From LJM@SLACVM.BITNET Fri Aug 21 04:03:47 1992 Received: from vm.uni-c.dk by dkuug.dk via EUnet with SMTP (5.64+/8+bit/IDA-1.2.8) id AA26018; Fri, 21 Aug 92 04:03:47 +0200 Message-Id: <9208210203.AA26018@dkuug.dk> Received: from vm.uni-c.dk by vm.uni-c.dk (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 3556; Fri, 21 Aug 92 04:04:29 DNT Received: from SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU by vm.uni-c.dk (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 5014; Fri, 21 Aug 92 04:04:28 DNT Received: by SLACVM (Mailer R2.08 R208004) id 6591; Thu, 20 Aug 92 19:02:54 PST Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 19:02 -0800 (PST) From: "Len Moss" To: "SC22/WG5 Mailing List" X-Charset: ASCII X-Char-Esc: 29 S L A C M E M O R A N D U M August 20, 1992 ____________________________ To: Interested FORTRAN users From: L. Moss Subject: Trip Report on WG5 and X3J3 meetings, 27 Jul - 7 Aug, 1992 _________________________________________________________________ NOTE: This is a personal report of these meetings and in no sense does it constitute an official record. WG5 MEETING ___________ The international Fortran standards committee, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5, met in Victoria, British Columbia from 27 through 31 July 1992. MANAGEMENT PLAN At this meeting, WG5 formally adopted a plan for managing future Fortran standards work. This plan, which has been developed over the past year by a WG5 subgroup, divides the work of revising Fortran and producing auxiliary standards (i.e., Fortran-related standards, such as the varying length character string module currently in the works) between a requirements body (WG5 itself) and various development bodies. The requirements body will determine what functionality will be incorporated into a given revision or auxiliary standard, and the development body will then integrate the required functionality into a complete language design and draft the actual document. The body working on the revision of the Fortran standard itself is designated the primary development body. In a separate resolution, WG5 requested that X3J3 take on this responsibility, provided it can arrange in a timely fashion to do so under X3's new "I project" procedures (which should avoid some of the procedural headaches that plagued the Fortran 90 effort). Work on auxiliary standards may also be assigned to the primary development body, or may be assigned to some other group (for example, the German standards body, DIN, has been acting in this capacity for the string module). However, these other development bodies are expected to coordinate their work with the primary development body, to a greater or lesser extent depending on the nature of their projects. The plan also lays out a schedule. A minor revision is to be produced in the 1995-6 time frame, with emphasis on clarifications, corrections, and, if time permits, a few small enhancements. At the same time, work is to begin in parallel on a major revision to appear around the turn of the millennium. Requirements for the major revision will be collected over the next two years and refined the following year; thus the main new features of Fortran 2000 will be determined by 1995. This management plan was adopted as WG5 Standing Document 4. It is intended to be a living document that can be further refined as future experience warrants. FORTRAN 90 MAINTENANCE Maintenance of Fortran 90 has been hampered up until now by conflicts in the international and US procedures. For example, X3 has a well-defined procedure for requesting and issuing formal interpretations of the standard, but, until quite recently, no mechanism for correcting outright errors (typos, internal inconsistencies, etc.) other than the full revision cycle. JTC1, on the other hand, had procedures for issuing both technical corrigenda (i.e., to fix typos, clarify confusing language, and correct minor, inadvertent errors) and amendments (for more substantial changes), but no formal mechanism for providing guidance to implementers and users on how to interpret the often complex language of the standard. Both JTC1 and X3, however, are in the process of revising their maintenance procedures, and it appears that the result may be much more usable and useful. Despite this progress, a number of members felt that attempting to produce technical corrigenda or amendments would be inefficient. Instead, they proposed saving all changes to the text of the standard for the upcoming minor revision, and in the meantime using more informal channels, such as X3J3's internal maintenance standing document, X3J3/S20, to provide rapid feedback to the Fortran community on the resolution of defect reports. After considerable discussion, WG5 agreed to pursue publication of official technical corrigenda, partly in an attempt to make the new procedures work the way we think they should, and partly to provide implementers with secure legal footing as soon as possible. Accordingly, WG5 asked X3J3 to submit a list of completed interpretations, clarifications, and minor corrections following its November 1992 meeting. WG5 will conduct letter ballots on these items, and then forward those on which consensus is reached for further processing as technical corrigenda. It is intended that this process should be repeated approximately annually as necessary. There was no interest expressed in publishing more substantial corrections as official amendments; instead, these will be included in future revisions of the standard. During this meeting, a WG5 subgroup spent a good deal of time reviewing a number of specific interpretation, clarification, and correction issues. The results of this review were forwarded to X3J3. X3J3 MEETING ____________ The week following the WG5 meeting, 3-7 August 1992, the corresponding US committee, X3J3, met in Bellvue, Washington. I acted as head of the Data Concepts subgroup at this meeting. STATUS OF THE US FORTRAN 90 STANDARD Although Fortran 90 has been an official international standard (ISO/IEC 1539 : 1991) for some time now, the corresponding US standard (X3.198) is still being held up by procedural difficulties. Final action by ANSI's Board of Standards Review (BSR) had been expected during the course of this X3J3 meeting. However, on Friday morning it was learned that this action had not been considered at the BSR meeting the previous day due, apparently, to a misunderstanding on the part of BSR's secretariat. [As of the date of this report I have not heard anything further regarding the status of X3.198.] MAINTENANCE OF FORTRAN 90 Nearly all of this meeting was given over to processing interpretation, clarification, and correction requests. Responses to quite a few new or previously unresolved issues were tentatively approved, and a number of previously approved responses were revised. I did not record the exact numbers, but according to Andrew Tait, editor of our maintenance standing document, X3J3/S20, we made a little progress towards clearing the (still substantial) backlog of unresolved issues. A change to our maintenance procedures was also made at this meeting. Heretofore, we attempted to treat essentially every question asked on the f90interp electronic mailing list as a formal defect report. This resulted in a very large amount of bookkeeping overhead tracking questions that did not really require formal responses (e.g., "Does the standard permit such-and-such?", "{Yes|no},see section so-and-so.", "Oh, thanks!") or else were eventually superseded by a more formal request defect report which was distilled out of the discussion on the network. The committee agreed to establish a more formal mechanism for submitting defect reports, and to use the bulk of the exchanges on the network informally, i.e., to provide background information on the issue and to begin work on its resolution. ADMINISTRATIVE BUSINESS MEETING FEES: The treasurer recommended an increase of the meeting fee from $80 to $100. After some discussion, this was approved: FV (15-4*) -- PASSED. MEMBERSHIP: At the beginning of this meeting X3J3 had 33 members, giving a quorum of 12 (=1+INT(Members/3)), and a majority of the membership of 17 (=1+INT(Members/2)). At the end of the meeting, two members were dropped for non-attendance, leaving the membership at 31. FUTURE MEETINGS: 123rd 9-13 November 1992, New Haven, CT (host: Rochelle Lauer). 124th 8-12 February 1993, Fort Lauderdale, FL (host: Bill Leonard). 125th 10-14 May 1993, University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, IL (host: Kurt Hirchert). 1993 WG5 Meeting 5-9 July 1993, Berchtesgaden, Germany (host: Karl-Heinz Rotthauser). 126th 12-16 July 1993, Brussels, Belgium (host: Dick Hendrickson). 127th 8-12 November 1993, Albuquerque, NM. 128th February 1994, Sunnyvale, CA. NEXT DISTRIBUTION: The closing date for the next pre-meeting distribution is 5 October 1992. To get an item into the distribution it should be received before this date by: Linda O'Gara Supercomputer Systems, Inc. 2021 Las Positas Ct. Livermore, CA 94550 Phone: 415-373-8040 FAX: 415-373-6270 Email: uunet!ssi!ljo -- Leonard J. Moss | My views don't necessarily Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, MS 97 | reflect those of SLAC, Stanford, CA 94309 | Stanford or the DOE