ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 - N807

                   Information Processing Society of Japan(IPSJ)/
            Information Technology Standards Commission of Japan(ITSCJ)
                                    SC22/Fortran WG


            Japanese National Activity Report to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5
                           Victoria. Canada : 27-31 July 1992


1. Revision of JIS Fortran standard
   We have been revising JIS Fortran standard and we will finish the draft
   standard by March, 1993. We will have the new standard by the end of 1993.

   During the revision of JIS Fortran, we have found several points to be
   clarified in IS 1539 and we sent questions to X3J3.

2. Position on the revision cycle
   We are in favor of "revision in 2000, revision in 1995 [only corrections] ”.
   We are not in favor of train model.

   Philosophically a standard should not be changed in a short period.
   Stability is one of important natures of standards that promotes portability,
   reliability, maintainability of Fortran program for use on a variety of
   computing systems. The question is whether five year period is short or long
   enough in the view point of standards. We think five year period is short for
   major revision. And revision every five years will cause confusion in the
   Worldwide Fortran community.

   IS 1539 was finished in early 1991 and published in mid 1991. But so far
   only a few Fortran90 compilers have been implemented, and compilers are
   not available on many platforms so that Fortran90 language has not been
   used widely yet. No compiler validation suites are developed yet either.
   The major revision like Fortran90 takes long time to be well digested by
   the WW Fortran community. FORTRAN77 was not a major revision compared with
   Fortran90, but it took for a while to be widely used.


Masayuki Takata, Minoru Tanaka
IPSJ/ITSCJ SC22/Fortran WG