Subject: SC22 N2566 - WG3 Business Plan and Convener's Report

From: "william c. rinehuls" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 18:04:56 -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
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:  [email-masked]
__________________ 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: [email-masked]

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 _________________________________