Unapproved Meeting Minutes BSI IST/5/-/15 (Posix) Panel Date: 25-Nov-1994 Location: BSI HQ Room 408 389 Chiswick High Road London W4 4AL Those Present: Dave Cannon (Chairman) University of Exeter Martin Kirk X/Open Rob Smith NHS Derek Jones Knowledge Software Jon Leigh NCC Bruce Payette MKS Papers before the meeting: P265 IST/5/-/15 Agenda, 25-Nov-1994 P266 IST/5/-/15 Minutes, 30-Sep-1994 P267 UK Report to ISO WG15, Vancouver, 24-28-Oct P268 WG15 N511: UK Discussion Paper on Apps Conformance P269 WG15 Actions, Vancouver, required of UK WG15 P270 WG15 Meeting report, Vancouver, 24-28 Oct DC P271 WG15 Resolutions, Vancouver, 24-28 Oct WG15 P272 IEEE PASC Posix group status report IEEE/WG15 Authors: DC Dave Cannon 0. Apologies David Brownbridge Praxis David Rogers Data Logic David Ferbrache DRA 1. Adoption of Agenda: P265 2. Approval of Minutes: P266 The 'minutes' of the previous meeting were approved with the following corrections: . References to EWOS EG CAE should be EWOS EG OSE. . In Item 4: Rob Smith took the system Admin drafts for reference, rather than for comment. . References to the language 'c' should be 'C' throughout. 3. Matters Arising, including Action items: 30-Sep: Convenor to contact Jim Isaak, convenor of WG15, requesting an agenda item for the October meeting of WG15 to discuss the issues of Posix Application Conformance. (Done: 4-Oct-94) Some panel members expressed the belief that X/Open is the only body which is keeping Posix alive, particularly with respect to Conformance testing. Other members believed that this is a European perception, and that Posix in the US is healthy. Some public bodies are now asking for proof of application conformance, but they are relying on verbal assurances and are not asking for any kind of testing, even though tools are available to check such claims. It was also thought that vendors often work in a state of ignorance of the Posix standard(s) - they often don't have a copy. DJ suggested vendors should be requested by prospective purchasers to document non-conformant aspects of their products in procurement exercises. It was expected that the NHS will be requesting X/Open's XPG4 as a mandatory requirement from next year, and the DTI are promoting a PROST document on procurement strategies, which will hopefully be available early next year. JL offered to keep the panel appraised of developments. The discussion moved on to conformance testing standards, and JL indicated that the NCC doesn't have any manpower to progress the proposed UK NP on generalised Conformance testing (WG15 N423), (originated through the UK Posix panel following proposals from the NCC); it doesn't believe the process would produce anything useful in any reasonable timescale. JL reported that EWOS EG CT is becoming active in the area of generalised Conformance testing, and the NCC is concentrating its efforts here. IST/5/-/15 will keep a watching brief on progress, via JL who will act as a conduit between the panel and EWOS. Action: JL to report back on EWOS EG CT progress at the next panel meeting. 30-Sep: Rob Smith to talk to contacts within the NHS to determine whether such a strategy was acceptable to their requirements, and respond to IST/5/-/15 convenor by 14-October. (Done) 30-Sep: Colin O'Driscoll to submit comments on ISO 10646 to WG15 at its next meeting, October '94. (OBE) There is only limited expertise in the ISO 10646 standard within the IST/5/-/15 members present at the meeting - it was decided to allow the action to die. 30-Sep: Convenor to forward P259 to WG15 and to the US development body as the current WD of the UK Posix Profile. (Done: 4-Oct-94) 30-Sep: Convenor to contact Richard Carr, NCC, to establish whether they have any input to offer to the October WG15 meeting on Draft 8 of the 2003.2 document. (Done: 20-Oct-94) [No input: NCC are concentrating their efforts on the EWOS EG on OSE] 30-Sep: Convenor to contact Richard Carr, NCC, and Martin Kirk, X/Open, to establish whether they have any input to offer to the October WG15 meeting on the impact of ISO 10646 on Posix standards. (Done: 20-Oct-94) [No input: NCC are concentrating their efforts on the EWOS EG on OSE] DJ - the revision of the C standard will allow local character codes in identifiers. This does impact portability somewhat. This raises the question as to whether Posix will allow local character encodings for identifiers in its API. (Reserved words will not be included in this development of the new C standard). 27-May: 9405-42 Member bodies: Determine the feasibility of working with CEN as documented in N444 for the registry of POSIX national profiles, locales and charmaps for discussion at the Oct/94 meeting [This action continues. The (inconclusive) discussion noted that CEN was an appropriate repository for such items, but the mechanism for establishing and maintaining a dialog between SC22/WG15 and CEN was unclear to the group. This will be revisited at this meeting of IST/5/-/15] (Done: see below) 30-Sep: Failing other input at the September meeting, the above comment on the feasibility of working with CEN as a repository of POSIX national profiles, locales and charmaps will be passed to the October meeting of WG15. (Done: 24-Oct-94) 30-Sep: Convenor to speak to Peter Owens (RG CPA Rapporteur) for his views on how the work on the guide for National Profiles and Locales is to be structured and completed. (WG15 AI 9405-44 refers). (Done: 22-Jun-94) [Peter Owens has not yet had opportunity to read and evaluate the GNPNL document]. WG15 debated this issue at some length in October, and came to no official conclusion - Japan, authors of the National Profile part of the draft, were happy to see the work progressed within the IEEE. Denmark (authors of the National Locales section) opposed this, and wanted work progressed within WG15, to allow them access to working group meetings. Several compromises were attempted in formulating a resolution to adopt the work; none were acceptable to Denmark. Ultimately the resolution was withdrawn. It is expected that a Japanese member of the IEEE will submit a PAR to IEEE PASC to attempt to introduce the work item and to progress it through PASC. EWOS EG SEC have produced a set of locales, including a Welsh one. Action: Convener to pass a copy of the EWOS EG SEC document to Greger Leijonhufvud for comment and response. (Done: 5-Dec-94) 30-Sep: Convenor to contact David Ferbrache and enquire whether he has an interest in IST/33 matters and would be willing to act as a conduit. (Done: 5-Oct-94) Action: DF has not yet replied to the query on his acting as a contact for IST/33 (from IST/5). Convener to chase. (Done: 28-Nov-94) 4. Progress of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15: P267,P268 The two papers were noted. Discussion on application conformance has been noted under actions arising (above). . Consideration of ISO ballots: . Actions: The vote on the PDAM to ISO/IEC 9945-2 (Batch Services) was noted. The document is IEEE 1003.2d Draft 12.2, BSI 94/646474, SC22 N1645. This has a revised response date - the vote is due at SC22 on 1994-12-30. (IST/5 has requested panel input at its next meeting, 94-12-7). The panel approved a 'YES' vote, with the comment that WG15 should take account of the changes to the document in the final IEEE recirculation ballot. (Draft 12.3) ISO/IEC 14519-1 POSIX Ada Language Interfaces (Responses due at BSI - 1995-02-25). The panel has little Ada expertise. DJ noted that there were differences between the 9945-1 conformance statements and those in the Ada draft. The panel agreed to recommend a 'YES' vote. Action: DJ to supply text for a comment on the conformance statement in the Ada document. . Status Report of SC22/WG15, P270 . Actions: P269 The documents were noted, P270 being the report of the WG15 meeting in October, P269 being the actions on the UK from that meeting: these are reproduced below: Action: 9410-02 UK: To provide a report on the progress of its National profile to SC22/WG15 by the May 1995 meeting. (Ongoing) Action: 9410-06 Member bodies: Comment to WG15 RIN draft position on ISO 10646 impact on POSIX standards (open action item 9310-47, 9405-23) (Ongoing) [The RIN Draft position paper is not yet available for the panel to comment on] 9410-16 Member bodies: Notify Project Editor of the names of the participants for the Synchronization AdHoc by December 31, 1994. (Done: 28-Oct) Martin Kirk volunteered to participate. KS (Denmark) was asked to add the name to the new email 'Sync' list. More volunteers will be very welcome. Action: 9410-19 Member bodies: Provide input on identification of existing conformance testing activities to the WG15 RGCT Rapporteur (See N526, section 5.1) (Open) Action: Convener to pass N526 to JL for comment on existing conformance testing activities prior to the next IST/5/-/15 meeting. (Done: 21-Dec) 9410-22 Member bodies: Submit names to be included in the synchronization Email list to Keld Simonsen by 18 Nov. 1994. (Done: 28-Oct) See 9410-16 above. 9410-26 United States: Forward the following documents to the convener for SC22/WG15 Review and Comment: P1003.2b Shell and Utilities - Extensions: Draft 10 P1003.1i Technical Corrections to Real Time System API Extensions: Draft 2 P2003R Test Methods for Measuring Conformance to POSIX Standards (revision of IEEE Std. 1003.3:1991): Draft 5 Action: 9410-27 Member bodies: Review documents listed in 9410-26. (Open) Convener to copy the following documents to the following panel members on receipt of the documents from WG15: . 1003.2b D10 to RS for review. (Done: 3-Mar-95) . 1003.1i D2 to DJ for review. (Done: 22-May-95) . 2003R D5 to JL for review. (Done: 8-Jun-95) 9410-30 Member bodies: Review SC22/WG15 N511 and provide any feedback to the SC22/WG15 Email distribution list. (Done) This is the UK paper on application conformance testing. MKS indicated that they are not interested in any formal applications conformance testing. This fits in with the views of most vendors who have expressed an opinion. 9410-32 Member bodies: Provide attendee list for October 1995 meeting to Barry Needham by the May 1995 WG15 meeting. (Open) This led on to a debate on the new availability of AITS funding to some other member of IST/5/-/15, since the Convener, being an employee of a University, is no longer eligible to receive it. There was no immediate taker. Action: Convener to email the membership asking if there is any interest in taking the AITS cash. (Done: 28-Nov-94) DJ then talked to his letter to IST/-/1 on the redistribution of AITS funds to the more deserving (more relevant) panels and therefore standards. There is a case for drumming up more support/attendance for IST/5/-/15. The present set of attendees form the usual sub-set of the mailing list, which was revised about a year ago. Action: Convener to approach IST/5 to determine an effective means of increasing the panel's attendance/activity. (Done: 7-Dec-94) The debate concluded that there is no merit in supporting languages for their academic qualities - industry should be funding, and the BSI should be standardising, commercially relevant work. It was noted that HP is heavily into Pascal for its systems programming language, for example, but that this is one of the Panels on DJ's hit list. IST/5/-/15 notes that the C/C++ proposal raises some important issues of principle; the Posix panel believes that there should be more support for the commercially useful language panels and less for the more esoteric panels, specifically that Panels should be enabled to attract commercial sponsorship to support their work. The proposal to reapportion the available support raises some interesting problems of evaluation criteria. How is this decided? The panel offered a number of alternatives, but reached no conclusion. Action: Convener to email a summary of the above proposal on reapportioning financial support for IST/5's panels to the email reflector for comment and feedback prior to IST/5. (Done: 28-Nov-94) Action: 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. (Open) Action: Convener to circulate the documents N444 and N515 for discussion next meeting. (Done: 19-Feb-95) 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. (Done) East coast was recommended. . Resolutions: P271 5. Progress of IEEE PASC Posix WGs . Consideration of IEEE ballots: . Status Report of IEEE PASC: P272 Body count at the last PASC meeting was down again, to about 130. This could be because many documents are now in ballot, and those people don't turn up to meetings. The IEEE Posix effort could be in danger of completing! This could be made worse by JTC1 electing to vote on Publically available specifications as standards. In a discussion on distribution of IEEE drafts for review the availability of drafts by (anonymous) FTP was raised. Action: MK to find and advise email list of anonymous FTP sites for Posix standards, for use by IST/5/-/15's members. . Security aspects: (DF) No report. 6. Rapporteur Groups: . Report of Verification RG ( ) JL reported that NCC will not be sending anyone along to RGCT in future, they will be concentrating effort on EWOS. BSI QA appear to be dropping their activities in this area too. . Report of Internationalisation RG (GL) No report. . Report of Profile Coordination RG (PO) No report. CCTA are reducing their activities in Posix now that 1003.0 has been successfully produced. 7. Liaison with other Standards Committees and Panels: . IST/5 Report: (DC) The report to IST/5's last meeting was noted. . IST/5/-/14 Liaison: (DJ) Wide character DIS succeeded with no votes from the UK and NL on the Danish parts. UK position is that C should stay small and fast, but there are proposals from other quarters for a bigger and better o-o version. Defect reports are still being filed and handled. 8. Any Other Business Meeting dates for 1995 were determined as follows: A number of attendees remarked on the difficulty of reaching BSI's Chiswick venue for a 10:30 meeting start. MK indicated that space at X/Open's offices in Reading might be available for the February meeting. Venues for the other meetings remain open. The possibility exists of starting meetings later in the day if held at BSI Chiswick. February 24 Reading, X/Open offices May 19 September 8 November 24