From rinehuls@Radix.Net Wed Sep 15 18:27:48 1999 Received: from mail1.radix.net (mail1.radix.net [207.192.128.31]) by dkuug.dk (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id SAA28230; Wed, 15 Sep 1999 18:27:47 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from rinehuls@Radix.Net) Received: from saltmine.radix.net (saltmine.radix.net [207.192.128.40]) by mail1.radix.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id MAA18283; Wed, 15 Sep 1999 12:28:35 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 12:28:32 -0400 (EDT) From: William Rinehuls To: sc22info@dkuug.dk cc: keld simonsen Subject: SC22 N2999 - WG3 Convener Report - PLENARY AGENDA ITEM 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 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: rinehuls@radix.net ________________ 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 __________________________