From lrajchel@ANSI.org Sun Aug 27 18:36:40 2000 Received: from email1.ansi.org (mail.ansi.org [165.254.114.6]) by dkuug.dk (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id SAA31700; Sun, 27 Aug 2000 18:36:40 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from lrajchel@ANSI.org) Received: by email1.ansi.org with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) id ; Sun, 27 Aug 2000 12:35:44 -0400 Message-ID: <2F81C8110D55D411882A0020356797B2151627@email1.ansi.org> From: Lisa Rajchel To: "'sc22info@dkuug.dk'" Cc: "'Simonsen, Keld'" Subject: SC 22 N 3157 - SC 22/WG 5 Business Plan/Convener's Report Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2000 12:35:38 -0400 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) _____________________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 N3157 TITLE: SC 22/WG 5 Business Plan/Convener's Report DATE ASSIGNED: 2000-08-27 SOURCE: J. Reid, Convener, SC 22/WG 5 BACKWARD POINTER: N/A DOCUMENT TYPE: Other (Defined) PROJECT NUMBER: STATUS: This document will be discussed under Agenda Item 8.3 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: lrajchel@ansi.org _____________________end of title page _________________________ ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1415 WG5 Business Plan and Convener's Report to the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 2000 Plenary PERIOD COVERED BY THIS REPORT: August 1999 to August 2000. SUBMITTED BY: Dr John Reid (Convener of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5) JKR Associates, 24 Oxford Road, Benson, Wallingford, Oxon OX10 6LX, UK. Phone: +44 1235 446493, Fax: +44 1235 446626, Email: jkr@rl.ac.uk 1 MANAGEMENT SUMMARY 1.1 JTC1/SC22/WG5 Statement of Scope The development and maintenance of ISO/IEC Fortran programming language standards. 1.2 Project Report 1.2.1 Completed Projects 22.02.01.02 Type 2 TR on Floating Point Exception Handling in Fortran The TR was published in December 1998 as TR 15580:1998. A revised version is ready for publication. 22.02.01.04 Type 2 TR on Enhanced Data Type Facilities in Fortran The TR was published in December 1998 as TR 15581:1998. A revised version is ready for publication. 22.02.02 Programming Language Fortran - Part 2: Varying length character strings A revised version of this part of the Fortran standard was published in June 2000 as ISO/IEC 1539-2:2000(E). 22.02.03 Programming Language Fortran - Part 3: Conditional Compilation The IS was published in April 1999 as IS 1539-3:1999. 1.2.2 Projects Underway 22.02.01.01 Programming Language Fortran - Part 1: Base language The requirements for the next revision of the base Fortran Standard (IS 1539-1:1997), referred to informally as Fortran 2000, were agreed by WG5 at its meeting in Las Vegas, USA, in February 1997. In accordance with WG5's agreed strategic policy, the development of the draft standard was delegated to NCITS/J3, acting as WG5's Primary Development Body. The target date for J3 to deliver the draft standard to WG5 is June 2002. It is expected that the first CD ballot will commence in October 2002. The target date for the publication of the revised standard is December 2004. WG5 and J3 are developing new procedures to provide more effective means for WG5 members to contribute to the work of its Primary Development Body in order to ensure that corrigenda to IS 1539-1:1997 are published in a timely fashion and before the first CD Ballot for Fortran 2000. The first of these corrigenda will be submitted for SC22 balloting this autumn and the second will be submitted in the autumn of 2001. 22.02.03 Programming Language Fortran - Part 3: Conditional Compilation Defect processing has been started and suggested edits are in document WG5 N1409, which was prepared at the meeting in Oulu (August 2000) and will be the subject of an informal letter ballot of WG5 members. All changes are minor except for the omission of a line of text between the DIS and IS. The ISO secretariat has agreed to reprint the document with the line restored. It is proposed not to prepare a corrigendum unless other serious defects are found, in which case the changes in N1409 will be included. 1.2.3 Cancelled Projects None 1.3 Cooperation and Competition WG5 cooperates closely with the ANSI NCITS/J3 Fortran Technical Committee, to whom it has delegated the technical development of Fortran 2000 as well as the maintenance of Fortran 95 (ISO/IEC 1539-1:1997). There is also close contact with the industry-driven HPF and OpenMP Consortia, with several members of the Consortia also being members of J3 and/or WG5. Many of those responsible for the development of commercial Fortran compilers are members of J3 and/or WG5. Other important liaisons are those with IFIP WG2.5 (Numerical Software) and ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20 (Internationalization). There are no competitive activities. 2 PERIOD REVIEW 2.1 Market Requirements Fortran is still the language of choice for the majority of scientific and technological programming. The long delay between the release of Fortran 77 and the availability of Fortran 90 compilers, at a time when other languages, such as C and C++, were evolving rapidly, had a significant impact on the use of Fortran, but there are now clear signs that the facilities available in Fortran 90 and Fortran 95 are causing a growing number of scientific and technological users to move towards these latest versions of Fortran. Most major Fortran compiler vendors are represented either on WG5 or its Primary Development Body, NCITS/J3, as are many of the major research establishments that rely on Fortran for their numerical computing. There are also two active email lists for users of Fortran, which provide valuable feedback from users. All these diverse sources are being used to guide the development of the language, both through revisions to the base language Standard, and through other related standards and technical reports. 2.2 Achievements A new Part 2 of the Standard has been published during the year, while revisions of two Technical Reports TR15580 and TR15581, describing features that will be incorporated in the next revision of the Base Language Standard (Part 1), have both passed their Concurrent PDTR Registration and PDTR Ballots without any disapproval votes. 2.3 Resources As elsewhere in the Standardization world, it is becoming increasingly difficult to persuade employers to provide the necessary funding for Standards activity. WG5 delegates most of the technical work involved in developing Standards and Technical Reports to 'development bodies' which are either based on a national Fortran committee, as in the case of NCITS/J3 - the primary development body responsible for development of the revision to the base language standard and its subsequent maintenance, or consist of a (small) multinational group under the leadership of the relevant project editor. WG5 currently has one such active development body, the primary development body, developing standards, and four development bodies monitoring published standards and technical reports for maintenance purposes. WG5 itself carries out much of its discussions via email, with an annual meeting during the summer, and occasional other meetings at critical stages in the development of the base language standard. The meeting in August 2000 was attended by thirteen members, including the Convenor, representing six countries. 3 FOCUS FOR NEXT WORK PERIOD 3.1 Deliverables It is anticipated that the first corrigendum for Part 1 of the Standard will be ready for SC22 processing before the end of the year. It is hoped that revised versions of TR 15580:1998 and TR 15581:1998 will be published soon. 3.2 Strategies WG5 operates under a strategic plan described in WG5 Standing Document 4, the latest version of which, WG5 N1349, is annexed to this Report. In particular, the revision of the base Standard, IS 1539-1, is delegated to ANSI NCITS/J3 operating as WG5's Primary Development Body, while the other projects for which WG5 is responsible are handled by other Development Bodies which liaise with the Primary Development Body as required. 3.2.1 Risks As far as possible, WG5 tries to anticipate technical comments during international ballots by holding informal ballots of its members before any documents are submitted for ballot. Nevertheless, unexpected technical comments can always delay the planned schedule. 3.2.2 Opportunities WG5 has made extensive use of email for over a decade to speed up technical development. Since 1995 most documents have been distributed via an official file server in the UK, with two mirror sites in the USA; all documents have been distributed in this way since 1997. An open web site is also used to provide non-technical, and other publicly available, information to interested parties. In addition to speeding up the distribution of documents, the use of electronic distribution and communication systems also provides many other benefits, such as the ability to rapidly carry out informal ballots of the members for various reasons. 3.3 Work Program Priorities Finalization of Corrigendum 1 to Fortran 95 and preparation of Corrigendum 2 are WG5's priority activities this year. WG5 members will also monitor, and/or participate in, the work of WG5's Primary Development Body, NCITS/J3, as it moves into the final stages of the development of the Working Draft of the revision of the base Fortran language Standard, ISO/IEC 1539-1:1997. 4 OTHER ITEMS 4.1 Action Requested at the Forthcoming SC22 Plenary At its recent meeting in Oulu, WG5 expressed concern about increasing unauthorized and irrelevant use of the SC22 email reflector system and would be most grateful if this could be investigated. 4.2 Recent Meetings 2000/8/14-18 Oulu, Finland 4.3 Future Meetings 2001/07/30-8/3 UK 2002/08 Netherlands? 2003/04 USA (1st CD ballot resolution) 2003/08 tba Note that WG5 normally meets annually, with extra meetings being held as/when necessary to process ballot comments or other high priority activities that do not accord with the regular meeting schedule. WG5's Primary Development Body, NCITS/J3, meets quarterly. Other work is carried out via email. .................................................................... Annex ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/N1349 The Fortran Standardization Process (WG5 Standing Document 4) The international standard for Fortran is a multi-part set of standards. Part 1 defines the base language; other parts define optional auxiliary standards. WG5 has the responsibility of maintaining these standards and of developing them separately and jointly as may be appropriate. It follows the procedures described below, subject always to the over-riding ISO procedures. 1. Major functions There are three major functions: (1) identification of needs and specification of standard requirements, (2) development of standard document content and (3) maintenance of the current standard. Other activities include scheduling, performing liaison and review activities, and conducting ad hoc studies. The requirements and development functions should be separate but highly coordinated. Draft documents (standards, amendments, corrigenda, technical reports, etc.) will be submitted to ISO for adoption. 2. The requirements function The result of requirements specification is a document that prescribes the functional requirements for a revision of the base language standard or of related standards. WG5, from time to time, determines, records, distributes, and maintains the needs and suggested requirements for Fortran. To begin a new revision WG5, using the recorded needs and suggested requirements, establishes objectives and corresponding functional requirements, specifications, and schedule for that revision. 3. The development function The development function develops the international standard revisions and related auxiliary standards, in accordance with the specified requirements and schedule. A development body will be chosen to produce each revision or new auxiliary standard. The development body for a revision of the base Fortran standard is termed the "primary development body". It is the responsibility of each development body to determine how the requirements are to be met and to prepare the corresponding draft document. Revisions of the Fortran standard will incorporate approved corrections as well as fully implemented requirements. A development body will nominate a project editor, produce a draft document to meet the agreed schedule and specified requirements, establish a document production system that will allow the most recent electronic version of any proposed standard to be available to all members of WG5 and the development body and coordinate with other development bodies and organizations, as appropriate. 4. The maintenance function Maintenance of a standard involves correcting errors that are discovered in the standard and providing official interpretations for those parts of the standard that are found to be unclear or incompletely specified. A corrigendum that incorporates corrections resulting from this maintenance activity will be produced periodically. WG5 will determine maintenance bodies for Fortran revision standards and auxiliary standards. In general, the body that develops a standard will be responsible for its maintenance. WG5 will conduct a letter ballot on items that the maintenance body identifies as ready for further processing. From the items thus approved, WG5 will extract material appropriate for a technical corrigendum and forward the resulting draft to SC22 for further processing. This procedure will be repeated as required. 5. Scheduling WG5 will determine the approximate target date for each revision of the base standard - typically between five and ten years - and will negotiate with the primary development body a detailed schedule consistent with this target. For other development work WG5 will negotiate an appropriate schedule with the corresponding development body. Activities involving maintenance of the current standard will take place concurrently with the development activities. 6. The multi-part standard Some needs may be met most effectively with auxiliary standards rather than by revision of the base standard. Such an auxiliary standard is related to the base standard in some significant way; each auxiliary standard is a separate part of the Fortran standard, with Part 1 being the base language. Standard-conforming implementations must accommodate the whole of Part 1; the other parts are optional. Because of the serious potential for incompatibilities arising from uncoordinated extension activities, WG5 requests that all bodies developing extension standards coordinate their work closely with the primary development body and requires that the work be technically acceptable to the primary development body before approval by WG5. At some point it may become appropriate to incorporate an auxiliary standard into the base standard. WG5 will accomplish this by assigning the integration to the primary development body, with assistance from the development body responsible for maintenance of the auxiliary standard. 7. Liaison and review activities It is the responsibility of WG5 and the development bodies to establish liaison or contact with and review the work of other organizations whose work items relate to the Fortran standards effort. A list of such organizations is maintained in WG5 Standing Document 6, WG5 Liaison Activities. 8. Conducting ad hoc studies It is the responsibility of WG5 to determine whether studies are needed to aid the identification and requirements specification processes. WG5 may carry out such ad hoc studies or may request one or more participating member bodies to carry out such studies. 9. Coordination within WG5 and between WG5 and development bodies Meeting schedules will be coordinated to best accomplish the goals established by the schedule. The WG5 Convenor will when appropriate conduct letter ballots of members to assist in reaching decisions between meetings. There should be as much overlap as possible in the membership of WG5 and development bodies, especially with the primary development body. This provides informal communication and continuity. Formal written reports and resolutions will be used to clarify communications and maintain a record of communications.