Subject: RE: (SC22docs.1679) SC 22 N 3482 - SC 22/WG 3 Business Plan/Conve ner's Report

From: Matthew Deane <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 14:51:09 -0400

In my hurry to get this out, I made a numbering error.  It should be N 3482.
My apologies.

-----Original Message-----
From: Matthew Deane [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 2:33 PM
To: 'SC 22 Distribution List'
Subject: (SC22docs.1679) SC 22 N 3480 - SC 22/WG 3 Business
Plan/Convener's Report

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

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 N3482

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

DATE ASSIGNED:
2002-08-22

SOURCE:
SC 22/WG 3 Convenor (L. Dickey)

BACKWARD POINTER:
N/A

DOCUMENT TYPE:
Other document (Open)

PROJECT NUMBER:

STATUS:
As this document was received after the July 26 deadline, it will be
reviewed at the upcoming SC 22 Plenary under Agenda Item 8.1 pending
approval for addition to the agenda. 

ACTION IDENTIFIER:
FYI

DUE DATE:
N/A

DISTRIBUTION:
Text

CROSS REFERENCE:

DISTRIBUTION FORM:
Open

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______________

Convener's Report
ISO/IED JTC1/SC22/WG3 - Programming Language APL
2002/08/22

Period Covered:

Submitted by:
Leroy J. Dickey
Convenor, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22/WG 3

Department of Pure Mathematics
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario,
Canada  N2L 3G1

Email: [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
  	JTC 1.22.24.01   Programming Language Extended APL.

1.2.2	Projects Underway

  	JTC 1.22.09.02   Character Repertoire for APL
  	JTC 1.22.24.02   Character Repertoire for Extended APL 

	These projects are in the editing phase.

  	JTC 1.22.09.02   is intended for inclusion with IS 8485.
  	JTC 1.22.09.02   is intended for inclusion with IS 13751.

	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

	None

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 of users are those in management of
	financial and actuarial data, but it is also used
	by largest airline in the world and for production
	by one of the largest computer manufacturers 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 now
	holds its own user conferences.  Adherants to this
	language think that it may replace APL.

2.2	Achievements

	The projects
  	JTC 1.22.09.01   Programming Language APL
  	JTC 1.22.24.01   Programming Language Extended APL.
	are complete.

	The projects
  	JTC 1.22.09.02   Character Repertoire for APL
  	JTC 1.22.24.02   Character Repertoire for Extended APL 
	are well underway.  We expect completion of writing in 2002.

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 for the Next Work Period

	To complete the APL Character Repertoire.

3.1	Deliverables

	The text for APL Character Repretoire is pending. 

3.2     Strategies

	Work hard.

3.2.1	Risks

	WG3 suffered from 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.

	In spite of the conspiracy and antipathy within the
	standards world, there are still many highly productive
	APL programmers and corportations who are using APL.

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

	Renew IS 8485 when it comes up for renewal
	Renew IS 13751 when it comes up for renewal

4.2	Schedule

	None.

4.3	WG3 Meetings
	
	Currently only by e-mail

4.3.1	Most Recent Physical Meeting

	Berlin, 2000-07-23.

4.3.2	Future Meetings

	None scheduled at this time.