If you read SS carefully (the book, not any of the internet versions), you’ll find that Mark Rippetoe himself prescribes these ‘extra’ exercises to his novice trainers. In other words, the five barbell exercises are the base of the program, but you’d be remiss to omit chins/pullups.

The chins are really important because:
-you need some direct bicep and lat work
-it will help with grip for deadlifts
-your lats are critically important for bench pressing
-if you train with me, they’re the closest thing you get to doing curls for the first few months

We’re having good success with bodyweight rows, and we’re going to do more testing to figure out how the best way to implement those in the newbie plan that I’ll probably publish as a DVD and book (or e-book, at the very least). For strength and alignment purposes, we want to balance overhead pressing with pullups/bench pressing with horizontal rowing. There also seems to be a positive impact on the bench pressing, as correct inverted row form teaches athletes to pinch their shoulder blades as is necessary for a good benching ‘platform’.

For the ab work, you might be able to convince me that heavy squats and deads are ‘enough’ for abs and low back. Then again, there’s quite alot of stress on the lower back squatting 3x a week and deadlifting once or twice, so the ab work is done with heavy weight in an attempt to keep the core musculature well balanced.

As for ‘every’ day, I meant each workout day. So when we do abs every other day, it’s either on A day or B day. I think you’re right, that if you did heavy ab work every time you train, it’d be hard to recover, much less every single day of the week.

And can you clarify one point. You suggested that one can do ab and chinups/pullups every day. Do you mean every workout day or literally every day Monday-Sunday? I would imagine doing them every day could hinder your recovery from the main barbell exercises.