Subject: Document SC22 N2242

From: "william c. rinehuls" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 12:08:03 -0400 (EDT)

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22
Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces
Secretariat:  U.S.A.  (ANSI)

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22
N2242

August 1996

TITLE:                United Kingdom National Activity Report for the
                      JTC 1/SC22 September 1996 Plenary Meeting

SOURCE:               Secretariat, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22

WORK ITEM:            N/A

STATUS:               N/A

CROSS REFERENCE:      N/A

DOCUMENT TYPE:        United Kingdom National Activity Report

ACTION:               To SC22 Member Bodies for information.

                      This document will be discussed under Agenda
                      Item 7.2 at the September 1996 JTC 1/SC22 Plenary.

Address reply to:
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 Secretariat
William C. Rinehuls
8457 Rushing Creek Court
Springfield, VA 22153  USA
Tel:  +1 (703) 912-9680
Fax:  +1 (703) 912-2973
email:  [email-masked]

___________________________________________________________________________
UK national activity report, September 1995 to September 1996

General

The UK equivalent of SC22 is BSI IST/5 Programming Languages.  At the end 
of December 1995 Andrew Walker, X/Open, completed his three-year term of 
office as IST/5 chairman.  We are sure that SC22 will wish to join us in 
thanking Andrew for his many contributions to language standards work 
during his chairmanship.  We are pleased to report that he remains a 
member of IST/5 and so his expertise and experience will remain available 
to the language standards community.

Andrew has been succeeded as chairman by Brian Meek, Kings College London, 
who was previously chairman in 1984-87 covering the transition from 
ISO/TC97 SC5 to ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22.  For various reasons he has requested 
that this appointment be for 1996 only, and not for the usual three years.

Technical work

Almost all of the technical work of IST/5 is in relation to SC22 projects, 
and it maintains technical panels which coordinate the UK contribution to 
the SC22 WGs in which the UK is active.  These panels advise IST/5 on 
matters such as letter ballots.  In September 1995 the UK provided the 
secretariat and convenor for WG5 Fortran, WG13 Modula-2, WG17 Prolog and 
WG19 Formal Specification Languages, in the case of WG19 maintaining 
technical panels for both VDM-SL and for Z.  However, as SC22 members 
will know, since then IST/5 received with regret the resignation of Mark 
Woodman as convenor of WG13, and having consulted the Modula-2 panel, 
recommended that BSI relinquish the secretariat of WG13.  With the 
standard for the Modula-2 base language being virtually completed, the 
primary objective of the UK in establishing the project and proposing it 
to SC22 had been achieved, and it seemed an appropriate time to let 
others take over the later developments.  Again, we are sure that 
others in SC22 will join us in thanking Mark Woodman, and his predecessor 
Roger Henry, for what they have done.  The UK intends to continue to 
participate actively in WG13.

We are also active in, and maintain panels for, WG4 Cobol, WG9 Ada, WG11 
Bindings, WG14 C, WG15 Posix, WG16 Lisp, WG21 C++ and WG22 PCTE.  We are 
not currently active in, and do not have panels for, WG3 APL and WG20 
Internationalisation.

Syntactic metalanguage

IST/5 has long been responsible for one project outside SC22, the UK 
national standard BS6154, Method of Defining Syntactic Metalanguage (there 
are historical reasons for this strange name!).  As the records of SC22 and 
its predecessor SC5 show, it was always our wish that this national standard 
should become, or be replaced by, an international standard, but for 
various reasons this wish had until recently remained unfulfilled.  The 
introduction of the fast-track procedure provided a straightforward way 
of achieving this ambition, and BSI accepted IST/5's proposal that the UK 
submit BS6154 for fast-track balloting. As SC22 members know, the ballot 
succeeded as DIS 14977.  Comments were limited enough that it has been 
possible to deal with them by electronic mail discussion, without the 
need for a ballot resolution meeting.  We have been fortunate enough to 
have the original project editor for BS6154, Roger Scowen, available and 
willing to guide us through this process, and we would like to thank him 
for his efforts.  Once ISO/IEC 14977 is published, IST/5 will recommend 
to BSI that BS6154 be withdrawn in its favour.  

_________________________ end of document N2242 _____________________