Programming: Standards

Standards make it easier to make your programs play nicely with other programs/systems. Trying to be compliant with multiple standards can be painful.

TODO:

this page is a mess

Background

There are standards all over the place. In my experience, the main place where standards overlap and cause pain is when targeting multiple operating-systems. Different operating systems conform (to varying degrees) to different standards.

• posix (linux, bsd): http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/
• windows: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/design

Then different platforms have other considerations... In an effort to make this as easy as possible, I am categorizing notes for all standards (that I have used) in like groups.

platforms

users and groups

filesystem

XDG Base Directory

XDG Mime Applications

XDG Desktop Entries

POSIX

terminal

general

standards: datetime

standards: text encoding