Subject: SC22 N2488 - PL/I Project Editor's Report for Plenary

From: "william c. rinehuls" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 18:02:58 -0400 (EDT)

_________________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:  [email-masked]

_________________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 __________________________