I-51-01E-012

ITRON Newsletter No.12
ITRON Technical Committee, TRON Association

Katsuta Building 5F, 3-39, Mita 1-chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108, JAPANTEL: (03) 3454-3191
FAX: (03) 3454-3224

New Edition of ITRON Standard
Guidebook Issued

Handbook is a one-volume compilation of ITRON(Ver 2.0) and ITRON2 speci cations. Each of thepublications below can be obtained directly from thesources indicated.
The latest version of ITRON3.0 is now Ver
3.02.00. Changes made since the ITRON3.0 Standard Handbook was released (Ver 3.00.00) are noted
in Newsletter No.5 and No.11, as well as in ITRON
Standard Guidebook 2.
The newly issued ITRON Standard Guidebook 2,
which is a general introduction to the ITRON speci cations, deals primarily with ITRON3.0. Meanwhile, the earlier ITRON Standard Guidebook '92'93 remains as a valuable reference for use with theITRON (Ver 2.0) and ITRON2 speci cations, eventhough the dates in its title are now past.

The coming of a new ITRON Standard Guidebook
edition, heralded for some time in this Newsletter, hasat last been ful lled. Now that the ITRON TechnicalCommittee has completed its work on the Guidebook,
Personal Media Corporation has made it available inpublished form.
The title of the new edition is ITRON StandardGuidebook 2. The contents are focused mainly on
ITRON3.0, the latest version of the ITRON kernel
speci cations. The earlier edition of the ITRON Standard Guidebook consisted of three parts, \For People
Who Want to Know about ITRON," \For People Who
Want to Use ITRON," and \For People Who Want toImplement ITRON." The new edition adds a fourthpart, \The Approach to Standardization in ITRON,"
which is a collection of papers on matters taken into
consideration when ITRON was developed.
The articles introducing ITRON (Ver 2.0) andITRON2 speci cations in the ITRON Standard
Guidebook '92-'93 have been replaced in the new edition with articles on ITRON3.0. Other articles still
considered applicable have been retained, with revisions bringing them up to date with the current
ITRON3.0 speci cation. The Q&A and References
sections have been reorganized, and the Appendix has
been expanded, among other changes.
The new edition is highly recommended as a textbook on the ITRON speci cations, both for newcomers and those wanting to deepen their knowledge onthe subject. Please note that it is currently available
only in Japanese.

ITRON Panel Session at TRONSHOW'94
A panel discussion on ITRON took place as part ofTRONSHOW '94 held this past December in Tokyo.
Addressing the topic, \Today's ITRON-speci cation
OS applications," panel members reported on a few ofthe many areas in which ITRON-speci cation operating systems are being applied today.
Date: Monday, December 5, 1994 (3:00{5:00pm)
Place: Tokyo Design Center (near Gotanda Stationin Shinagawa Ward)Chair: Hiroaki Takada (University of Tokyo)
Panel members:
Kiichiro Tamaru (Toshiba Corporation)
Shinjiro Yamada (Hitachi, Ltd.)
Satoru Umezawa (Yamaha Corporation)
Shuji Yura (Japan Minicomputer Systems Co., Ltd.)
Hiroyuki Muraki (Mitsubishi Semiconductor
Software Corporation)
Kenji Kudoh (Fujitsu Device Limited)
Akira Matsui (Personal Media Corporation)
Hiroaki Takada (University of Tokyo)

ITRON-related Publications
Listed in another page are the publications preparedand issued by the ITRON Technical Committee as ofDecember 1, 1994. The ITRON-ITRON Standardy This newsletter is reprinted from TRONWARE vol.31 andTRON PROJECT BIMONTHLY No.36.

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ITRON-related Publications
NameTypePrice
Publisher
IssuedISBN No.
ITRON-ITRON Standard Handbook Speci cation (Jap.)
4,800Yen Personal Media Co. 1990 4-89362-079-7
ITRON3.0 Standard Handbook
Speci cation (Jap.)
4,000Yen Personal Media Co. 1993 4-89362-106-8
ITRON/FILE Standard Handbook
Speci cation (Jap.)
3,000Yen Personal Media Co. 1992 4-89362-092-4
ITRON Standard Guidebook '92-'93
Textbook (Jap.)
3,500Yen Personal Media Co. 1992 4-89362-197-6
ITRON Standard Guidebook 2
Textbook (Jap.)
3,500Yen Personal Media Co. 1994 4-89362-133-5
ITRON Speci cation Ver 2.01.00.00 Speci cation (Eng.) 12,000Yen TRON Association 1989
{ITRON2 Speci cation Ver 2.02.00.10
Speci cation (Eng.) 15,000Yen TRON Association1990{
ITRON3.0 Speci cation Ver 3.00.00 Speci cation (Eng.){TRON Association1994{NOTES:- Prices do not include consumption tax.
- The documents issued by the TRON Association are available to Association members at a special discount rate.
- English-language speci cations are distributed free of charge on the Internet as explained in Newsletter No.8.

ITRON at the TRON Project Symposium

TRON Association.

On-line distribution of ITRON3.0
speci cation (English-language edition)

Two papers on ITRON were presented at the Conference session of the Eleventh TRON Project Symposium, held in Tokyo last December.
The rst, presented by Yasuro Kawata of theUniversity of Electro-Communications, was on \Eunice/ITRON: A Control System Development Environment for ITRON Machines." The paper consisted mainly of an outline introduction to the Eunice/ITRON development support system, describing
in particular the Nike object-oriented programming
language at the heart of this system. Nike supports
the entire software development life cycle, and the paper covered its features in some detail.
The second paper was delivered by the Universityof Tokyo's Hiroaki Takada. Entitled, \Experimental
Implementations of Priority Inheritance Semaphoreon ITRON-speci cation Kernel," the paper discussed
methodology for incorporating a priority inheritancefunction in a ITRON3.0-speci cation kernel. Thisis a function that bene ts hard real-time systems.
The paper further introduced the results of a performance evaluation based on actual implementation ofthe function.
Besides these formal papers, a presentation on thetopic, \Development of ITRON Speci cation RealTime Operating System Simulator on MS-DOS" waspresented in a poster session, by K. Matsuura and hiscolleagues from the Musashi Institute of Technology.
At the same time a demonstration of the simulator
was run on an actual system { something that is possible because the ITRON speci cations are an open
architecture.
The Proceedings of the Eleventh TRON Project
Symposium have been published by the IEEE Computer Society Press, and are available also from theIt was announced in ITRON Newsletter No.8 that theEnglish version of the ITRON3.0 Speci cation hadbeen completed and made available for distribution
on the Internet. Since then, however, a number ofproblems were discovered in the English translation,
causing the distribution to be halted. These problems have now been corrected and free distribution has
been resumed. We apologize for the delay in making
this speci cation available. The method of downloading the speci cation on the Internet is explained inITRON Newsletter No.8.
The speci cation available on the Internet is Ver
3.00.00. Revisions have been made to that version
as detailed in Newsletter No.5 and No.11. It should
be noted, however, that the Newsletter translation isdone separately from that of the ITRON speci cations, resulting in some inconsistencies in terminology
usage. We plan to correct this in the future.

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