Austin Group Status Update                              Austin/35 Page 1 of 1
Submitted by Andrew Josey, The Open Group. October 29th 1999

This is a brief status update after completion of draft two.

Draft 2 of the Austin Group Common Specifications was made available on
October 29th, completing almost four staff months of editorial work since
the Montreal meeting in July.

The Draft 2 specifications are available from the Austin Group web site,
at URL: http://www.opengroup.org/austin/login.html

There is no formal review for Draft 2. Draft two is out for a one month
informal review, reviewers are requested to check that the correct edits
have been made and to submit EDITORIAL bug reports. Objections and other
comments will be accepted, however we will not be able to address them until
the next formal review period (D3).

The informal review period commences today and completes at close
of business California time (5PM) on Wednesday December 1st 1999.

This draft has attempted to resolve many of the style issues raised
against draft one, and I am pleased to report that
recent discussions with the editorial team at IEEE and ISO have
indicated that the manual page format is acceptable. 

I am currently assessing the schedule for the next meeting
of the Austin Group (possibly in early January 2000). This would
be a project planning meeting (or possibly a series of teleconferences).

The next draft will be available on February 29th 2000
and at the moment is expected to contain merged text from XNS 5v2, P1003.1a,
P1003.1d and P1003.2b. We are monitoring the various PASC projects
to see when other amendments will be available for merging. The output
of the recent PASC meeting appears to impact the schedule in that
the first IEEE ballot most likely should be delayed until Draft 4 .
Editing for draft three will commence in early December. I expect to
circulate a revised schedule in the next couple of weeks.

The next formal review meeting will be in May 2000 to review aardvark
arising from draft 3. This meeting will be a five day meeting and be held
in either Cupertino or Copenhagen.