From jwagener@trc.amoco.com Sat Sep 5 00:58:17 1992 Received: from noc.msc.edu by dkuug.dk via EUnet with SMTP (5.64+/8+bit/IDA-1.2.8) id AA27486; Sat, 5 Sep 92 00:58:17 +0200 Received: from uc.msc.edu by noc.msc.edu (5.65/MSC/v3.0.1(920324)) id AA20383; Fri, 4 Sep 92 17:58:16 -0500 Received: from [129.230.11.2] by uc.msc.edu (5.65/MSC/v3.0z(901212)) id AA16642; Fri, 4 Sep 92 17:58:23 -0500 Received: from trc.amoco.com (apctrc.trc.amoco.com) by netserv2 (4.1/SMI-4.0) id AA26424; Fri, 4 Sep 92 17:57:53 CDT Received: from crmac1 by trc.amoco.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA13949; Fri, 4 Sep 92 17:57:49 CDT Date: Fri, 4 Sep 92 17:57:49 CDT Message-Id: <9209042257.AA13949@trc.amoco.com> From: Jerrold L. Wagener To: SC22WG5@dkuug.dk Subject: the phantom standard; and what's in a name? X-Charset: ASCII X-Char-Esc: 29 To X3J3 - The "glass is half full" way to look at it is that the BSR has not rejected Fortran 90. But they haven't yet approved it. There were no "no" votes in the BSR ballot, but there were "comments" with some of the yes votes. The BSR wants some answers to these comments before they put their stamp of approval on F90. Apparently all of the comments had to do with the three "unresolved" public comments - those from Levine, Matthews, and Van Snyder. According to Lynn Barra of the X3 Secretariat, the BSR may have been under the incredible impression that these were the only public comments received, and they weren't resolved so..., well that's a pretty high percentage of unresolved. Both the Secretariat and SPARC appear to be scrambling to set the record straight (a total of almost 700 public comments), inform the BSR that bindings are in progress against F90, and that the US will be (more of) a laughing stock if the BSR doesn't approve F90. At the moment X3J3 is not being asked to do anything on this, but until it gets sorted out, I guess we have something of a phantom standard. And what's in a name? I've also heard from Bill Rinehuls, the SPARC chair (who also confirmed that they are working hard to resolve the BSR thing), on the packet I sent him. SPARC will be considering our SD-3 proposal at their meeting next week. Bill is pleased with the SD-3 (he didn't ask me to change anything), was familiar with the WG5 and SC22 resolutions on the "I" project, and sounds as if he wants to expedite the approval of the SD-3 proposal. The one thing that bothers him a bit is the name of the language; he thought the name of the ISO standard is the same as X3.9-1978, the US Fortran 77 standard - thus a potential name collision (in the US), though he did not think it would really be a problem. I told him I thought that "Fortran 90" was somewhere in the name of the ISO standard; he said that if that were true then that certainly would resolve any problem. Well, I must confess that I'm not sure what the official name of the ISO standard is. I don't have a copy of the official standard (I guess maybe I need to get one), and don't recall ever seeing one. If I've seen one then I don't recall seeing the name (and if I've seen one and seen the name I don't remember the name - now does that cover all the bases?). Does anyone out there know definitively *exactly* what the name of ISO/IEC 1539:1991 is? and is the "Fortran" in all caps or not? If anyone knows please get that information to me as soon as possible so that I can try to get it to SPARC during their meeting next week - just to make sure that they have the correct name information. Never a dull moment, eh? Jerry