Subject: SC 22 N 3280 - JTC 1/SC 22/WG 5 Business Plan and Convenor's Repo rt

From: Matthew Deane <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 15:01:58 -0400

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22
Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces
Secretariat:  U.S.A.  (ANSI)
 
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 N3280
 
TITLE:
JTC 1/SC 22/WG 5 Business Plan and Convenor's Report

DATE ASSIGNED:
2001-08-07
 
SOURCE:
SC 22/WG 5 Convenor (J. Reid)

BACKWARD POINTER:
N/A
 
DOCUMENT TYPE:
Other document (Open)

PROJECT NUMBER:
N/A
 
STATUS:
This document will be reviewed at the upcoming SC 22 Plenary under Agenda
Item 8.3.

ACTION IDENTIFIER:
FYI
 
DUE DATE:
  
DISTRIBUTION:
Text

CROSS REFERENCE:
 
DISTRIBUTION FORM:
Open
 
Address reply to:
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 Secretariat
Matt Deane
ANSI
25 West 43rd Street
New York, NY  10036
Telephone:  (212) 642-4992
Fax:             (212) 840-2298
Email:  [email-masked]

______end of cover page, beginning of document__________

ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1438

WG5 Business Plan and Convener's Report to the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 2001
Plenary

PERIOD COVERED BY THIS REPORT: August 2000 to August 2001.

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: [email-masked]

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

A revised version of this TR was published on 7 June 2001 as 
TR 15580:2001(E).

22.02.01.04 Type 2 TR on Enhanced Data Type Facilities in Fortran

A revised version of this TR was published on 14 June 2001 as 
TR 15581:2001(E).

22.02.03 Programming Language Fortran - Part 3: Conditional Compilation

A corrected version of this part of the Fortran standard was published 
on 15 December 2000 as IS 1539-3:1999(E).

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 have developed 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. These new procedures involve WG5 members preparing draft
responses at WG5 meetings and my email ahead of J3 meetings at which
they are considered further.  The first corrigendum was published on
28 June 2001. The second will be submitted for SC22 balloting this
autumn. A third may be needed next year.

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 agreed to reprint the document with
the line restored (see above). 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 vendors have upgraded their
Fortran 90 compilers to Fortran 95 and some have incorporated the
extensions of TR 15580 and TR 15581.

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

Revisions of the Technical Reports TR15580 and TR15581, describing
features that will be incorporated in the next revision of the Base
Language Standard (Part 1), were published during the year. The 
first corrigendum to the Base Language Standard was published during 
the year and processing for the second corrigendum is well advanced. 
Development work on the next draft of the Fortran standard is complete 
and integration is in hand.

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 July/August 2001 was attended by thirteen members, including
the Convener, representing six countries.

3 FOCUS FOR NEXT WORK PERIOD 

3.1 Deliverables 

It is anticipated that the second corrigendum for Part 1 of the Standard
will be ready for SC22 processing before the end of the year.

3.2 Strategies 

WG5 operates under a strategic plan described in WG5 Standing Document
4, the latest version of which is WG5 N1349.  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; 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 2 to Fortran 95 is a WG5 priority activity
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. It is intended
that this work will reach the CD stage by September 2002.

4 OTHER ITEMS

4.1 Action Requested at the Forthcoming SC22 Plenary

WG5 requests that a work item be established for a Type 2 Technical Report 
on Enhanced Module Facilities with Project Editor Van Snyder and targeted
for final publication in 2004/5.

4.2 Recent Meetings

2000/8/14-18  Oulu, Finland 
2001/7/30-8/3 London, UK 

4.3 Future Meetings

2002/08/11-16   Las Vegas, USA
2003/03/30-04/4 Las Vegas, USA (1st CD ballot resolution)
2003/08         Dresden, Germany
2004/04         USA (Final CD ballot resolution)

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.