Subject: SC22 N2999 - WG3 Convener Report - PLENARY AGENDA ITEM

From: William Rinehuls <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 12:28:32 -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
N2999

TITLE:
WG3 Convener Report and WG3 Business Plan for the September 1999 JTC 1/
SC22 Plenary - PLENARY AGENDA ITEM

DATE ASSIGNED:
1999-09-15

SOURCE:
Secretariat, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22

BACKWARD POINTER:
N/A

DOCUMENT TYPE:
WG Convener Report

PROJECT NUMBER:
N/A

STATUS:
Discussion of this document will be an agenda item for the September 1999
JTC 1/SC22 Plenary.

ACTION IDENTIFIER:
FYI

DUE DATE:
N/A

DISTRIBUTION:
Text

CROSS REFERENCE:
N/A

DISTRIBUTION FORM:
Def

Address reply to:
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 Secretriat
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 ________________

                  ISO / IEC - TC1 / SC22 / WG3
                    1999 / 2000 BUSINESS PLAN

             BUSINESS PLAN FOR ISO-IEC / JTC1 / SC22 / WG3,
               Programming Language APL, its environments,
                    and System Software Interfaces

PERIOD COVERED:
October 1999 - September 2000

SUBMITTED BY:
Leroy J. Dickey, Convenor

1. MANAGEMENT SUMMARY:

1.1 JTC1/SC22 STATEMENT OF SCOPE:

Standardization of Programming Language APL, its environments and systems
software interfaces such as:

      specification techniques, 
      workspace interchange, and
      common facilities and interfaces.

1.2 PROJECT REPORT

WG3 has a total of 4 assigned projects. One of these is completed and the
other are in progress.

These these items are listed in a lter section.  See the Secretariats
report for another listing of these projects and related target dates.

1.3 COOPERATION AND COMPETITION for APL (WG3)

The Special Interest Group for APL (SIGAPL) of the Association for
Computing Machinery (ACM) is a professional society that has held more or
less regular meetings since the early 80s.  As a programming language, APL
is unique in this regard. WG3 (APL) usually meets in conjunction with the
SIGAPL conference.

APL has always attracted a small but elite audience, usually, actuaries,
financial analysts, academics, and scientists who need to create model
for analysis of data and value rapid program development.  The APL user
base has increased, but not in proportion to the increase of computer
users in recent years.

There are two relatively new languages which are obvious comptetitors for
APL. They are called J and K and appeared less than 10 years ago. Both of
these languages have aspired to correct anomalies and minor linguistic
irregularities of APL.

The language K has chosen a smaller set of primitive functions and has
specialized in the management of large datasets in the financial
industry. At the inception of K, it was a proprietary language giving
significant advantage to one large international bank. It is now publicly
available, but its pricing policy makes it unatractive to the general
public.

The language J has becoming broader in its functionality and in its
market. It has included arbitrary precision integers and a full set of
arithemtic operations (where they make sense) for full precision rational
arithmetic. In doing this J has preserved all of its structural features
and extended them to include these new data types.  But the strength of J
over APL lies in its adverbs, which can be used to modify the meaning of
any verb, either system supplied or user defined.

WG3 has liaison with SC2/WG2 which has been very satisfactory in
developing the amendment that designates a correspondence between symbols
used by the APL language and the IS 10646 standard.  APL users believe
that as usage of ISO 10646 becomes easier, this will assist with APL
workspace interchange.

2.0 PERIOD REVIEW

2.1 MARKET REQUIREMENTS

The APL standard have been produced in response to market requirements
covering broad areas of application.

APL has focused  on high level programming environments to improve
productivity, portability of applications, portability of programmers and
compatibility of applications over time.

While press attention is primarily devoted to newer language and
interface areas, it is important not to overlook the importance of older
technologies where there is significant user investment.  APL dates from
1961 and there are significant areas of application development.

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, its amenability to
rapid prototype development, and its adaptability to changing
environments.

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. Concern about the date problems facing programmers of other
languages have not been an issue for APL standards committees, since the
standard for APL has addressed the date and time issue in what is
considered to be a fully satisfactory way. 

This, of course, can not stop programmers from ignoring the standard, and
the larger APL houses are scanning ALL of their code, to make sure that it
conforms to the needs of the next millenium.

2.2 ACHIEVEMENTS

2.3 RESOURCES

Standards participants are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain
the necessary funding for standards development activities.

APLers, pioneers in the use of electronic mail, continue to make
productive use of this medium.

The reduction of resources is having its effect on development schedules.

For examples, the expected date for publication of Extended APL standard
has slipped two years, at least, in part due to falling membership in the
primary development team and to health problems.

3.0 FOCUS FOR THIS PLANNING PERIOD

3.1 DELIVERABLES:

Following are deliverables from last year are now addressed more
specifically.

This work is complete, and it should be renewed the next time it is up
for review.

DIS 13751
 
This work is complete, except for the forwarding of the final text to
Geneva for publication. Due to health reasons the forwarding of the final
text for publication as IS 13751 on Extended APL was delayed.

Work is now under way again.

The Geneva office has been contacted for assistence in this area.

We expect that the finished document will be in the hands of ISO by the
First of December, 1999. A working group meeting is planed for summer 2000
to deal with the results of the circulation of the IS.

APL Character Repertoire
 
Circulation of PDAM Registration ballots on Character Repertoire
amendments to IS 8485 on APL and DIS / IS 13751 on Extended APL; 

This is planned to be ready by the First of November, 1999.

3.2 STRATEGIES

The APL Working Group will likely continue to meet in conjunction with
SIGAPL meetings use electronic communication in the intervening intervals.

It is expected that the Working Group will move into a maintenance phase.

3.2.1 RISKS

The working group is now small, compared to the flourishing that it
experienced durning the major development phase.  The major risk is that
we will all die off.

However there is continuing commitment of participants even though in
some cases, their sponsors have decreased interest.  Or view is that this
is in part because the major portion of the work is done, and the most
intersting part of the job is finished.

APL is not a highly visible, perhaps because of the select niches that it
occupies. The risk is that some forget its importance.

3.2.2 OPPORTUNITIES

The development of J and K have been enormously exciting because of the
ability of users to easily share code vie electronic mail without the use
of special encoding techniques.

This, in turn, has stimulated the interest of others. If UCS-2 (or UCS-4)
comes into common use, the same phenomenon might happen with APL.  In the
meantime, transliteration schemes are the only practical method in use
today.

3.3 WORK PROGRAM PRIORITIES

The main priority of WG3 is to get the Extended APL Standard out the door
and to circulate the PDAM for APL Character Repertoire.

_______________________ end of SC22 N2999 __________________________