From jwagener@amoco.com Tue Mar 2 10:11:49 1993 Received: from interlock.amoco.com by dkuug.dk with SMTP id AA12251 (5.65c8/IDA-1.4.4j for ); Tue, 2 Mar 1993 23:12:19 +0100 Received: by interlock.amoco.com id AA27447 (InterLock SMTP Gateway 1.1 for SC22WG5@dkuug.dk); Tue, 2 Mar 1993 16:04:43 -0600 Received: by interlock.amoco.com (Internal Mail Agent-2); Tue, 2 Mar 1993 16:04:43 -0600 Received: by interlock.amoco.com (Internal Mail Agent-1); Tue, 2 Mar 1993 16:04:43 -0600 Date: Tue, 2 Mar 93 16:11:49 CST Message-Id: <9303022211.AA26446@trc.amoco.com> From: Jerrold L. Wagener To: SC22WG5@dkuug.dk Subject: informal report on X3J3 meeting 124 X-Charset: ASCII X-Char-Esc: 29 This is coming later than usual, as I put priority on getting the 006 ballot out. Just pretend that "better late than never" holds in this case :). jlw JLW informal report on X3J3 meeting 124, 93 Feb 8-12, Ft Lauderdale ------------------------------------------------------------------- The principal objectives of this meeting were: - revise the requirements document (004) - complete the interpretation processing (006) - decide on HPF, LIA action, if any The first objective had a high priority at this meeting because document 93- 004 (probably version 93-004r2) will constitute the X3J3 input to the requirements discussion at next July's WG5 meeting; there is only one more X3J3 meeting between now and July. The form of 004 was established in Ft Lauderdale, as was the process of soliciting and processing suggestions for 004. The /JOR subgroup will be distributing additional details regarding these actions. In terms of interpretation processing (not counting item 000000 edits, of which there were three new ones), 10 new interpretation items were added, bringing the total to 130, and 38 items were resolved. That leaves 19 of the 130 unresolved. There are 33 items on the now-active X3J3 letter ballot, and any that fail that ballot will add to the 19. No further action was taken regarding HPF; the X3J3 comments on HPF that were in the meeting 123 minutes (those minutes were approved) had been sent to the HPFF and will be part of the HPF public review comments. (The HPFF will process those comments at a meeting March 10-12.) It was noted that an independent HPFF-like process has now been initiated to formulate a defacto standard message passing interface, currently known as MPI, to address that level of parallel computing. With the revelation that X3J3 (and every other language committee) is a coordinating liaison to X3T2 on the proposed Language Independent Arithmetic (LIA) standard, the agenda item on the LIA report took on increased significance. There was little support for the LIA but, not having considered the LIA as an X3J3 responsibility, the committee chose to write X3T2 expressing concern about the implications of some of the things it had heard about LIA and asking several "what if" questions. (For example, what if the LIA is not entirely compatible with IEEE arithmetic or the Brown model?) A letter to X3T2 was drafted that contained five such points and, after some revision, approved by the committee. (The letter has been sent.) Among other activities during the week: a good discussion on object oriented programming was led by guest speaker Denko Nebesh; the /parallel and /OOF subgroups met one morning, with about half the attendees participating in each; a straw vote indicated the committee wanted to try moving to an electronic (email) premeeting distribution; and David Mattoon accepted the challenge of succeeding Linda O'Gara as librarian (David_Mattoon_at_CTC@relay.proteon.com). The next meeting will be May 10-14 in Champaign, IL, Kurt Hirchert hosting. That meeting will adjourn by 3pm Friday (the TAG session will be on Thursday), so that people can stay until the end and still make it home Friday night (at least, if home is in the US). Please plan accordingly so that we have a full complement up until adjournment to prepare for the WG5 meeting. Jerry Wagener