From Mok-Kong.Shen@lrz.lrz-muenchen.d400.de Thu Oct 7 13:58:38 1993 Received: from cd1.lrz-muenchen.de by dkuug.dk with SMTP id AA20937 (5.65c8/IDA-1.4.4j for ); Thu, 7 Oct 1993 13:58:38 +0100 Received: by cd1.lrz-muenchen.de; Thu, 7 Oct 93 13:59:29 +0100 X400-Trace: de*d400*lrz-muenchen; arrival 07 Oct 93 11:58:45 Z action Relayed X400-Internal-Trace: MTALRZCD1; arrival 07 Oct 93 13:59:19 +0100 action Relayed X400-Internal-Trace: MTALRZVEE; arrival 07 Oct 93 11:58:46 Z action Relayed P1-Message-Id: de*d400*lrz-muenchen; 931007135406105-MTALRZVEE Ua-Content-Id: 931007135406105- Original-Encoded-Information-Types: IA5-Text Message-Id: <931007135406105-MTALRZVEE*Mok-Kong.Shen@lrz.lrz-muenchen.d400.de> Date: 07 Oct 93 11:58:45 Z From: Mok-Kong.Shen@lrz-muenchen.de To: SC22WG5@dkuug.dk Subject: Comments (II) on Proposals from BSI and Schonfelder X-Charset: ASCII X-Char-Esc: 29 Dear WG5 Members, Being afraid that my last posting could be misunderstood, I like to append a few paragraphs to it. A very hard critique has been voiced in the present mailing list, claiming that the progress of Fortran standardization has been too slow and, if my conjecture of the meaning of the critic is correct, the efficicncy of the standardization groups concerned leaves much to be desired. While the critique is not launched against WG5 alone, I suppose that WG5 members should either (a) react to the critique, trying to improve, where possible, the processing speed and effectivity, e.g. through more intensive and speedy discussions via the present mailing list, etc. (in case the critique really is justified), or (b) examine and discuss on the critique and then forget about it (in case the critique is not justified). This is in my opinion necessary because the critique did not come from a person randomly chosen from the Fortran community or the general public but rather from a person who is, I esteem, an expert. Maybe within WG5 I am the single sympathizer of the critic. (Note, however, as expressed in my last-but-one posting, I don't share at all his opinions on standardization in general and what concerns the string module in particular.) Assuming, at least for the time being, that the critique is not entirely unjustified, then I like to suggest that a viable starting point of a response to it is for WG5 to take more initiative then hithertofore to push forward the standardization processing. In concrete terms, one of the possible measures could be to arrange to have WG5 obtain access to X3J3's information base such that proposals that are input to X3J3 and not (the rare case) indirectly via WG5 could be immediately copied and routed to WG5 members in order to evoke under circumstances (prior) discussions among them on the same, eventually resulting in comments for timely input to X3J3 before its meeting that start to examine these proposals. In this way the manpower resources of WG5 could to a certain extent contribute to the progress of work done by X3J3, thereby resulting in enhanced speed and smoothness of the standardization processing as a whole. As said, the above is only one possiblity. I could be quite wrong in that. In fact I must confess that I have formulated these lines 'freehand' (so to say) without having given deep reflections on them. But that hopefully doesn't matter much, since the purpose of this posting will be served if it succeeds to ellicite from other members better proposals in response to the critique in question. I am of the opinion that we should do something in that direction even if the critique were groundless. Even if we consider that the work hitherto done by us have been fully satisfactory to the Fortran community, it doesn't hurt to try to do even better in the future. For there can exist no upper bound to the quality of scientific endeavours. Best regards, Mok-Kong Shen