From Miles.Ellis@etrc.ox.ac.uk Mon Apr 21 17:14:01 1997 Received: from oxmail4.ox.ac.uk (oxmail4.ox.ac.uk [163.1.2.33]) by dkuug.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id RAA26345 for ; Mon, 21 Apr 1997 17:13:57 +0200 Received: from ermine.ox.ac.uk by oxmail4 with SMTP (PP) with ESMTP; Mon, 21 Apr 1997 16:13:38 +0100 Received: from [163.1.85.1] (com1.etrc.ox.ac.uk [163.1.85.1]) by ermine.ox.ac.uk (1.1/8.8.3) with ESMTP id QAA24757 for ; Mon, 21 Apr 1997 16:12:57 +0100 (BST) X-Sender: mellis@ermine.ox.ac.uk Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 16:13:46 +0100 To: sc22wg5 From: Miles Ellis Subject: Ballot to proceed with Conditional Compilation as part 3 The country ballot on whether to continue with the project to produce a part 3 of the Fortran Standard covering Conditional Compilation that was requested in Las Vegas Resolution LV9 has now ended. The result is an unambiguous vote by 8-1 to continue with the project. The detailed votes were as follows: YES NO Austria France Finland Germany Netherlands Japan Sweden UK USA This puts an end to the continuing procedural debate about this project. In accordance with Las vegas Resolution LV9 I have requested David Epstein and the CoCo Development Group to provide me with a revised document by June 16th in order to ensure that all WG5 members have time to thoroughly review it before the Vienna meeting. It is my intention to provide sufficient agenda time in Vienna to iron out any remaining issues during the meeting in order that the document can be submitted for its first CD ballot shortly after that meeting. Comments that were submitted with these votes were as follows: Austria ------- As already mentioned at the Las Vegas meeting, Austria would prefer a Technical Report Type 1 if no consent could be reached. Finland ------- The decision was made with slight margin, as we believe that David and CoCo task force is able to fix remaining problems within time. France ------ The two conflicting proposals are backed up with detailed specifications and by public domain implementations. They clearly respond to the wishes of two different categories of users, and there does not seem to appear any category of users that would ask for a third alternative. Standardizing only one of the options would be an unecessary rule out of the other one. Standardizing both does not seem practical, and would lenghten and complexify the Fortran standard even more, when its length and complexity are already drawbacks for the widespreading of its use. The standards committee should express their thanks to the editors and proponents of each approach, and point out that the goal of having at least one portable Conditional Compilation facility is now attained thanks to their efforts. The inclusion into the standard of this facility should be reconsidered for a later release at the light of user experience feedback. Meantime, we suggest that the current work on COCO be converted to a type 2 Technical Report. Germany ------- The German delegation still sees some problems with CoCo. The most serious one is that CoCo will be an optional part of the standard and thus not universally available. Other problems include some perceived technical difficulties which will hopefully be resolved in the near future. There was a clear majority for keeping the proposal as originally planned: a Fortran-like, simple facility for conditional compilation without macro substitution capability. There was also a majority for rapid progression of the work and a timely ballot on the PDTR. UK -- The voting figures in the BSI Fortran Panel were 5 yes - 3 no - 1 undecided USA --- The results of the US informal vote were 9-6-2. Miles Ellis Convenor: ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 Email: Miles.Ellis@etrc.ox.ac.uk Phone: +44 1865 270528 Fax: +44 1865 270527