Austin Group Status Update                              Austin-30 Page 1 of 1
Submitted by Andrew Josey, The Open Group.              July 25th, 1999

This  is a brief status update after this weeks Austin Group meeting.

The third meeting of the joint technical working group informally
known as the Austin Group was held at the Hotel Europa in Montreal (hosted
by the IEEE PASC) on July 20-22 1999. The meeting had 21 attendees 
(some part-time) and one attendee part-time via teleconference.

The objective of this meeting was to review the draft one specifications.
A three day plenary session was held, and over 830 change requests
were processed (at an average of 47 aardvark requests per hour).

A discussion on style issues was held and directions given
to the editors to address many of the identified issues. Some layout issues
remain, such as whether man page format is allowable, whether each man page
needs clause numbering and whether shaded
text (say for XSI extensions) can be taken as informative text appearing
within the normative requirements for POSIX conformance. Actions have
been assigned to clarify the requirements. These layout issues relate
directly to the usability of the document, and if no
compromise can be reached, it is most likely that multiple 
versions of the document will need to be rendered from the single source.

The next draft will be produced in October and will fold in the changes
identified by the review of draft 1 and rework the style issues (use of
imperative shall and fonts for characters etc). There will be no formal
review period for draft two.

Draft three is scheduled for February 29 2000, and based on the
feedback from reviewers for draft 1 there will be an
increased review period (8 weeks). At the present time draft three is 
anticipated to include XNS5v2, POSIX 1003.1a, 1003.2b, 1003.2d and other
amendments completing by December 31st 1999. 


The next meeting will be in late December 1999 or  January 2000. This will 
be a planning meeting to confirm contents for draft 3.

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.