Subject: Minutes of IEEE 1275 committee meeting on 07/18/95 Date: Wed, 26 Jul 95 11:58:37 -0600 From: "Dr. Luan D. Nguyen" Dear IEEE 1275-1994 Committee members, Attached please find the minutes of our last meeting on July 18th, 1995 at FirmWorks, Mountain View, CA. Also please remind that: (1) our next meeting will be on September 19th at IBM, Austin, TX , and (2) please also check the "Action Item Summary" at the end of this note for your action items. Thank you and have a nice day. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1- Attendees Mitch Bradley FirmWorks/President (415)961-1302 wmb@firmworks.com Chairman IEEE 1275-1994 Committee David M. Kahn Sun Microsystems/ (415)336-2784 dmk@Eng.Sun.Com Vice Chair IEEE 1275-1994 Committee/ Firmware/OS Architecture Luan Nguyen IBM/Sys. Arch./ (512)838-1292 duyluan@austin.ibm.com Secretary IEEE 1275-1994 Committee Ron Hochsprung Apple/Sys. Arch. (408)974-2661 ron@apple.com Mike Segapeli IBM pPS Firmware (512)838-8428 mikes@austin.ibm.com John Dickol IBM Microelectronics(512)838-6005 dickol@vnet.ibm.com Jordan Brown Sunsoft (310)348-6039 jordan.brown@west.sun.com David Paktor HAL Computer (408)379-7000 x1366 paktor@hal.com John Rible Quicksand (408)458-0399 jrible@cruzio.com John Kingman IBM RSD (512)838-1546 kingman@austin.ibm.com Abraham Torres IBM RSD (512)838-7644 abraham@austin.ibm.com 2- Review Agenda Proposed agenda was reviewed and approved 9-0-0. 3- Last meeting minutes review Vote passed to approve the last meeting minutes (9-0-0). 4- Standard Progress Report 1275.3 is still in ballot 1275.4: Recirculation period is over and we are waiting to hear from IEEE. AI: Martin to follow up with IEEE and to report back the new status. 1275.6: Ballot closed, but seems like we cannot get enough vote and also wait to hear from IEEE. The committee current concensus is that if because of any reason 1275.6 do not pass IEEE process, we will publish it as an recommended practice document. David Kahn reported that our Web page was created with many interesting features including but not limited to the Open Firmware song. Now, users can get to our Web page to access/download/print many different Open Firmware publications/documents, check out the minutes of our meetings, or agenda/location of our future meetings.... Committee acknowledged the hardwork that David have put in (especially his time to be estimated at 3 weeks) and conveyed our appreciation. Future enhancement ideas are provided to David and AI to Ron about the link to yahoo. Next time when you surf the net, please check out our Web home page http://playground.sun.com/pub/1275 and tell us how you think. 5- Action Items Review The following AIs are still opened: * Mitch: to follow up TI patent issue with Harrison Beasley. Open, pending on Ron's effort to check on TI licensing/royalty on NuBusthat may provide a path to solve this patent issue. Mitch to also e-mail Ron, Luan and Bob the patent number. * Dave Trissell: COFF and PE writings are still open. Kip to remind and work with Dave. * All authors/editors of each "recommended practice" documents have action item to update the document template and its contents per discussion * Mitch: encapsulate #251 to recommended practice document. * Mitch: encapsulate "interposer" to recommended practice document. * David Kahn: Standard properties document 6- Future Meetings Sept. 19, 1995: to be host by IBM Austin, TX. IBM will also host binding meetings on Sept 20, 1995. Oct. 31, 1995: to be hosted by FirmWorks Inc, Mountain View, CA. Mitch will also host November 1st, 1995 binding meetings. Jan. 16 & 17, 1996: tentatively Motorola Austin, TX. AI: Luan to contact Kip to confirm. 7- Errata document (.7): John Rible will have new draft in the next couple weeks. 8- Recommended Practice boiler template: The following is the text for 1.3 boiler template for recommended practice documents that was approved by the committee during this meeting: * Typo on internet address to change to http://playground.sun.com/pub/1275 * Boiler plate to relate version number with proposal number. * Committee agreed to bump version number every time we change documents from draft to approved version. AI: David Kahn to send to Ron sections on definitions to be put in the template. AI: Ron to add line number to the template. 9- Open Firmware: Recommended Practice - 16-color Text Extension Committee agreed to change the word "light" to "bright" (e.g light blue to bright blue...). Committee also agreed to try out the following to set the current and future brightness/color: * Notation: FG(foreground): brightness, color EFF FG: brightness, color BG(background): brightness, color EFF BG: brightness, color (note EFF which stands for effective is the actual display) Esc[1m sets FG brightness to 1 Esc[2m sets FG brightness to 0 Esc[0m sets FG brightness to 0, EFF FG to FG EFF BG to BG Esc[7m sets EFF FG to BG EFF BG to FG Esc[3xm sets FG br to FG br and FG color to x Esc[4xm sets BG br to FG br and BG color to x Note: if you are in inverse mode and you do 3xm, BG is undefined. 10- Open Firmware Recommended Practice - 8-bit Graphics Extension Committee agreed to change the name of the methods "color-!" and "color-@" to "color!" and "color@". Committee also agreed on the following geometry text: dimensions (-- width height ) Returns visible width and height in pixels. The returned values are the visible dimentsions of the screen in the current mode. NOTE: Client programs may test for the existance of this method, and if it does not exist, use the 'width' and 'height' properties. If the method does exist, it's return values may differ from the static property values. 11- Proposals: #275: Withdrawn by John Kingman #276 to 278: Remanded to PowerPC Binding Committee 12- New Issues: a-Request of two new FCodes from David Paktor: Committee response is to use tokenizer rather than add new official FCode. b-Softex identifies 5 items: 1- size-method: issue solved. 2- the use of offset-hi and offset-low: committee agreed to create a binding to recommend it as recommended practice. 3- the PReP document should add information on block device class and state them as recommended practice. 4- Add to devices extension document a paragraph to specify an additional requirement: SCSI devices shall implement properties and methode defined by section E.1 to section E.5 of the base IEEE 1275 document. Note: this will effectively raise the status of these sections from informative to normative. 5- Add to devices extension document a new section for block and byte devices to specify an additional requirement. Add size-method and number-block method provided in the proposal #248. Also add: offset-low returns least significant cell of the double number denoting the beginning offset of the partition of the disk device that was specified when the disk-label support package was opened. In general that offset is obtained by executing the offset method of the disk-label support package with an argument of zero. It is permissible for the disk package to execute the disk-label support package's offset method was after opening that support package storing the result for later use. Offset-high is the most significant cell of the double number... (the rest of the paragraph is similar to offset-low) c- ARC Terminal: committee reviewed the document from Kip. AI: Kip to update as discussed. 13- Action Items Summary Old AIs left: See section 5 on Action Items Review in this note. New AIs: * David Kahn to send to Ron sections on definitions to be put in the recommended practice boiler template. * Ron Hochsprung to add line number to the recommended boiler template. * 16-bit color text extension and 8-bit graphics extension to be updated as discussed by the editor. * Mike Segapeli to update the devices extensions document as described in section 12 above. * Kip to update the ARC terminal document and follow up with Dave Trissell on COFF and PE writings.