With the VSX4 test suite already announced and starting to ship, X/Open Co Ltd is preparing to go public on Release 4 of the Portability Guide itself, and has set early October as the time when it will spill the beans. XPG4 – originally set to come out last May, but delayed due to complex documentation is the next-generation of X/Open’s Portability Guide, and builds on the long-established XPG3, which first saw the light of day back in September 1988. Therefore many of the components have already been released. XPG4 specs are now complete, and, says X/Open’s Alan Davies, will cover a greater scope than their predecessor. XPG now has 532 branded components – languages, tools, libraries and the like – and there are Base and Plus branding levels for conformant systems. With XPG4, as part of its sworn intent to become more user-oriented, X/Open will be assembling various specific user packages and profiles made up of combinations of the existing and new XPG components. And, it promises to tell a much wider tale than just XPG4 at around about the same time.
