Subject: SC 22 N 3455 - National Body Activity Report of the United States

From: Matthew Deane <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2002 12:57:11 -0400

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

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 N3455

TITLE:
National Body Activity Report of the United States

DATE ASSIGNED:
2002-07-29

SOURCE:
US National Body

BACKWARD POINTER:
N/A

DOCUMENT TYPE:
National Body Contribution

PROJECT NUMBER:

STATUS:
This document was received by the July 26 deadline, so it will be reviewed
at the upcoming SC 22 Plenary under Agenda Item 7.2.  

ACTION IDENTIFIER:
FYI

DUE DATE:
N/A

DISTRIBUTION:
Text

CROSS REFERENCE:

DISTRIBUTION FORM:
Def

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______________

National Activity Report for 2001-2002
United States of America, National Member Body
Prepared for JTC1/SC22 Plenary in
Finland, August 2002

Doc: CT22-N2002-05
Date: 2002-07-25

The U.S. Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to SC22 is INCITS/CT22. 

The U.S. has continued to be active in many of SC22's Working Groups. In
particular, the activities of the following groups are reported here:

Ada:
	*	For SC22/WG9, the U.S. TAG is DDC-I, Inc.
	*	Completed Projects 
	1.	22.10.01 -- IS 8652:1995 Programming Languages: Ada and
ISO/IEC 8652:1995/Cor.1:2001 Technical Corrigendum. The U.S. TAG is now
participating in updating the standard by developing an Amendment with
completion anticipated in 2005. 
	2.	22.15942 -- TR 15942 Guidance for the use of the Ada
Programming Language in High Integrity Systems.  The U.S. TAG recommended
approval for making this standard freely available on an appropriate web
site.  The TAG is also participating in the maintenance of this standard. 
	*	Projects Underway
	1.	The U.S. TAG requested the subdivision of project ISO/IEC
8652:1995 in accordance with subclause 14.5 of the JTC1 Directives in order
to prepare amendments to ISO/IEC 8652.
	2.	The U.S. TAG is participating in the development of an
Amendment to ISO/IEC 652:1995. The Amendment would be completed circa 2005
and would make small changes to the Ada Language Specification.
	3.	The U.S. TAG is developing a guide on the use of the
"Ravenscar Profile."
	*	The U.S. TAG supplies support to the three WG 9 working
groups - Ada Rapporteur Group (ARG), Annex H Rapporteur Group (HRG), ASIS
Rapporteur Group. 
	*	Participation with Other Organizations
	1.	Members of the U.S. TAG participate in the Special Interest
Group on Ada (SIG) of the Association for Computing Machinery and
Ada-Europe.  SIGAda is considering whether it should request Category C
liaison with WG 9.
	2.	There is some representation by the U.S. TAG in the Ada
Resource Association (ARA). 
	3.	Members of the U.S. TAG participated in the International
Real-Time Ada Working Group in April 2002.

C:
	*	For SC22/WG14, the U.S. TAG is INCITS/J11.
	*	Continued providing most of the manpower for maintaining
ANSI/ISO/IEC 9899:1999.
	*	J11 assisted in the development of TR (Type 3) on C
Extensions to Support Embedded Processors, which is currently out for
balloting.
	*	J11 held co-located meetings with ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG14 on
the following dates: October 15-19, 2001 Redmond, Washington, USA; April
15-19, 2002 Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles.
	*	J11 assisted in the preparation of a new work item to
produce a Type 2 TR on Specification for Additional Character Data Types to
the Programming Language C 

C++:
	*	For SC22/WG21, the U.S. TAG is INCITS/J16.
	*	The primary work of the committee during year 2001 was
processing Defect Reports, continuing work on the study of efficient use and
implementation of C++, and creation of a proposal for a new TR on extensions
to the C++ standard library. 
	*	Final drafts of Defect Report resolutions for many issues
were completed. The Project Editor was directed to use those resolutions in
creating a Technical Corrigendum to be forwarded to ISO in 2002. 
	*	In the interest of closer coordination with the C committee
(J11), J16 has adjusted its meeting schedule so that one meeting per year is
at the same time and location as the J11 meeting. It is in the interests of
both committees to see that C and C++ diverge as little as possible.
	*	J16 continues to hold co-located meetings with WG21.

COBOL:
	*	For SC22/WG4, the U.S. TAG is INCITS/J4. J4 is responsible
for the development of the U.S. and international standards for COBOL (ANSI
X3.23-1985, ISO 1989); the development of related amendments, technical
reports, and technical corrigenda; and the processing of related defect
reports.
	*	Based on recommendations from J4 and INCITS, ANSI reaffirmed
ANSI X3.23-1985 and its amendments.  
	*	J4 analyzed comments on the FCD ballot on the revision to
ANSI X3.23-1985 (ISO/IEC 1989:1985) and developed recommendations for WG4's
consideration in ballot resolution at the November 2001 WG4 meeting.  J4
completed the associated changes directed at that meeting and submitted a
document that is the subject of an ISO/IEC FDIS ballot that closes 4
September 2002.
	*	Features included in the COBOL revision are cultural
adaptability, object orientation, enhanced inter-operability with other
programming languages, new data types (bit, floating point, native binary,
pointers), strong typing, enhanced portability of arithmetic, support for
multiple-octet coded character sets, a screen handling facility, data
validation support, conditional compilation, exception handling, storage
allocation support, and file sharing with record locking.
	*	J4 developed PDTR 19755, Object Finalization for Programming
Language COBOL, as requested by SC22.  This TR is the subject of an SC22
concurrent registration and approval ballot that closes 7 September 2002.
	*	J4 anticipates future work to include defect handling for
the new standard; development of O-O class library technical reports for
collection classes and XML support; and preliminary planning for the next
revision.

Fortran:
	*	For SC22/WG5, the U.S. TAG is INCITS/J3.
	*	Published Corrigendum 2 to Fortran 95.
	*	Is now completing the CD of Fortran 02.
	*	Expect that the joint meeting with WG5 in August will result
in a draft for public comment.

Language Independent Datatypes:
	*	For part of SC22/WG11's work, the U.S. TAG is INCITS/L8.
	*	Attended the 2001 WG11 meeting.
	*	The specification ISO/IEC 11404 Language Independent
Datatypes is being revised.  A roadmap for this revision will be distributed
to SC22 shortly.  It is remarkable that many organizations outside SC22
(like SC32 - Data management and Interchange, and the W3C consortium) are
interested in this specification.  L8 contributed a working draft of the
revision of 11404.

Pascal:
	*	For SC22/WG2, the U.S. TAG is INCITS/J9.
	*	In response to the condition that there were two U.S.
standards for Extended Pascal, the committee recommended that the U.S.
withdraw X3.160:1990 Programming Language Extended PASCAL (ANSI/IEEE
770/X3.160-1989) in favor of ANSI/ISO/IEC 10206:1991[1999] -  Information
Technology - Programming languages - Extended Pascal.
	*	J9 is in Maintenance Mode. It is prepared to answer
interpretation questions on the Pascal and Extended Pascal standards, but
has not received any in the last year.

PL/I:
	*	For SC22/WG7, the U.S. TAG is INCITS/J1.
	*	During the last year there were no meetings, no requests for
clarification requests, and   no substantive actions.

POSIX

	*	The U.S. TAG to WG15 is held by IEEE
	*	The single, unified POSIX specification (IEEE/WG15/Open
Group, also known as the Austin Group Specification) has been completed. It
also completed balloting in IEEE and Open Group and has entered FDIS ballot
in JTC 1. It is expected to be an approved standard before the year is out.
	*	There have been no meetings of WG15 or the U.S. since
February 2001. With the successful completion of the Austin Group
specification work and ballot, consideration is being given to disbanding
the U.S. TAG upon successful completion of the current ballot.

Prolog:
	*	For SC22/WG17, the U.S. TAG is INCITS/J17.
	*	The U.S. is contributing to WG17 subgroups working on
proposals to standardize Definite clause grammars, foreign language
interface and global variables.
	*	It is worth noting that the international Prolog community
is showing renewed interest in Prolog standardization.

Internationalization:
	*	For SC22/WG20, the U.S. TAG is INCITS/L2.
	*	Create the fourth edition of ISO/IEC TR 10176 - Guide for
the development of programming language standards. This effort is necessary
to specify which characters from the growing repertoire of ISO/IEC 10646 can
be used as identifiers in programming languages.  The third edition of TR
10176 has been published.
	*	Amend ISO/IEC 14651 - International string ordering: L2
contributed substantially to the development of the amendment #1 by
providing the common template table.  L2 plans to provide input to the
future amendments, which are needed to deal with the repertoire extensions
of ISO/IEC 10646, aka Unicode.  Often the collation rules lag slightly
behind the repertoire (which is the nature of collation research).
	*	Comment on ISO/IEC 14652 - Specification method for cultural
conventions: L2 provided extensive comments on the DTR2 ballot and more
technical advice during the meetings.  The U.S. insisted that sections of
the TR be clearly marked as "controversial" whenever WG20 could not reach
consensus.  The final document will have many such sections when it is
published.
	*	Contribution to IS 15897 - Registration of cultural
elements: EN 12005 was fast-tracked as ISO/IEC 15897 and assigned to WG20
for maintenance.  L2 provided an extensive contribution to improve the
registration and review process to ensure the quality of individual
submission.  This work will show up in the next revision of 15897. 
	*	TR 15435 - APIs for Internationalization: Technical comments
from the L2 experts were instrumental to the withdrawal of this
controversial project.
	*	Unicode in programming languages. In February of 2002, L2
hosted a session with experts, conveners, and chairs from programming
language standardization committees to find common solutions for the use of
the Universal Character Set in programming languages.  A Unicode data type
is a possible solution - L2 will provide an expert to the ad-hoc session on
this subject at the SC22 plenary in Finland, August 2002.