From owner-sc22wg5@dkuug.dk  Thu May 22 19:37:06 2003
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Reply-to: Van.Snyder@jpl.nasa.gov
Subject: Re: (SC22WG5.2729) Name of the language 
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Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 10:45:04 -0700
From: Van Snyder <vsnyder@math.jpl.nasa.gov>
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John:

I prefer Fortran 2003, for the first reason you gave.

1. It corresponds to past practice of basing the name on the year in 
   which the technical content is chosen.

I don't worry much about Richard's second reason to prefer Fortran 2000:

2. It is throughout all kinds of documents and postings.  Not only
   will we have to change existing habits, we will never be able to
   remove all the existing references to the name Fortran 2000.  Thus,
   we'd put ourselves in the position of forever having to explain to
   people that all the stuff they read about Fortran 2000 really
   applies to Fortran 2003.

I haven't seen any postings in newsgroups asking "Whatever happened
to Fortran 88 (or 8x)?"

I do worry that if we produce a minor revision in 2008, and people observe
the tradition that the revision number is (usually) the year in which the
technical content is chosen, and not notice that Fortran 2000 is an exception,
they will say "Why did it take so long to do so little?"

If we choose to call the present revision Fortran 2000, and produce a
revision in 2008, we should all work very hard to make it a substantial
revision.

Best regards,
Van