"standard" C calling convention?

People often refer to the "standard C calling convention", usually as
opposed to some other calling convention that a compiler also
supports. I have several questions, in no particular order about this
"standard".


  - Am I correct in assuming that this is more of an de facto than de
      jure standard.


  - Is this calling convention the same across different machine
      architectures, OSes?


  - Where can I find a reliable description of it? (Other than looking
      at the source of gcc or something.)


  - Is the point of having a standard calling convention that it allows
      code compiled with different compilers to be linked together? (I
      suspect that question itself may expose my deep ignorance of the
      relation between compilers and linkers--please bear with me, I'm
      filling in the gaps as fast as I can.)


-Peter
--
Peter Seibel
peter@javamonkey.com
[Most ABIs have a standard calling convention. The Unix ones all do.
It has to be machine-specific, since it involves machine registers,
and stack layout. The point of a standard, any standard, is so that
products from different vendors can interoperate. -John]

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