From rinehuls@access.digex.net Fri Jun 6 00:03:04 1997 Received: from access2.digex.net (rinehuls@access2.digex.net [205.197.245.193]) by dkuug.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id AAA00729 for ; Fri, 6 Jun 1997 00:03:02 +0200 Received: from localhost (rinehuls@localhost) by access2.digex.net (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP id SAA12314 for ; Thu, 5 Jun 1997 18:02:58 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 18:02:58 -0400 (EDT) From: "william c. rinehuls" To: sc22docs@dkuug.dk Subject: SC22 N2488 - PL/I Project Editor's Report for Plenary Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII _________________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 N2488 June 1997 TITLE: PL/I Project Editor's Report for the August 1997 JTC 1/SC22 Plenary SOURCE: Secretariat, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 WORK ITEM: n?A STATUS: Please note that consideration of this Report will be an agenda item for the August 1997 SC22 Plenary. CROSS REFERENCE: n?A DOCUMENT TYPE: Project Editor's Report ACTION: To SC22 Member Bodies for review. Address reply to: ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 Secretariat William C. Rinehuls 8457 Rushing Creek Court Springfield, VA 22153 USA Tel: +1 (703) 912-9680 Fax: +1 (703) 912-2973 email: rinehuls@access.digex.net _________________end of title page; beginning of report _______________ PL/I Project Editor's Report for the August 1997 SC22 Plenary The PL/I project editor's report for this year is essentially "no change, no active work, no clarification requests". It is probably about time that we figure out when to start taking PL/I standards off the various agendas. On the one hand, the language (in close, and often conforming, approximation to the standard) is still very much in active use (unlike, e.g., ISO Basic as contrasted to Microsoft variant). While most of the use is "legacy", we still hear of significant new applications being developed in some industry sectors, classes being taught to new students in computer programming trade schools, etc. There is consequently continuing value in continuing to reaffirm the standards. On the other hand, there hasn't been any active development in years and, because of the quality of the semi-formal definition, no substantive clarification requests in even longer. And the vendor/developer part of the community shows no enthusiasm for even minor revisions/extensions to the standard or the language. I'm willing to continue to serve as Project Editor almost indefinitely. I don't need, even in principle, to continue to maintain even the vestiges of a functioning standby WG and the task is consequently not burdensome. On the other hand, it may be time that SC22 figure out what the stopping rule ought to be for a project that is useful, but not active; not costing much of anything, but probably producing almost no sales revenue; and with no likelihood of either changing in the forseeable future. John Klensin Project Editor PL/I ______________________ end of SC22 N2488 __________________________