Subject: SC 22 N 3153 - SC 22/WG 3 Business Plan/Convener's Report

From: Lisa Rajchel <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2000 11:14:00 -0400

_____________________beginning of title page ____________________________

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22
Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces
Secretariat:  U.S.A.  (ANSI)

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22
N3153

TITLE:
SC 22/WG 3 Business Plan/Convener's Report 

DATE ASSIGNED:
2000-08-21

SOURCE:
L.  Dickey, Convener, SC 22/WG 3

BACKWARD POINTER:
N/A

DOCUMENT TYPE:
Other (Defined)

PROJECT NUMBER:

STATUS:
This document will be discussed under Agenda Item 8.1 at the JTC 1/SC 22
Plenary Meeting. 

ACTION IDENTIFIER:
FYI to SC22 Member Bodies

DUE DATE:
N/A

DISTRIBUTION:
text

CROSS REFERENCE:

DISTRIBUTION FORM:
Def

Lisa Rajchel
ANSI
11 West 42nd Street
New York, NY  10036
Telephone:  (212) 642-4932
Fax:             (212) 840-2298
Email:  [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]> 

_____________________end of title page ____________________________

Business Plan and Convener's Report
ISO/IED JTC1/SC22/WG3 - Programming Language APL
2000/08/08

Period Covered:
September 2000 - August 2001
Submitted by:
Leroy J. Dickey
Convener, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22/WG 3
Department of Pure Mathematics
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario,
Canada  N2L 3G1

Email: [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>
<mailto:[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]> > 
1.	Management Summary

1.1	JTC1/SC22/WG17 Statement of Scope

	Development and maintenance of ISO/IEC standards
	related to programming language APL
1.2	Project Report

1.2.1	Completed Projects

	JTC 1.22.09.01   Programming Language APL
1.2.2	Projects Underway

	JTC 1.22.09.02   Character Repertoire for APL
	This project has been submitted and approved for registration.  See
JTC1/SC22/N3067 or http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~ljdickey/apl-rep/tables/
<http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~ljdickey/apl-rep/tables/>  It is intended for
inclusion with IS 8485.
	JTC 1.22.24.01   Programming Language Extended APL.
	The technical work and editing work, in consultaion with Geneva, for
Programming Language Extended APL is complete.  The technical work was
completed in June 2000.  This final copy for this project will probably be
communicated to Geneva before the Nara meeting of SC22.
	JTC 1.22.24.02   Character Repertoire for Extended APL.
	The text to be published for this project is identical that of to
Project JTC 1.22.09.02.  See above, or JTC1/SC22/N3082.  The distinguishing
characteristic is that Character Repertoire for APL (1.22.09.02) will be
published alongside IS 8485, whereas Character Repertoire for Extended APL
(1.22.24.02) will be published alongside IS 13751.
1.2.3	Canceled Projects

	ISO/IEC DIS 13751 Programming language Extended APL was cancelled,
but it has been re-incarnated as ISO/IEC DIS 13751-2 Programming language
Extended APL The affirmative voting for re-registration was announced in
August, 2000.
1.3	Cooperation and Competition

2.	Period Review

2.1	Market Requirements

	APL is a general purpose computing language that finds it most
important applications in those areas that benefit by the organization of
their date in arrays.  The biggest groups user are those in management of
financial and actuarial data, but it is also used by one of the largest
airlines in the world.
	Two major financial houses have developed dialects of APL for their
own internal use.  There are rumours that one of these might enter the
public domain in the near future.
	The vendor of another dialect of APL called J has now holds its own
user conferences.  Adherants to this language think that it may replace APL.
2.2	Achievements

	DIS 13751-2 has been re-registered this year.
	(Project JTC 1.22.24.01, Programming Language Extended APL)
	One document pertaining to both of these projects
  	JTC 1.22.09.02   Character Repertoire for APL
  	JTC 1.22.24.02   Character Repertoire for Extended APL.
	has been circulated and approved in the past year.
2.3	Resources

	The working group WG3 meets as needed, usually once a year, and
works mainly by electronic correspondence between meetings. This year nine
experts from six countries, namely Canada, The United Kingdom, The
Netherlands, France, Denmark and United States of America, and one of the
experts was a liason person from the Association for Computing Machinery.
3.	Focus Next Work Period

	To complete the revised text for the APL Character Repertoire.
3.1	Deliverables

	The text for IS 13751 is completed. It will probably be delivered
before the meeting of SC22 to be held in September.
3.2	Strategies

	None.
3.2.1	Risks

	WG3 suffers form a decline in official support for standardization.
One volunteer was discouraged from participation when the national member
body imposed an unreasonable expectation of the time commitment required to
to the job (half time).  Two other volunteers have been discouraged by
national mamber bodies who set financial hurdles too high.

3.2.2	Opportunities

	There is need for a new standard for moving data between APL
applications.  
	Three APL vendors are cooperating in the implementation of SCAR
"Self Contained Array Representation".  The APL Character Repertoire has
aided in this effort.  
	WG11 might find this interesting, since the developers claim that
they can use this scheme to communicate not only between sessions of
different implementations of APL but also with applications running in other
languages.
3.3	Work Program Priorities

	(1)	APL Character Repertoire
	(2)	Perhaps SCAR.

4.	Other Items

	In future, it is likely that the APL working group will move into a
maintenance mode and stand prepared to answer questions about
interpretation.

4.1	Action Requests at the Forthcoming Plenary

Renewal of IS 8485 
	Re-appointment of convenor.

4.2	Schedule

	None.
4.3	WG17 Meetings

4.3.1	Recent Meetings

	Berlin, 2000-07-23.
4.3.2	Future Meetings

	None scheduled at this time.