Standards Update Part 4: 1003.5

[David E. Emery]

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From: dee at linus.MITRE.ORG (David E. Emery)

	Standards Update                              Part 4: 1003.5
	
	          An update on UNIX|= Standards Activities
	       January 1989 IEEE 1003 Meeting, Ft. Lauderdale
	
	
	     1003.5 - Ada Bindings to POSIX
	
	     This quarter's 1003.5 report points out some problems
	that are really endemic to the entire standards making
	process.  To wit, the people involved in making standards
	are rarely those who end up using them.  The user community
	does not (generally) have the wherewithal or time to join
	standards committees and attend standards committee
	meetings.  POSIX, like all other standards, suffers from
	this problem.
	
	     In the case of 1003.5, the problem manifests itself in
	a new way.  While there are few members of the committee,
	the vendor and end user community are about evenly
	represented.  This would seem to be an advantage.
	Unfortunately, the Ada vendor and user community is not a
	UNIX oriented community.  The members of this committee,
	while very knowledgeable about Ada and its requirements, may
	not be as well verse in traditional UNIX semantics as one
	would like.
	
	     This may change as the DoD (and the entire US Federal
	Government) becomes more interested in POSIX.  Until that
	time, 1003.5 is going to suffer from a dearth of UNIX
	oriented members.  This may cause them to produce a standard
	that, while strong in Ada terms, is weak when it comes to
	its relationship to POSIX based systems.
	
	     The Ada language binding group has a goal of having a
	standard Ada binding for P1003.1 by the end of 1989, with
	balloting to take place some time in the fall.  The first
	draft of this standard was available for the January meeting
	of the POSIX committees, and it is going to take quite a bit
	of work to get it ready for a fall ballot.  This committee
	is really in desparate need of some warm bodies - preferably
	with Ada and UNIX backgrounds.

---------------
I don't think this is a very fair characterization of our working
group.  It may have been true at Minneapolis (where most of the 1003.5
officers, for various reasons, were unable to attend), but many of us
have a pretty solid Unix background.  It is true that we sometimes
have to educate the 'uninitiated'.  It is also true that we need more
bodies, particularly people literate in both Unix and Ada.  However,
there is a substantial interest in Ada on Unix, indicated by the large
number of vendors (Verdix, Telesoft, Alsys, Meridian, DDC and Tartan
Labs <this list is probably not complete, either>).

However, I take significant exception to the implication that the
1003.5 committee "does not understand Unix."  This is particularly
true when you look at the expressed attitude of the rest of 1003, that
"we don't care about Ada", or at best "we don't have time to learn
Ada".  We have a major problem when Ada and Unix clash, a problem I
don't think that the rest of P1003 can appreciate (given their narrow
C focus).

				dave
				emery at mitre.org

[ The report was based on the Minneapolis meeting.
It's good to see some counter opinions, though.  -mod ]

Volume-Number: Volume 16, Number 41