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OSF Flash - Motif an IEEE Standard

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (corpcom@osf.org)
Wed Jan 19 15:52:54 1994

Resent-From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
Resent-To: osf-news-mtg@menelaus.LOCAL
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 94 13:08:14 -0500
From: corpcom@osf.org
To: contacts-january@osf.org, eu-steering@osf.org, isv-steering@osf.org,

Date:  Tue, 18 Jan, 94

To:    OSF Members

From:  corpcom@osf.org (OSF Corporate Communications)
                       Open Software Foundation


****************************************************

                OSF ELECTRONIC FLASH

****************************************************
An electronic mail news flash for OSF Members from 
the Open Software Foundation
  
                                    January 18, 1994

This news was recently released to the press.

CONTACT: Jane Smeloff
         Open Software Foundation
         617 621-8997


     OSF/Motif Officially Adopted As IEEE Standard   
  Industry confirms Motif as the formal GUI standard


CAMBRIDGE, MA January 17, 1994 - The Open Software 
Foundation announced today that OSF/Motif has been 
formally approved by a unanimous vote of the balloting 
group of the IEEE Computer Society Standards Board as the 
graphical user interface (GUI) standard P1295 - the 
Modular Toolkit Environment.  The final approval that was 
received in December acknowledges Motif as the formal 
open systems user interface standard.

The P1295 standard specification of more than six hundred 
pages is derived from the OSF/Motif documentation set, 
and specifies both the application programming interface 
(API) and appearance and behavior (look and feel) for 
Motif.  Motif 1.2 is compliant with this new standard.  

"This is an excellent example of how a membership-
supported open systems development group working closely 
with a formal standards organization can produce a solid 
solution to meet both vendor and user requirements,"  
said Elizabeth Connolly, director of OSF's User 
Environment Component.  "This achievement is a clear 
indication that OSF is on target, producing the right 
technology and specifications needed for the open systems 
graphical user environment. And we especially would like 
to thank all OSF members who contributed to this IEEE 
standard in the work group and in the balloting group."

"This project completes one of OSF's open systems 
technology cycles," said John Morris, director of 
liaisons and senior technical representative to worldwide 
standards bodies for OSF. "The OSF/Motif technology came 
about through an open  process that selected Motif as 
the premier technology in X Window System (tm) toolkits.  
This was followed by a series of OSF software development 
cycles that produced the reference technology, 
specifications and a test suite.  And finally, now that 
Motif has been proven both as a technology and as an open 
systems specification,  a formal standard has been 
derived from the OSF work and approved by the open, 
voluntary process of the IEEE which assures the industry 
of high quality, consensus standards," continued Morris.  

The IEEE standards development process is based on 
voluntary participation from technical industry experts 
who form working groups, develop draft standards and meet 
regularly, ensuring that a high degree of consensus is 
maintained.  Finally, when the draft achieves working 
group consensus it is then balloted and after approval, 
submitted to the IEEE Standards Board for acceptance.  

In addition to IEEE approval, the Motif API specification 
has also been submitted to X/Open's Fast-Track review 
process.  The Motif specification under X/Open review is 
a superset consistent with the core functionality in 
P1295, and also is derived from the OSF Motif 
documentation.  The X/Open version of the Motif 
specification contains additional Motif features such as 
drag-and-drop, internationalization and gadgets.   

The Open Software Foundation is a not-for-profit research 
and development organization with the objective of 
enabling business users of information technology to 
exploit that technology to fundamentally change and 
improve the way they do business. OSF supplies software 
to make information technology easier to learn and easier 
to use, while enabling various vendors' equipment to work 
together, and information and applications to be accessed 
and shared across distributed, open computing 
environments. OSF has created a coalition of vendors and 
users working together, using an innovative open process, 
to find and implement the best, most relevant 
technologies from organizations throughout the world. 
Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, the OSF has over 400 
members and 300 employees worldwide.

                       ###

OSF, OSF/1, Motif, and Open Software Foundation are 
trademarks of the Open Software Foundation, Inc.
X Window System is a trademark of the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology.


Copyright 1994, Open Software Foundation, Inc.  All 
rights reserved.


*****************************************************
Donna Esterling, Editor       Promotional Programs Mgr
Open Software Foundation      email:  newsnug@osf.org
11 Cambridge Center           phone:  617-621-8700
Cambridge, MA 02142 USA       fax:    617-621-0631
c/o OSF Electronic Bulletin
Comments to the editor can be sent to:

               newsnug@osf.org

E-mail additions and changes can be sent to:

              bulletin-request@osf.org
*****************************************************


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