From owner-sc22wg5@dkuug.dk Mon Jan 6 10:20:11 2003 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by dkuug.dk (8.9.2/8.9.2) id KAA85180 for sc22wg5-domo; Mon, 6 Jan 2003 10:20:11 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from owner-sc22wg5@dkuug.dk) X-Authentication-Warning: ptah.dkuug.dk: majordom set sender to owner-sc22wg5@dkuug.dk using -f Received: from nameserv.rl.ac.uk (nameserv.rl.ac.uk [130.246.135.129]) by dkuug.dk (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id KAA85175 for ; Mon, 6 Jan 2003 10:20:08 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from jkr@jkr.cc.rl.ac.uk) Received: from jkr.cc.rl.ac.uk (jkr.cc.rl.ac.uk [130.246.8.20]) by nameserv.rl.ac.uk (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id JAA31027 for ; Mon, 6 Jan 2003 09:20:12 GMT Received: (from jkr@localhost) by jkr.cc.rl.ac.uk (8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8) id JAA25194 for SC22WG5@dkuug.dk; Mon, 6 Jan 2003 09:24:31 GMT Date: Mon, 6 Jan 2003 09:24:31 GMT From: John Reid Message-Id: <200301060924.JAA25194@jkr.cc.rl.ac.uk> To: SC22WG5@dkuug.dk Subject: Re: (SC22WG5.2658) Fw: FYI: Germany's negative vote on F2000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sc22wg5@dkuug.dk Precedence: bulk ----- Begin Included Message ----- Date: Fri, 03 Jan 2003 21:40:02 +0100 From: Toon Moene Organization: Moene Computational Physics, Maartensdijk, The Netherlands User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux ppc; en-US; rv:1.0.0) Gecko/20020622 Debian/1.0.0-0.woody.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Michael Metcalf CC: sc22wg5@dkuug.dk, wwalter@math.tu-dresden.de Subject: Re: (SC22WG5.2658) Fw: FYI: Germany's negative vote on F2000 References: <200301031621.RAA42209@dkuug.dk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Michael Metcalf wrote: > I'm back after a 10-days' absence (so, first, a Happy New Year to one > and all!) and am astonished to find that my original posting of Wolfgang's > comments has generated a heated debate with nearly 100 contributions on > comp.lang.fortran, far too many to forward. One of the most considered from > a non-member of J3/WG5 (Dick H. and Richard M. have weighed in with very > sensible replies) is, however, attached. I, too, found Norm's reply well-reasoned. I also waded through the debate on comp.lang.fortran (in delayed mode - I only read news at home). Several things stroke me as begging for improvement in our standards making process: 1. Noone (outside the committees) seems to realize how new features enter the Standard; hence the "disconnect from user community" remarks. Do we have a clear description on a web page somewhere ? 2. The date(s) for public comment were unclear until the deadline (at least for the US national commentary period) was closed :-( 3. There's an eternal debate between: "Committees can't design and should only standardize existing practice" vs. "Existing practice between vendors differed, so we had to choose | break new ground". Perhaps a FAQ with some examples would help here. 4. "The language gets too large" :-) Perhaps a TR that describes a new feature in the language should also get into examples (multiple ones) clarifying how a more complex Standard would help to reduce complexity in user programs (or, if that's impossible, at least show what can be done with the new stuff that couldn't be done before). Obviously, this only helps if the TRs are publicly readable (in an easy way, i.e., browsable). And, yes, I don't think it would help to re-invent C++. Hope this helps, -- Toon Moene - mailto:toon@moene.indiv.nluug.nl - phoneto: +31 346 214290 Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG Maartensdijk, The Netherlands Maintainer, GNU Fortran 77: http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/g77_news.html Join GNU Fortran 95: http://g95.sourceforge.net/ (under construction) ----- End Included Message -----