Subject: N 4262 - Business Plan and Convener's Report for WG 5

From: Sally Seitz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2007 14:41:54 -0400

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 
Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces 
Secretariat:  U.S.A.  (ANSI) 
  
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 N4262
  
TITLE: Business Plan and Convener's Report for WG 5

DATE ASSIGNED: 
2007-08-21
  
SOURCE: 
WG 5 Convener (J. Reid)

BACKWARD POINTER: 
N/A 
  
DOCUMENT TYPE: 
Officer's Contribution

PROJECT NUMBER: 
N/A 
  
STATUS: 
This document is circulated for review and consideration.  It will be
discussed under agenda item 8.2 at the September 2007 JTC 1/SC 22 Plenary in
Singapore.

ACTION IDENTIFIER: 
ACT 
  
DUE DATE: 
  
DISTRIBUTION: 
Text 

CROSS REFERENCE: 
  
DISTRIBUTION FORM: 
def 

Sally Seitz 
Program Manager 
American National Standards Institute 
25 West 43rd Street, 4th Floor 
New York, NY 10036 
Tel: 212 642 4918 
Fax: 212 840 2298 
__________________________end of cover page, beginning of
document______________________________________________

ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1692 

WG5 Business Plan and Convener's Report to the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 2007
Plenary

PERIOD COVERED BY THIS REPORT: August 2006 to August 2007.

SUBMITTED BY: John Reid  

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 

None in this period. 

1.2.2 Projects Underway 

22.02.01.01 Programming Language Fortran - Part 1: Base language

It was agreed at the May 2004 meeting of WG5 that the next revision
of the base Fortran language should be minor (as was Fortran 95 as a 
revision of Fortran 90) with a target publication date of 2009. WG5 
was already committed to including the enhanced module facilities of 
ISO/IEC TR 19767:2005. The schedule agreed then (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 
N1590) was reaffirmed at the WG5 meetings in 2005 and 2006. To accord 
with this, the status of the standard was changed to 'under revision' 
in late 2006. 

To determine the content of the revision, WG5 established a Repository 
of Requirements (Standing Document 5) and revised it several times;
the latest version is ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1679. The repository items 
were considered at the meeting of WG5 in February 2006 and the decisions 
are recorded in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1653, resolution F5. A few 
significant items were left to be included if the primary development 
body, INCITS/J3, found time after working on the high-priority 
items. At its May meeting, INCITS/J3 decided that two items, data type 
BITS and intelligent macros, were sufficiently developed to include, 
but that further interoperability of Fortran with C was not and would be 
better as a Type 2 Technical Report. A proposal for the TR has been 
submitted and voted upon (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 N1674). The response is 
document ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1694.

INCITS/J3 constructed a draft revision of the base Fortran language in 
accord with this plan ahead of the WG5 meeting in August 2007 and the 
schedule and content were reconsidered then. Given that no full 
implementations of Fortran 2003 were yet available (though some near-full
implementations were available), it was felt essential to delay the revision
and reduce its extent. The new schedule that was agreed is in ISO/IEC
JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1693 and involves a 10-month delay in the target date for
final publication (2010-06 instead of 2009-08). For the content, it was
agreed that one of the major items, co-arrays for parallel programming, was
of prime importance in view of the universal availability of parallel
hardware. It was therefore agreed that only a small reduction in this
feature was appropriate, but that intelligent macros be removed and that
data type BITS be replaced by a simpler extension that does not involve a
new intrinsic type. 

WG5 therefore requests approval for the new schedule. 

The primary responsibility for maintenance of the base language has been
delegated to INCITS/J3. Our procedure is that each interpretation request
is first considered by J3. Once a response has been agreed at a J3 meeting,
a J3 letter ballot is held, and if this is successful it is followed by an
informal WG5 vote. A vote is deemed to have failed if there are any no
votes with reasons that have not so far been considered. This gives plenty
of scope for detailed analysis and gives the result good credibility. Only
after this procedure has been followed is a corrigendum and response
document constructed. This has been done twice for Fortran 2003, with
corrigenda published in 2005 and 2006.

WG5 continues this process for handling defect reports and will 
construct further corrigenda even if these cannot be approved 
officially. WG5 requests that official approval be allowed. Although 
the standard is under revision, it will not be replaced until 2010 
and will be the base for implementations for many years thereafter. 

22.02.01.02 Type 2 Technical Report on Exception Handling

The features of the TR on Exception Handling have been incorporated
in the base Fortran Standard ISO/IEC 1539-1:2004(E), so no maintenance
of this TR is being undertaken. 

22.02.01.04 Type 2 Technical Report on Enhanced Data Type Facilities

The features of the TR on Enhanced Data Type Facilities have been 
incorporated in the base Fortran Standard ISO/IEC 1539-1:2004(E), so no 
maintenance of this TR is being undertaken. 

22.02.01.05 Type 2 Technical Report on Enhanced Module Facilities

The TR on Enhanced Module Facilities is now in a maintenance stage. 
There has been no activity during the period.  

22.02.02 Programming Language Fortran - Part 2: Varying Length
Character Strings

Features of Fortran 2003 cover almost all the requirements for which
Part 2 was written. However, no compilers are available yet. Therefore, 
WG5 continues to have responsibility for maintenance. There has been 
no activity during the period. 

22.02.03 Programming Language Fortran - Part 3: Conditional
Compilation

There appears to be very little interest in Part 3 and there have
been few implementations. WG5 continues to have responsibility for 
maintenance, but there has been no activity during the period. It
expects to recommend withdrawal when renewal is next considered.  

1.2.3 Projects Withdrawn

None.

1.3 Cooperation and Competition

WG5 cooperates closely with the ANSI INCITS/J3 Fortran Technical
Committee, to whom it has delegated the technical development of
Fortran as well as the maintenance of Fortran 2003 (ISO/IEC
1539-1:2004(E)). There is also contact with the industry-driven 
HPF and OpenMP Architecture Review Board, with several members of the
Board 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.

Dan Nagle (J3 chairman) has attended meetings of the Other Working 
Group on Vulnerabilities. 

Other important liaisons are those with IFIP WG2.5 (Numerical
Software), IEEE 754 (Floating-point hardware), ANSI INCITS/H2 
(Data base), and ANSI INCITS/J11 (C).

There are no competitive activities.

2 PERIOD REVIEW

2.1 Market Requirements

Fortran is the language of choice for much scientific, engineering,
and economic programming, particularly for very large programs that
have evolved over many years. 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 95 are
causing a growing number of scientific and technological users to move
towards these latest versions of Fortran. Vendors have upgraded their
Fortran 90 compilers to Fortran 95 and have implemented many of
the new features of Fortran 2003.

Most major Fortran compiler vendors are represented either on WG5 or
its Primary Development Body, INCITS/J3, as are two of the major
research establishments that rely on Fortran for their scientific
computing. In addition to vendor-supplied and specific mailing lists,
there is an active email list and an active usenet newsgroup 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 

The main achievement during the period has been the development of
a draft for the next revision (see section 1.2.2).  

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. The number of employers, especially among compiler
vendors, has declined through corporate mergers and 
acquisitions. 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 INCITS/J3, 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 three development bodies monitoring published standards
and technical reports for maintenance purposes. A development body for
the TR on further interoperability of Fortran with C will be established 
soon.

WG5 itself carries out much of its discussions via email, with an
annual meeting, usually during the summer, and occasional other meetings 
at critical stages in the development of the base language standard. The
meeting in August 2007 was attended by 18 members, including the Convener, 
representing 5 member bodies.

3 FOCUS FOR NEXT WORK PERIOD

3.1 Deliverables

It is envisaged that the first Committee Draft for the revision of Part 1 
will be submitted for registration and approval in May 2008.

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
INCITS/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.

3.2.3 Work Program Priorities

WG5's priority activities this year are the maintenance of the base
Fortran language Standard, ISO/IEC 1539-1:2004(E) and the development
of a draft revision (see Section 1.2.2).

4. ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION

4.1 WG5 Liaisons

See Section 1.3.

4.2 Recent Meetings

2004/05/02-07 Las Vegas, USA
2005/05/9-13  Delft, Netherlands 
2006/02/13-17 George Mason University, Fairfax VA, USA 
2007/08/6-10  London, UK

4.3 Future Meetings

2008/02/11-15 Las Vegas, USA
2008/11/16-21 Tokyo, Japan (probably)
2009/5/       USA

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, INCITS/J3, meets quarterly. Other
work is carried out via email.

5. SC22 PLENARY ACTIONS RELATED TO WG5

5.1 Schedule for the revision of Part 1 the Fortran Standard

WG5 requests approval of new schedule, set out in
ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1693, leading to first CD in 2008, final CD
in 2009, and publication in the summer of 2010.

5.2 Type 2 TR on Further Interoperability of Fortran with C

WG5 requests approval of Bill Long as Project Editor for this TR.

5.3 Corrigenda for Part 1 the Fortran Standard

WG5 requests that official approval be allowed for further corrigenda 
to Part 1 of the Fortran Standard. 

Sally Seitz
Program Manager
American National Standards Institute
25 West 43rd Street, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10036
Tel: 212 642 4918
Fax: 212 840 2298