ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1415 WG5 Business Plan and Convener's Report to the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 2000 Plenary PERIOD COVERED BY THIS REPORT: August 1999 to August 2000. SUBMITTED BY: Dr John Reid (Convener of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5) JKR Associates, 24 Oxford Road, Benson, Wallingford, Oxon OX10 6LX, UK. Phone: +44 1235 446493, Fax: +44 1235 446626, Email: jkr@rl.ac.uk 1 MANAGEMENT SUMMARY 1.1 JTC1/SC22/WG5 Statement of Scope The development and maintenance of ISO/IEC Fortran programming language standards. 1.2 Project Report 1.2.1 Completed Projects 22.02.01.02 Type 2 TR on Floating Point Exception Handling in Fortran The TR was published in December 1998 as TR 15580:1998. A revised version is ready for publication. 22.02.01.04 Type 2 TR on Enhanced Data Type Facilities in Fortran The TR was published in December 1998 as TR 15581:1998. A revised version is ready for publication. 22.02.02 Programming Language Fortran - Part 2: Varying length character strings A revised version of this part of the Fortran standard was published in June 2000 as ISO/IEC 1539-2:2000(E). 22.02.03 Programming Language Fortran - Part 3: Conditional Compilation The IS was published in April 1999 as IS 1539-3:1999. 1.2.2 Projects Underway 22.02.01.01 Programming Language Fortran - Part 1: Base language The requirements for the next revision of the base Fortran Standard (IS 1539-1:1997), referred to informally as Fortran 2000, were agreed by WG5 at its meeting in Las Vegas, USA, in February 1997. In accordance with WG5's agreed strategic policy, the development of the draft standard was delegated to NCITS/J3, acting as WG5's Primary Development Body. The target date for J3 to deliver the draft standard to WG5 is June 2002. It is expected that the first CD ballot will commence in October 2002. The target date for the publication of the revised standard is December 2004. WG5 and J3 are developing new procedures to provide more effective means for WG5 members to contribute to the work of its Primary Development Body in order to ensure that corrigenda to IS 1539-1:1997 are published in a timely fashion and before the first CD Ballot for Fortran 2000. The first of these corrigenda will be submitted for SC22 balloting this autumn and the second will be submitted in the autumn of 2001. 22.02.03 Programming Language Fortran - Part 3: Conditional Compilation Defect processing has been started and suggested edits are in document WG5 N1409, which was prepared at the meeting in Oulu (August 2000) and will be the subject of an informal letter ballot of WG5 members. All changes are minor except for the omission of a line of text between the DIS and IS. The ISO secretariat has agreed to reprint the document with the line restored. It is proposed not to prepare a corrigendum unless other serious defects are found, in which case the changes in N1409 will be included. 1.2.3 Cancelled Projects None 1.3 Cooperation and Competition WG5 cooperates closely with the ANSI NCITS/J3 Fortran Technical Committee, to whom it has delegated the technical development of Fortran 2000 as well as the maintenance of Fortran 95 (ISO/IEC 1539-1:1997). There is also close contact with the industry-driven HPF and OpenMP Consortia, with several members of the Consortia also being members of J3 and/or WG5. Many of those responsible for the development of commercial Fortran compilers are members of J3 and/or WG5. Other important liaisons are those with IFIP WG2.5 (Numerical Software) and ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20 (Internationalization). There are no competitive activities. 2 PERIOD REVIEW 2.1 Market Requirements Fortran is still the language of choice for the majority of scientific and technological programming. The long delay between the release of Fortran 77 and the availability of Fortran 90 compilers, at a time when other languages, such as C and C++, were evolving rapidly, had a significant impact on the use of Fortran, but there are now clear signs that the facilities available in Fortran 90 and Fortran 95 are causing a growing number of scientific and technological users to move towards these latest versions of Fortran. Most major Fortran compiler vendors are represented either on WG5 or its Primary Development Body, NCITS/J3, as are many of the major research establishments that rely on Fortran for their numerical computing. There are also two active email lists for users of Fortran, which provide valuable feedback from users. All these diverse sources are being used to guide the development of the language, both through revisions to the base language Standard, and through other related standards and technical reports. 2.2 Achievements A new Part 2 of the Standard has been published during the year, while revisions of two Technical Reports TR15580 and TR15581, describing features that will be incorporated in the next revision of the Base Language Standard (Part 1), have both passed their Concurrent PDTR Registration and PDTR Ballots without any disapproval votes. 2.3 Resources As elsewhere in the Standardization world, it is becoming increasingly difficult to persuade employers to provide the necessary funding for Standards activity. WG5 delegates most of the technical work involved in developing Standards and Technical Reports to 'development bodies' which are either based on a national Fortran committee, as in the case of NCITS/J3 - the primary development body responsible for development of the revision to the base language standard and its subsequent maintenance, or consist of a (small) multinational group under the leadership of the relevant project editor. WG5 currently has one such active development body, the primary development body, developing standards, and four development bodies monitoring published standards and technical reports for maintenance purposes. WG5 itself carries out much of its discussions via email, with an annual meeting during the summer, and occasional other meetings at critical stages in the development of the base language standard. The meeting in August 2000 was attended by thirteen members, including the Convenor, representing six countries. 3 FOCUS FOR NEXT WORK PERIOD 3.1 Deliverables It is anticipated that the first corrigendum for Part 1 of the Standard will be ready for SC22 processing before the end of the year. It is hoped that revised versions of TR 15580:1998 and TR 15581:1998 will be published soon. 3.2 Strategies WG5 operates under a strategic plan described in WG5 Standing Document 4, the latest version of which, WG5 N1349, is annexed to this Report. In particular, the revision of the base Standard, IS 1539-1, is delegated to ANSI NCITS/J3 operating as WG5's Primary Development Body, while the other projects for which WG5 is responsible are handled by other Development Bodies which liaise with the Primary Development Body as required. 3.2.1 Risks As far as possible, WG5 tries to anticipate technical comments during international ballots by holding informal ballots of its members before any documents are submitted for ballot. Nevertheless, unexpected technical comments can always delay the planned schedule. 3.2.2 Opportunities WG5 has made extensive use of email for over a decade to speed up technical development. Since 1995 most documents have been distributed via an official file server in the UK, with two mirror sites in the USA; all documents have been distributed in this way since 1997. An open web site is also used to provide non-technical, and other publicly available, information to interested parties. In addition to speeding up the distribution of documents, the use of electronic distribution and communication systems also provides many other benefits, such as the ability to rapidly carry out informal ballots of the members for various reasons. 3.3 Work Program Priorities Finalization of Corrigendum 1 to Fortran 95 and preparation of Corrigendum 2 are WG5's priority activities this year. WG5 members will also monitor, and/or participate in, the work of WG5's Primary Development Body, NCITS/J3, as it moves into the final stages of the development of the Working Draft of the revision of the base Fortran language Standard, ISO/IEC 1539-1:1997. 4 OTHER ITEMS 4.1 Action Requested at the Forthcoming SC22 Plenary At its recent meeting in Oulu, WG5 expressed concern about increasing unauthorized and irrelevant use of the SC22 email reflector system and would be most grateful if this could be investigated. 4.2 Recent Meetings 2000/8/14-18 Oulu, Finland 4.3 Future Meetings 2001/07/30-8/3 UK 2002/08 Netherlands? 2003/04 USA (1st CD ballot resolution) 2003/08 tba Note that WG5 normally meets annually, with extra meetings being held as/when necessary to process ballot comments or other high priority activities that do not accord with the regular meeting schedule. WG5's Primary Development Body, NCITS/J3, meets quarterly. Other work is carried out via email. Annex: N1349