ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 - N820a Strategic Plan for Fortran Standardization (WG5 Standing Document 4) 1. Mission (the goal to achieve) The mission is to be responsive to changing technology and user needs by establishing procedures whereby a revision of the international Fortran standard is produced about every five years. Each of these revisions, during its lifetime, will be recognized and accepted worldwide as the single international Fortran standard. The standard will be developed and maintained by a broad and balanced international group of users, vendors, and academics, collectively providing appropriate expertise. 2. Vision (the desired effect of achieving the goal) The international scientific and engineering community will be provided with a single worldwide Fortran standard that will improve software and programmer portability and promote software reusability and compatibility. 3. Strategies (what specific functions will achieve the goal) 3.1. Two major functions There are two major functions: (1) identification of needs and specification of standard requirements and (2) development of standard document content and maintenance of the current standard. Other activities include scheduling, performing liaison and review activities, and conducting ad hoc studies. The requirements and development functions should be separate but highly coordinated. 3.2. Requirements as the "what" function. The result of requirements specification is a document that prescribes the functional requirements for a revision of the language standard and related standards. Draft documents (standards, amendments, corrigenda, technical reports, etc.) will be submitted to ISO for adoption. WG5, on a continuing basis, determines, records, distributes, and maintains the needs and suggested requirements for Fortran. To begin a new revision WG5, using the recorded needs and suggested requirements, establishes objectives and corresponding functional requirements, specifications, and schedule for that revision. 3.3. Development as the "how" function The development function develops the international standard revisions, corrigenda, amendments, and related auxiliary standards, in accordance with the specified requirements and schedule. A development body will be chosen to produce each revision and auxiliary standard. The development body for a revision of the Fortran standard is the primary development body. It is the responsibility of each development body to determine how the requirements are to be met and to prepare the corresponding draft document. Revisions of the Fortran standard will incorporate approved corrections and clarifications as well as fully implemented requirements. Maintenance of a standard involves correcting errors that are discovered in the standard and providing official interpretations for those parts of the standard that are found to be unclear or incompletely specified. Corrigenda that incorporate corrections, clarifications and interpretations resulting from this maintenance activity will be produced periodically. 3.4. Scheduling. The basic five-year schedule for revisions is predetermined. NG5 will negotiate with the primary development body a detailed schedule consistent with this five—year cycle. For other development work WG5 will negotiate an appropriate schedule with the corresponding development body. Activities involving maintenance of the current standard will take place concurrently with the development activities. Since the schedule must be reported to JTC1, the schedule will be phrased in ISO terms. The relevant ISO stages for ongoing projects are: 2 preparatory 3 committee CD ballot (SC22) 4 approval DIS ballot (JTCl) 5 publication [See, for example, WG5 Standing Document 3 (WG5-N643)] 3.5. Auxiliary standards. Some needs may be met most effectively by auxiliary standards rather than with revision of the Fortran standard. An auxiliary standard is related to the Fortran standard in some significant way; for example, some functionality may be made available by "binding" that functionality to Fortran. There are two forms of auxiliary standards: supplementary standards and extension standards. Extension standards involve syntax/semantics beyond that of the current Fortran standard. Because of the serious potential for incompatibilities arising from uncoordinated extension activities, WG5 requests that all bodies developing extension standards coordinate their work closely with the primary development body and that primary development body approval be obtained before a proposed extension standard is adopted. Supplementary standards are auxiliary standards other than extension standards. Common forms of supplementary standards likely will be standard Fortran code using the module/use and procedure library mechanisms. In order to minimize conflicts and incompatibilities, WG5 requests that the primary development body review all proposed supplementary standards and provide WG5 with the results of those reviews. 3.6. Liaison and review activities. It is the responsibility of WG5 and the development bodies to establish liaison or contact with and review the work of other organizations whose work items relate to the Fortran standards effort. Such organizations include: SC22/WGl1 and X3T2 (CLIA, CLID, CLIP) SC22/W615 and IEBE P1003.9 (POSIX Fortran Bindings) SC22/WG20 (Internationalization) X3H5 and HPFF (Parallel Processing) 3.7. Conducting ad hoc studies. It is the responsibility of WG5 to determine whether studies are needed to aid the need identification and requirements specification processes. WG5 may carry out such ad hoc studies or may request one or more participating member bodies to carry out such studies. 4. Tactics (how to achieve the strategic objectives) 4.1. Principal responsibilities of W65. WG5 may establish a management committee to make recommendations and interim decisions when it is impractical to involve the entire membership. The membership of the management committee would be reestablished at each meeting and be in effect until the following meeting. W65 will: (a) maintain a set of needs and suggested requirements (b) define revision objectives and select the corresponding functional requirements for development after comprehensive review (c) determine whether a given requirement can best be met by a revision of the Fortran standard or by an auxiliary standard (see N776) (d) choose the development bodies and delegate all development and draft document preparation to them (e) monitor development (where progress is not consistent with the schedule, WG5 will, together with the development body, determine if corrective action can be taken by the development body; if this is not possible it will be necessary for WG5 to reassign some or all items to another development body, or to delete some items from the specification, or to revise the schedule) (f) monitor maintenance activities (g) determine whether a final draft document is adequate and consistent with the specified requirements (h) submit draft documents to ISO 4.2. Principal responsibilities of the development bodies. A development body will: (a) appoint a project editor (b) produce a draft document to meet the agreed schedule and specified requirements (c) establish a document production system that will allow the most recent electronic version of any proposed standard to be available to all members of WG5 and the development body (d) coordinate with other organizations, as may be appropriate 4.3. The schedule. Following is a proposed schedule for the next two revisions: phase first revision second revision preparatory 2.1 11-91 7-92 initial requirements specified ---- 7-94 requirements review complete ---- 5-95 requirements specified completely 7-94 9-95 working draft 2.8 4-95 12-98 CD ballot 3.0 6-95 1-99 3.1 6-95 1-99 3.2 9-95 4-99 3.8 11-95 9-99 DIS ballot 4.0 12-95 10-99 4.1 12-95 10-99 4.2 7-96 5-00 4.4 9-96 7-00 4.8 9-96 7-00 publication 5.0 11-96 8-00 5.3 12-96 10-00 4.4. Fortran maintenance bodies. WG5 will determine maintenance bodies for Fortran revision standards and auxiliary standards. In general, the body that develops a standard will be responsible for its maintenance. X3J3 has been delegated responsibility for maintaining Fortran 90. WG5 will conduct a letter ballot on items that the maintenance body identifies as ready to be included in a given corrigendum. WG5 will forward the resulting draft of approved items to SC22 for further processing. 4.5. Coordination between WG5 and development bodies. Meeting schedules will be coordinated to make the best advantage of members’ resources as far as time and travel expenses are concerned and to accomplish the goals established by the schedule. There should be as much overlap as possible in the membership of WG5 and development bodies, especially with the primary development body. This provides informal communication and continuity. Formal written reports and resolutions will be used to clarify communications and maintain a record of communications. At each meeting a Responses and Resolutions (R&R) report will be produced that is intended to be the official communication and coordination vehicle between WG5 and the development bodies, as appropriate. The R&R reports produced by WG5 will be sent to the appropriate development body; the R&R reports produced by the development body will be sent to WG5. The responses portion of each R&R report will contain responses to resolutions received from the other bodies. The resolutions part may contain any information for or requests of the other bodies. Annex A. Schedule Implications For the next three years, the proposed schedule has the following implications for each participating WG5 member body: before - review the strategic plan 1993 - review the maintenance activities of X3J3 meeting - prepare suggested requirements accompanied by rationale and send to Convenor at least 6 weeks before the meeting at - adjust the strategic plan 1993 - draft recommendations for Fortran 90 maintenance meeting - review suggested requirements, create repository of needs and suggested requirements before - prepare informal list of requirements accompanied 1994 by rationale and send to Convenor at least 6 meeting weeks before the meeting - review ongoing maintenance activities at - finalize requirements for revision 1994 - draft recommendations for Fortran 90 maintenance meeting before - review WD for revision 1995 meeting (spring) at - approve WD of 1996 revision for CD registration 1995 meeting (spring) before - prepare national responses to CD ballot 1995 - prepare list of requirements and meeting send to Convenor at least 6 weeks before meeting (autumn) at - process results of CD ballot on revision 1995 and approve edits to draft for DIS registration meeting - finalize requirements for 2000 revision (autumn) before - prepare national responses to DIS ballot 1996 - review development activities meeting at - process results of DIS ballot and approve edits 1996 to draft for publication meeting - monitor development of requirements