Subject: ANSI Window Standards Meeting

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 87 15:59:48 EST

Date: Fri, 30 Jan 87 13:58 EST
From: Robert Scheifler <[email-masked]>
Subject: ANSI Window Standards Meeting
To: [email-masked]

The following report comes from George Champine, Associate Director,
Project Athena (and also a Digital employee).  The "I"s mean him, not me.

On Jan. 26-30, I participated in the ANSI Window Standards meeting at
Ft. Collins, CO, chaired by Georges Grinstein of the University of
Lowell.
The window standards committee is formally designated as X3H3.6.  It is
chartered by the X3H3 committee, which is the ANSI committee responsible
for graphics standards (GKS, PHIGS, CGI, CGM, etc). The parent
organization of X3H3 is X3, whose chartered area of responsiblity is
information processing systems.  ANSI is the American National Standards
Institute, whose function is to establish national standards.

Prior to the meeting, I requested that a discussion of the relation of
the ANSI window standards effort to X be placed on the agenda.  It was
placed on the agenda as the first item of business because of its
importance.

I made a presentation on the nature of the X system, along with recent
events at the technical conference and news conference.  I also
described the various approaches to standardization that were open (
IEEE, XOPEN, NBS, or defacto).  I then suggested that a subcommittee be
appointed to develop a recommendation on approaching this issue.  My
suggestion was accepted, and a subcommittee chaired by Jan Silverman of
Calcomp was appointed.

In the following "ANSI" is a short form for "ANSI Window Standards
committee".  The report of the subcommittee was as follows.

1. X and the ANSI window reference model are not inconsistent.  It is
likely that X and NeWS can be mapped onto the reference model.  Jon
Brewster of HP has been given the assignment to do this mapping for X.

2. ANSI is receptive to adopting the X protocol, since it is formally
specified and since ANSI has not addressed this area.

3. A group of key ANSI people should meet with MIT to extend an
invitation for MIT to send a representative to ANSI.  This group should
also ask what MIT's intentions are with respect to future involvement in
X (this question will be asked because it was stated at the Protocol BOF
that MIT would have no more involvement in X).  The people from ANSI
that will attend will be Grinstein, Silverman, Brewster, and Champine.
I was asked to set up the meeting.

There are several concerns that ANSI has relative to adopting X.  These
come partly because they do not understand X, partly because they do not
know MIT, and partly because of NIH.  The following are the concerns as
of this time in decreasing priority order.

1. X can not support other drawing packages (i.e. PHIGS).

2. X does not support local input echoing on things like rubber band
boxes as NeWS can.  They are concerned about performance on low end
systems.

3. Only rectangular windows are supported, whereas NeWS supports non-
rectangular windows.

4. Except for the protocol, the documentation needs to be upgraded to be
a standard.  As an aside, Jon Brewster tells me that Siemens has offered
to fund HP to upgrade the documentation.  Tom Greene of Apollo has also
offered to upgrade the documentation for submission to IEEE  via usr/
group.

The above was submitted to the full window standards committee and was
approved unanimously with one abstention (Sun).

I also explored the alternative of presenting the X specification to
ANSI directly without going through X3H3.6.  This process is called
"canvasing", and operates as follows.

1. The originating organization develops the specification, and makes it
to all interested parties.

2. Comments are solicitated from these interested parties.

3. All comments are answered.

4. A vote is taken for approval of the specification by all interested
parties.  A majority is required for passage.

5. The specification, results of the vote, and evidence that all
interested parties have been given an opportunity to participate, is
forwarded to ANSI as a package.