ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N824


informal JLW report of the 1992 WG5 meeting in Victoria
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The principle objective of this meeting was to establish the strategic, or 
management, plan for how WG5 will approach future work on Fortran 
standardization.  Related secondary objectives were to establish the policy 
and procedures for Fortran 90 defect management and to plan for the next 
revision of the Fortran standard.  All of these objectives were achieved.

The draft of the strategic plan, documents N760 and N794, was revised during 
the meeting and finally adopted, nearly unanimously, in the form of document 
N820a, which was then declared to be WG5 Standing Document 4.  It differs in 
detail from the draft in a number of ways, but its essential character of 
having a requirements body (WG5) and a primary development body for the next 
revision remained pretty much intact.  It placed more emphasis on periodic 
formal corrigenda (possibly annually) than did the draft and specified an 
approximately five-year cycle for future revisions of the Fortran standard.
The next revision is envisioned to reach CD stage in 1995, with changes 
largely limited to the incorporation of corrections, clarifications, and 
interpretations to Fortran 90.

The most unexpected development during the meeting was significant discussion 
about choosing a primary development body other than X3J3.  As a result of 
this discussion the UK dropped its strategic plan ballot suggestion that X3J3 
be named in the document as the primary development body.  Consequently X3J3 
stayed out of the strategic plan document, but the subsequent resolution on 
this issue (V9), adopted nearly unanimously, requested that SC22 invite X3J3 
to be the primary development body on the condition that the work be done as 
an X3 "I project" and that the project be in place by mid-year 1993.

Fortran 90 defect management was probably the dominant theme of the meeting 
and garnered the lion's share of the week's activities.  The result was that 
WG5 decided to process corrections, clarifications, and interpretations to 
Fortran 90 as formal ISO corrigenda, on approximately an annual basis.  The 
corrigenda material will be drawn from the X3J3/S20 document (see N784), with 
the first batch identified following the November X3J3 meeting.  WG5 will 
ballot these on an item-by-item basis, and those approved will be sent to 
SC22 as draft corrigenda.  Various aspects of the corrigenda processing are 
detailed in five of the meeting's resolutions, V5, V10, V11, V12, and V13, in 
the resolution document, N814d.

Jerry Wagener
12 August 92