The first four volumes of the third edition of X/Open’s Portability Guide have now been published – with the remaining volumes promised by March. They include the first details of X/Open’s networking and user interface specifications, such as the XTI Transport Interface, for multi-vendor networking and programming interfaces to the services of Open Systems Interconnection level 4, designed to work across different protocol stacks including Open Systems, TCP/IP and AT&T Starlan. Lyon-based company Marben SA is currently developing a conformance test in XTI for X/Open as part of the EC-sponsored testing programme. A draft definition of the XEM X/Open Event Management for event handling is to be published in 1989, along with window management programming interfaces based on the XLib Library Interfaces defined by the X/Consortium. In addition the definition for Cobol has been enhanced to align with the latest ISO standard, Cobol-85, and also included are the first results of efforts to achieve interworking between X/Open systems and MS DOS micros. Meanwhile, X/Open revealed that conformance tests for the X/Open branding scheme, announced in September of this year, will be available in mid-1989, and it expects to see branded Portability Guide 2 systems emerge very soon. The new guide is published in the UK by Prentice Hall, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, costing UKP75 for all seven volumes.
