of the standard? The Panel felt that any CT was better than none, and an ISO CT would be better than a National CT. Posix 1003.3 addresses conformance, not performance. This latter is a concern of 1003.4 (Real Time). It was noted that 1003.3 specifically addresses only 1003.1. Other Posix groups have to write their own conformance paradigms. The RG took a presentation on TET in Rotterdam. It was felt that harmonisation of test scaffolds was necessary before the next RG meeting; a workshop will be set up to assist this. (Rotterdam resolution #130 refers). c) Internationalisation (MK for Dominic Dunlop): SC22/WG20 has been formed - the ISO Internationalisation group - Posix RIN now has a target to liase with. 4. Liasons a) EWOS (ED): EWOS received no comments from any source on their report. (Circulated to the Panel as P113 and P122) The conformance testing part of the project is in abeyance. It will eventually take into account both the P1003.3 and the TET (nee Phoenix) test harness work. An interim report and Technical Guide was tabled and is circulated with these minutes. Comments would be welcomed by the EWOS group. MK will attend IST/2 as official liason, where this report is to be considered, therefore comments should also be passed to MK. Action: Panel members - to Review and Comment by 1-July-1991. 5. Any Other Business ISO/IEC IS 9945-1:1990 has been published. Available at all good BSI outlets now. Buy while stocks last! Action: Chair to post Posix networking group summaries to wg15-uk email distribution list. The meeting ended at 12:05 [Post-meeting note: The JNT (Joint Network Team of the Computer Board has extended, for a further twelve months, my contract to monitor the progress and to input to the Posix networking groups. If anyone has interest in or comment on these groups please let me know - I'll be attending the IEEE Posix meeting in Santa Clara from 8-12 of July, and setting up a NIST email distribution list to help the discussion. Dave Cannon] Date of next meeting: 30-August-1991