Standards Update, IEEE 1201: User Interface

[Moderator, John S. Quarterman]

From: Jason Zions <uunet!cnd.hp.com!jason>

I couldn't let Peter Salus' report go without comments.

> ... 1201 has recommended that XLib go to
>ballot directly, a proposal which seems to have so shocked the SEC
>that they put off deciding on balloting till April.  Steve Jobs told
>the USENIX audience in Phoenix, in June 1987, that X was ``brain-
>damaged''.  Whether that's true or not, X has won, and just putting
>XLib to a vote makes good sense.

Peter leaves out some important details which make the SEC action
appear somewhat more intelligent. The primary issue raised related to
exactly which specification of XLib was to become the standard. In
other words, whose document would get the IEEE document number? The MIT
Xlib spec? Which one - X11R3 or R4? Are there changes for R5? Is the
document technically correct?  What about X/Open's version of the Xlib
spec - is it cleaner? Tighter?  Easier to understand? More accurate? Is
there a specification of Xlib detailed enough to permit implementation
of a new interoperable version?

The SEC didn't delay specifically to April; they delayed action until
the PAR sponsors could develop adequate answers to these questions.

>Over the past 40 years, ISO has approved or accepted over 20,000
>standards, which concern almost everything imaginable from hockey
>masks to medical prostheses to the hinging of radar masts on inland-
>waterway vessels.  The standards have arisen in a variety of ways,
>most emanating from one of the regional or 70-odd national standards
>bodies.  Typically, it has taken from four to ten years to progress
>from raising a committee to approving a standard.  The result of this
>has been general agreement within the concerned industry prior to the
>issuance of an international standard.  Wall plugs are an excellent
>example of what happens when the engineers and bureaucrats issue a
>standard without industry consensus.

I think you'll find there is no ISO standard for wall plugs. Every
country for itself, and some take several. (We all know that, when one
buys an appliance in the U.K., one must also buy a plug for the end of
the power cord and install it oneself or with the help of one's
electrician...)

>Moreover, does the standards process really require more than two or
>three folks per company?  There were 38 in attendance at the ISO/IEC
>Joint Technical Committee on Application Portability meeting in
>September (including the secretariat); there were nearly 300 in New
>Orleans.  My perception is that going to a POSIX meeting is a perk.
>Holding the meetings in Hawaii, New Orleans, and Snowbird does little
>to dissuade me.  The New Orleans host was OSF; the Snowbird host is
>Unisys.  Though the new Unisys is a big entity, I didn't realize they
>had a site in Snowbird; nor OSF one in New Orleans.

The opening sentence of this paragraph seems to be a non-sequitor with
respect to POSIX, not to mention the rest of the paragraph. Membership
in a POSIX working group or ballot group is independent of one's
employment affiliation; each person is accredited as a bona fide
technical expert.

More than that, many companies do indeed send only one or two people to
the meetings. Larger companies may send one person to each committee.
If all the standards in development may affect the course of business
for a vendor, why should that vendor *not* actively participate in the
development of those standards?

It may indeed be going overboard for a company to pay for more than one
employee to attend a single committee, but even that's not true in all
cases; in the case of 1003.1, an HP employee chairs the group and hence
cannot really pursue any particular corporate agenda; for HP's views to
be represented, an additional person needs to be there.

I fail to understand your objection to active participation in
voluntary standards making. Why should only three or five people meet
in a room and develop a particular standard? If it takes 30-50 people
an extra year to develop a better standard, or at least one with wider
concensus and greater industry buy-in, what's the problem?

Finally, regarding the matter of meeting venue. Unisys is headquartered
in Salt Lake City. You tell me - where are the largest meeting
facilities likely to be? Where can one obtain low-cost meeting
facilities at the end of April in Utah? Were you unhappy with the New
Orleans venue? Was the hotel price exhorbitant (given the number of
meeting rooms required)? Where would you have preferred we had met,
given the constraints of price, air-travel connectivity, number of
hotel rooms needed, and number of meeting rooms needed?

>C'mon, lets get back to work, not meetings for the holiday or for the
>sake of meetings.  1003.1 did good, solid work.  Some of the other
>groups are doing work, too.  Partying ain't part of it.  Bah!

You're quite right. Partying is not relevant to the Monday-Friday 9-6
work of the meeting. If you see working groups goofing off during the
week, feel free to name names and point fingers. Tarring all 1003
groups save 1003.1 (past-tense, as well!) with the same brush of
laziness is unfair (not to mention terrible reportorial practice).

And yes, having the Sunday before and the Saturday after a meeting in a
pleasant locale *is* a perq for many of us. Most attendees work damn
hard during the course of the week. The meetings have to be help
*someplace*; if the cost can be maintained at a reasonable level, why
object to a nice location?

Jason Zions
Chairman of, but not speaking for, 1003.8 POSIX TFA

Volume-Number: Volume 19, Number 36