From rinehuls@access.digex.net Thu Aug 28 00:05:08 1997 Received: from access1.digex.net (qlrhmEbBUV1EY@access1.digex.net [205.197.245.192]) by dkuug.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id AAA07822 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 1997 00:05:01 +0200 Received: from localhost (rinehuls@localhost) by access1.digex.net (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP id SAA08418 for ; Wed, 27 Aug 1997 18:04:56 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 18:04:56 -0400 (EDT) From: "william c. rinehuls" To: sc22docs@dkuug.dk Subject: SC22 N2566 - WG3 Business Plan and Convener's Report 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 N2566 August 1997 TITLE: WG3 Business Plan and WG3 Convener's Report for the August 1997 JTC 1/ SC22 Plenary SOURCE: Secretariat, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 WORK ITEM: N/A STATUS: N/A CROSS REFERENCE: N/A DOCUMENT TYPE: Business Plan and Convener'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 Telephone: +1 (703) 912-9680 Fax: +1 (703) 912-2973 email: rinehuls@access.digex.net __________________ end of title page; beginning of report ________ BUSINESS PLAN AND CONVENOR'S REPORT for ISO-IEC / JTC 1 / SC 22 / WG 3 - APL PERIOD COVERED: Last year: August 1996 to July 1997 Next year: August 1997 to July 1998 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 Phone: 1+519 888-4966, x5559 Fax: 1+519 725-0160 E-mail: ljdickey@math.uwaterloo.ca 1.0 MANAGEMENT SUMMARY 1.1 JTC 1/SC 22/WG 3 STATEMENT OF SCOPE The development and maintenance of ISO/IEC standards for Programming Language APL. 1.2 PROJECT REPORT 1.2.1 COMPLETED PROJECTS IS 8485 Programming Language APL 1.2.2 PROJECTS UNDERWAY (1) Extended APL The document for Extended APL has been distributed successfully as a Committee Draft (CD), and is now being circulated as a Draft International Standard (DIS 13751). In view of the strong support for APL at the CD stage, we expect that it will be accepted as an International Standard. (2) APL Character Repertoire With this document, the APL working group is identifying those elements in UCS-2-2 that correspond to all known APL characters in all known APL implementations. The collection of the initial data involved broad participation of APL users, vendors, and implementers, and influenced the content of UCS-2. This will be circulated as a CD this calendar year. 1.2.3 MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES Maintenance of ISO 8485 (1989). To date, there are no Defect Reports or requests for interpretation. 1.2.4 CANCELED PROJECTS Interest and need for standardizing an APL-ASCII transliteration scheme is waning but because of appearance of ISO 10646. This project will be abandoned. 1.2.5 COOPERATION AND COMPETITION WG3 has liaison to the working group SC2/WG2 in the person of Leigh Clayton. Liaison with SC2/WG2 has been very satisfactory, both in the initial phases of the 10646 project and with the most recent addition of the APL function symbol Quad, U+2395. It is expected that there will decreased need for liaison in the near future. 2.0 PERIOD REVIEW 2.1 MARKET REQUIREMENTS APL continues to be widely used for new development and for enhancement and reengineering of existing applications. APL is the language of choice in the insurance industry. More actuaries use APL than with any other language. APL continues to be the premier language in the top banks of the world and is heavily used in the largest financial markets, so much so, that some have their own internal, proprietary, APL systems. One company uses APL for its internal electronic mail system, and employees of the company use the verb "to APL", meaning to send electronic mail. Some of the latest enhancements to APL are coming from this milieu, and are influencing APLers in other sectors as well. The oil industry, especially in the research departments continues to be a strong user of APL. Some APL vendors, who a few years ago heard their customers talking about migrating to desktop workstations, are experiencing a resurgence of interest in mainframe APL applications. This may be, in part, to difficulties encountered by excessive loads on small systems. APL is heavily used as a prototyping language, regardless of the language of the final product. One notable example is that the Federal Division of one of the largest computer companies in the world uses APL to develop software for satellite surveillance systems. The APL is machine and hand translated to a finished product which is delivered in another language that has been specified by the military contractor. In 1996, there were two different conferences dedicated to Array Processing Languages, one in Toronto, the other in Manchester. APL is the only language that I know that has an annual meeting dedicated to the joys of array processing. There are not many new APL language features in the offerings from the largest vendors, but those that are introduced seem to be responses to the creative forces in the smaller vendors. All APL vendors seem to be focusing their efforts on improving user interface and on bridges to other applications. For instance, one new APL product gathers numeric information from various data suppliers, stores it in multi- dimensional arrays, and then presents it to the user in useful and coherent formats, in some instances making use of the methods of time series analysis. Such a tool is in great demand to those who follow the stock markets of the world. This application illustrates three aspects that APL does best: its handling of arrays, its firm mathematical foundation, and its amenability to rapid prototype development. Issues for users of personal computers include the need for access to more operating system features and user interface features. These are being met by the active developers. The current draft of Extended APL addresses a great many of the market requirements for APL, but not all of them. Even as the draft standard progresses, new requirements are evolving. With the current trend to web-based operation, users are beginning to re-configure existing APL applications as servers integrated with web clients. Some APL vendors have already introduced language extensions to support this environment. Thus, continued evolution of the international standard for APL is essential to provide the benefits of new technologies and new environments to APL users worldwide. 2.2 ACHIEVEMENTS (1) A draft of Extended APL was forwarded to SC22 for circulation as a Draft International Standard (DIS 13751). (2) WG3 consensus was reached on the content of the APL Repertoire. (3) The working group is ready to circulate its Repertoire. 2.3 RESOURCES The convenor wants a secretary and a librarian. The secretary is wanted to assist with the preparation of reports such as this one, and the librarian is wanted to deal with all paper and electronic documents that arrive in his mail box. 3.0 FOCUS NEXT WORK PERIOD 3.1 DELIVERABLES One new deliverable to SC22 is planned in the coming year, namely the APL Character Repertoire mentioned above. Since everybody loves character sets, a working draft is attached to the convenor's report, below. 3.2 STRATEGIES The strategy for the next work period is to concentrate on consensus and quality. SC22's acceptance of responses to CD comments will measure consensus. 3.2.1 RISKS We have seen in other working groups that there can be consensus in the working group and among national bodies when there is a vote on a Committee Draft and then among comments, there can be significant resistance. Presumably this could happen to the WG3, the APL working group, as well, but there is no reason to expect it. 3.2.2 OPPORTUNITIES The APL Work Group continues to use electronic mail and ftp. Since ftp usage is supported by WWW browsers, working group members who are challenged by arcane ftp commands are delighted to learn that they can more easily access documents this way, and this lightens the load of the convenor. Most recently, a CD-ROM was produced that made it easier for readers to access one of our larger working papers. The APL working group has a special opportunity to promote its forthcoming standard. We have been invited by the editors of APL Quote Quad, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) publication of the Special Interest Group for APL, to write about our work. This offer has been accepted. Y2K: One hears stories about software that will break when the year 2000 rolls around. All known APL implementations use a time stamp with the year is presented with full accuracy, including the century. One large vendor proudly proclaims that its product is fully Y2K (Year 2000) conformant. This does not mean that all APL users are exempt from the woes that face the writers of software with a poorly chosen representation of date and time. One hears rumours of companies that have legacy code that did not make full use of the language capabilities at the time it was written. There is a scramble on, even now, to solve these problems. This is seen as an opportunity, because it offers employment for APL programmers. 3.3 WORK PROGRAM PRIORITIES Our priorities at this time, are to (1) See Extended APL be accepted as an International Standard (2) To see the APL Character Repertoire circulated as a CD. (3) To process any defect reports against ISO 8485. (4) To handle new matters arising. 4. OTHER ITEMS 4.1 ACTIONS REQUESTED AT THE 1997 SC22 PLENARY The convenor requests the assistance of SC22, please, in date management for our two projects. It was thought the resolution passed last year would divert at least one of the two disagreeable notices circulated this past year. 4.2 WG3 MEETINGS 4.2.1 In the year past. 1997 August 14-16, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The dates listed were in the week immediately prior to the APL language conference, APL97, and this latter conference unfortunately overlaps with the SC22 meeting in Ottawa. 4.2.2 In the coming year 1998 August 1-3, Rome, Italy (tentative - the week after APL 98.) 4.3 ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT DISTRIBUTION The APL standard, for historical reasons and because of its reliance on special characters, continues to be produced using TeX. The printer-ready form of the standard is circulated as a postscript files. The fact that postscript printers are widely available at low cost and that postscript viewers are readily available for free, makes this an acceptable distribution method for the time being. 4.4 TWO PERSONS TO UPDATE AND PRINT THE DRAFT STANDARD Now that the APL draft standard has its source language TeX. WG3 is working towards meeting SC22's requirement that there be 2 people capable of updating and printing the document. So far, the first standard has been produced on a Macintosh, an Amiga, and on a PC/Linux. The unfortunate part of this story is that it has never been running on any two systems at the same time. Our next target system is a DEC ALPHA, this to be simultaneous with the Linux version. We think that then we will be able to say that the requirement is satisfied. Our project editor is Leigh Clayton of Soliton in Toronto, and the backup editor is Lee Dickey of the University of Waterloo in Canada. Convenor's report There is little more to say, other than what is presented in the report above. To summarize, WG3 met in Toronto August 14-16, 1997. The principal agenda items were Extended APL and the APL Character Repertoire, and the Proposals for an ASCII Transliteration scheme. Extended APL has gone to DIS and no opposition is expected. The Character Repertoire is almost ready for circulation as a CD, and this is expected within the year. Finally, the need for an ASCII Transliteration scheme is no longer so pressing, in the presence of an APL Character set Repertoire. It is expected that there will be a need for a meeting in about a year's time. Since the next APL Language meeting, APL98, is planned for Rome, Italy, it is likely that WG3 will meet either immediately after (or possibly before) that meeting, but this year, two of our Working Group members expressed an interest in holding our meeting at a location near a good dive site. ______________________ end of SC22 N2566 _________________________________