P382
		            BSI IST/5/-/15 (POSIX)

		         POSIX Panel Activity Report
		                 15 March 1999

	1. Introduction

	IST/5/-/15 has met once since the last IST/5 meeting, on the 18
	December 1998. WG15 last met between the 15-16 January 1999; a
	meeting report is attached.

	2. ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15

	The most significant points from the WG15 meeting were:

	      . This was to be the first meeting for the new WG15 Convenor,
		Jim Oblinger.

	      . A collaboration between IEEE PASC, WG15 and The Open
		Group (TOG) has been put in place to consider the matter
		of the revision of POSIX. See the separate section
		on the Austin Group below. The WG15 participation is
		as a Rapporteur Group. Nick Stoughton (the UK POSIX panel
		convenor) is the designated WG15 Organizational Representative
		to the Austin Group.


	      . For 1999 meetings are two per year. These will both
		be colocating with PASC meetings. The next meeting is
		in July in Montreal.

	      . WG15 authorised the forwarding of a number of documents
		corresponding to its set of work items.


	3. The Austin Group

	A new collaboration is underway to develop a revision of
	the core POSIX and UNIX specifications.  Participants include
	IEEE PASC, ISO/IEC WG15 and The Open Group,with the group informally
	known as the "Austin Group".

	The Austin Group is a joint technical working group established
	to consider the matter of a common revision of ISO/IEC 9945-1,
	ISO/IEC 9945-2, IEEE Std 1003.1, IEEE Std 1003.2 and the
	appropriate parts of the Single UNIX Specification.

	The approach to specification development is  "write once, adopt
	everywhere", with the deliverables being a set of specifications
	that will carry both the IEEE POSIX designation and The Open
	Group's CAE Specification designation, and if adopted an
	ISO/IEC designation.  The new set of specifications are aiming
	for technical completion in early 2001.

	The target audience for the revised standard is users rather than
	system implementors, and the Open Group's specifications that
	form the core part of the Single UNIX Specification are being
	used as the Base documents. These use a style and alphabetical
	organization more suited to the user audience.


	The procedures that the group operates under have been developed
	by a joint committee of IEEE PASC, ISO/IEC SC22/WG15 and The
	Open Group.  These procedures are designed to enable multi-party
	participation in specification development.

	One item that IST/5/-/14 (C Panel) is asked to consider is that
	the Single UNIX Specification, which is the base document for
	the POSIX revision contains overlapping material with the ISO
	C Standard (in many cases due to common heritage).  Since one
	of the aims of this revision is to produce a standard aimed at
	the target user audience rather than system implementors, they
	wish to retain this material and propose to mark each page with
	a notice that the interfaces are defined in ISO C and in the
	case that conflicts occur they defer to the ISO C definition.
	The proposed text is:
		The functionality described on this manual page is aligned
		with the C standard. Any conflict between the requirements
		described here and the C standard are unintentional. This
		document defers to the C standard.
	The extensions beyond ISO C will also be marked clearly as
	extensions.

	The chair is Andrew Josey from The Open Group (and also the UK
	POSIX panel).  See http://www.opengroup.org/austin/ for more
	information.

	4. ISO Business, Recommended Votes, etc:

	No new business occurred.

	5. Future POSIX-Related Meetings:

	    1999:
		11-17 April     IEEE Posix groups       Charlotte, NC
		18-23 July      IEEE Posix Groups       Montreal, Canada
		20-22 July      Austin Group            Montreal, Canada
		23 July         ISO JTC-1/SC22/WG15     Montreal, Canada
		20-24 September ISO JTC1/SC22           Berlin, Germany
		October         IEEE Posix Groups       ??
		6-10 December   Austin Group            ??
	   2000:
		27-31 March     Austin Group            ??
		10-15 July      Austin Group            ??
		23-27 Oct       Austin Group            ??


	Andrew Josey (on behalf of the Panel Convenor)
	15-March-1999