From LJM@SLACVM.BITNET Wed Nov 20 00:17:33 1991 Received: from danpost.uni-c.dk by dkuug.dk via EUnet with SMTP (5.64+/8+bit/IDA-1.2.8) id AA01938; Wed, 20 Nov 91 00:17:33 +0100 Received: from vm.uni-c.dk by danpost.uni-c.dk (5.65/1.34) id AA04008; Tue, 19 Nov 91 23:18:35 GMT Message-Id: <9111192318.AA04008@danpost.uni-c.dk> Received: from vm.uni-c.dk by vm.uni-c.dk (IBM VM SMTP V2R1) with BSMTP id 1763; Wed, 20 Nov 91 00:17:20 DNT Received: from SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU by vm.uni-c.dk (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 2340; Wed, 20 Nov 91 00:17:18 DNT Received: by SLACVM (Mailer R2.08 R208004) id 1579; Tue, 19 Nov 91 14:24:29 PST Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1991 14:23 -0800 (PST) From: "Len Moss" To: "SC22/WG5 Mailing List" Subject: Trip Report on 120th X3J3 meeting, 11-14 Nov 1991 X-Charset: ASCII X-Char-Esc: 29 121-LJM-1 S L A C M E M O R A N D U M November 19, 1991 ____________________________ To: Interested FORTRAN users From: L. Moss Subject: Trip Report on 120th X3J3 meeting, 11-14 Nov 1991 _________________________________________________________________ Note: This is a personal report of this meeting and in no _____ sense does it constitute an official record. X3J3 met in Milpitas, California from 11 through 14 November 1991. The US TAG (Technical Advisory Group) for Fortran (which consists of US members of X3J3) met on the afternoon of 12 November, and then again on 15 November. This report is confined to the X3J3 meeting; I will report on the US TAG meeting separately. STATUS OF THE US FORTRAN 90 STANDARD ____________________________________ Although Fortran 90 has now been officially published as an international standard (ISO/IEC 1539 : 1991), the corresponding US standard (X3.198) still has a few procedural milestones that must be completed. The X3 reconsideration ballot on X3.198 closed with one negative vote (from Boeing Corporation). X3J3 approved 120-16b[1] as its response to the Boeing negative by roll-call vote: RV (23*-0-1) -- PASSED[2]. I believe the next ______________________ step is for this response and the results of the X3 ballot to be sent to ANSI's Board of Standards Review for final action. INTERPRETATIONS _______________ X3J3 gave final approval to 15 interpretations which had been drafted and tentatively approved at the previous meeting. The approved interpretations are: 119-12, 119-13b, 119-53a, 119-54, 119-55a (with 119-44), 119-56/proposal 1, 119-64, 119-69a, 119-65a, 119-70, 119-71a, 119-76a, 119-77a, 119-66b/answer 1, and 119-66b/answer 2. See the minutes of this meeting for the roll-call votes on each of these, and the supplement to the minutes of meeting 119 for the documents themselves. The texts of these interpretations will probably also be published in Fortran Forum and on the Fortran 90 interpretations mailing list (send email to f90interp-request@ncsa.uiuc.edu to subscribe to this list). X3J3 produced tentative responses to a number of interpretation requests at this meeting. After the appropriate procedures have been determined, a final, two-thirds majority ballot will be taken, either at the next meeting (May 92) or by letter ballot between meetings. The following interpretations, modulo some editorial amendments, were tentatively approved by simple majority at this meeting (questions and answers are identified by their X3J3 document numbers and will be available in the supplement to the minutes of meeting 120): QUESTION ANSWER ________ ______ 120-14 120-57/JTM-10 120-13 120-58/RL-1 120-25 120-59/RL-2 120-24 120-60/RL-3 120-39 120-62a/LJM-2a 120-27 120-69a/RRR-1a 120-42 120-73a/RL-4a 120-26 120-74/LJO-1 120-30 120-75/TMRE-2 120-31 120-76/TMRE-3 120-33 120-77/TMRE-4 120-15 & 120-23 120-78/KWH-1 120-34 120-79/JLS-9 120-22 120-81a/LJM-3a 120-38 120-82/JTH-1 120-19 120-83/KWH-2 120-29 120-84/MBSH-1 120-28 120-85a/MBSH-2a 120-41 120-86/MBSH-3 120-32 120-87a/RRR-2a 120-21 120-88a/LJM-4a 120-35 120-90/KWH-3 120-20/cases 1 & 2 120-92/RPK-1 120-20/case 4 120-94/RPK-3 120-20/case 5 120-95/RPK-4 120-46 & 120-20/case 3 120-98/LJM-5 120-43 120-99a/JLS-10a 120-44 120-100a/JLS-11a The texts of these tentative interpretations may also be published soon on the Fortran 90 interpretations mailing list. The committee also agreed to set a goal of handling interpretation requests within one meeting: FV (17*-8) -- _____________ PASSED. Procedures for implementing this goal were discussed, ______ some of which will require seeking clarifications of the rules from X3. PROCEDURES FOR DEVELOPING FUTURE STANDARDS __________________________________________ An ad hoc WG5 committee is currently working out procedures for developing future Fortran standards. When this group reports early next year, it will probably recommend that WG5 should develop a set of formal requirements for the next standard, and then assign the detailed development work to a national body, most likely X3J3. It is hoped that this more formal division of responsibility will result in a much less contentious process. Noting the large volume of interpretation requests for Fortran 90, and the embarrassingly large number of serious flaws in the standard, several members suggested that X3J3 and WG5 should be planning for two types of future standards, a maintenance revision, to fix the bugs, and a major revision, on a longer time scale, for the next round of new features. Two straw votes were taken on these suggestions: * Should a maintenance revision be published in about 3 years? SV (21*-0-1). ____________ * Should this maintenance revision be developed concurrently with the next major revision? SV (18*-1-3). ____________ There was also a discussion of whether a distributed development model should be used, with separate pieces of the development work being assigned to several different national bodies. A straw vote was taken on whether such a distributed model should be used: exclusively, heavily, sparingly, not at all, undecided? SV (0-0-18*-2-1). ________________ FORTRAN JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ______________________________ Keith Bierman reported on the ad hoc group appointed last time to develop procedures for a Fortran Journal of Development (FJOD). The email discussion within this group had been lively but no definite conclusions or proposals were ready. The FJOD email dialog did, however, bring up a question with wider implications for the future work of X3J3: namely, what sort of text processing facilities should be used for future X3J3 documents? The two main categories of solutions were WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") packages, such as Framemaker or Interleaf, or some sort of markup language, such as SGML or LaTeX. After a brief discussion, a couple of straw votes were taken: * Do you think future X3J3 documents should use WYSIWYG or markup language text processing tools? SV (4-11*-7) ____________ [WYSIWYG-markup-other or undecided]. * If a markup language is used, do you prefer: SGML, TeX/LaTeX, troff, other or undecided? SV (3*-6-2-13). ______________ DOD RECOMMENDATION AGAINST FORTRAN 90 _____________________________________ Henry Katz made the following announcement: I, working in conjunction with the Center for Standards of the Department of Defense, wish to announce that we are recommending to DOD that the Secretary of Defense reject Fortran 90. This is based upon a consensus reached with the major DOD Laboratories and Centers. Our plan is to stay with FORTRAN 77, include all of the bindings being developed for F77 and include MIL STD 1753 and certain other vendor extensions plus some of the neater thinks in F90. Our view is those who fell in love with Fortran 90 can use ADA. ADMINISTRATIVE BUSINESS _______________________ OFFICERS Jeanne Adams resigned as chair following the conclusion of this meeting, and Jerry Wagener resigned as vice chair. X3 has issued calls for volunteers for these offices (see 120-48 and 120-40). Jerry has announced his intention to apply for the office of chair. Several members stated that they were considering applying for one or both of these offices, but none besides Jerry indicated that they would definitely do so. The office of secretary is currently vacant (at this meeting, the vice chair kept the minutes). Appointment of a secretary will now need to await the appointment of a new chair. The new X3 policy allowing technical committees to formally collect registration fees, maintain a bank account, and appoint a treasurer was discussed. A straw vote on taking advantage of this new policy was taken: SV (13*-5-4). A formal letter ballot ____________ of X3J3 on this issue was authorized: FV (18*-2) -- PASSED. ____________________ Following the August meeting I was named assistant chair of the Data subgroup. MEMBERSHIP At the beginning of this meeting X3J3 had 34 members, giving a quorum of 12 (=1+INT(Members/3)), and a majority of the membership of 18 (=1+INT(Members/2)). At the end of the meeting, one member was dropped for non-attendance four were in jeopardy of losing their membership if they miss the next meeting, and two letters of intent to join the committee were in hand. FUTURE MEETINGS The committee discussed whether to continue with four meetings a year or switch to a three meeting schedule. The February 1992 meeting has been definitely cancelled, so in any case there will only be 3 meetings in 1992. Jerry Wagener will distribute two possible meeting schedules for the following year or two, for consideration at the next meeting. 121ST: 25-29 May 1992, Terre Haute, IN (host: C. Mallory North, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology). WG5 MEETING: 27-31 July 1992, Victoria, British Columbia (host: Bert Buckley). 122ND: 3-7 August 1992, Seattle, WA (host: Jose Oglesby). 123RD: 9-13 November 1992, New Haven, CT (host: Rochelle Lauer). NEXT DISTRIBUTION The closing date for the next pre-meeting distribution is 20 Apr 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 _____________________ [1] All X3J3 working documents are assigned numbers of the form, "mmm-rr", where: ______ mmm is the meeting number (this meeting was number 120). _____ rr is the registration number for the document assigned ____ by the librarian. Sometimes I will append to this an author identification of the form, "/aaa-n", where: ______ aaa are the initials of the author. _____ n is a small number to distinguish different documents ___ from a single author at one meeting. [2] The results of straw votes (SV), which include alternates and __ observers, are, unless otherwise noted, given as: (yes-no-undecided), with an asterisk next to my vote. Formal votes (FV) are (yes-no-not voting), but are usually recorded __ simply as (yes-no). Some votes require a two-thirds majority of those voting AND a simple majority of the entire membership. The latter requirement translates into a minimum of 18 votes with the committee's current membership list. Several votes at this meeting were taken by roll-call and will be labelled here as RV. The record of members' votes __ will be distributed with the minutes. -- 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