ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1662 WG5 Business Plan and Convener's Report to the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 2006 Plenary PERIOD COVERED BY THIS REPORT: August 2005 to July 2006. SUBMITTED BY: John Reid 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 None in this period. 1.2.2 Projects Underway 22.02.01.01 Programming Language Fortran - Part 1: Base language The primary responsibility for maintenance of Fortran 2003 has been delegated to INCITS/J3. Our procedure is that each interpretation request is first considered by J3. Once a response has been agreed at a J3 meeting, a J3 letter ballot is held, and if this is successful it is followed by an informal WG5 vote. A vote is deemed to have failed if there are any no votes with reasons that have not so far been considered. This gives plenty of scope for detailed analysis and gives the result good credibility. The first corrigendum was published as ISO/IEC 1539-1:2004(E)/Cor.1:2006(E), but unfortunately it had been completely reformatted by ITTF, losing the distinction in the standard between Roman and italic fonts. Further, there were arbitrary changes between Roman and italic fonts in the accompanying text which gave the document an untidy, unprofessional look. After correspondence between the WG5 convener, SC22 Secretariat and ITTF, it was agreed to reissue the Corrigendum in the format originally submitted, which has not happened at the time of writing, and to publish the next Fortran Corrigendum in the style which WG5 has used consistently for several years. ITTF claimed that WG5 had not followed the formatting guidelines for Corrigenda but we have not been able to find any such. We note that recent published technical corrigenda for Ada, C, Cobol, Fortran, Posix and SQL all display styles which are different from each other. By the end of the May 2006 meeting of INCITS/J3, 22 further interpretations had passed all our stages and the second corrigendum was prepared. However, some very minor technical changes were made at the last minute, so a further informal WG5 vote was taken, which resulted in one change. Corrigendum 2 was sent to the Secretariat on 17 July 2006. It was agreed at the May 2004 meeting of WG5 that the next revision should be minor (as was Fortran 95 as a revision of Fortran 90) with a target publication date of 2009. WG5 is already committed to including the enhanced module facilities of ISO/IEC TR 19767:2005. A Repository of Requirements (Standing Document 5) was established and revised several times; the latest version is ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1649. It should be read in conjunction with ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1656, which is an annex explaining how items have been modified or merged in the course of processing by INCITS/J3. The repository items were considered at the meeting of WG5 in February 2006 and the decisions are recorded in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1653, resolution F5. A few significant items were left to be included if INCITS/J3 found time after working of first priority items. At its May meeting, INCITS/J3 decided that two items, data type BITS and intelligent macros, were sufficiently developed to include, but that further interoperability with C was not and would be better as a Type 2 Technical Report. WG5 is therefore submitting requests for two new work items: revision of the Fortran Standard and a Type 2 Technical Report. For the full list of selected items, see http://j3-fortran.org/doc/year/06/06-010r2.pdf 22.02.01.02 Type 2 Technical Report on Exception Handling The features of the TR on Exception Handling have been incorporated in the base Fortran Standard ISO/IEC 1539-1:2004(E), so no maintenance of this TR is being undertaken. 22.02.01.04 Type 2 Technical Report on Enhanced Data Type Facilities The features of the TR on Enhanced Data Type Facilities have been incorporated in the base Fortran Standard ISO/IEC 1539-1:2004(E), so no maintenance of this TR is being undertaken. 22.02.01.05 Type 2 Technical Report on Enhanced Module Facilities The TR on Enhanced Module Facilities is now in a maintenance stage. There has been no activity during the period. 22.02.02 Programming Language Fortran - Part 2: Varying Length Character Strings Features of Fortran 2003 cover almost all the requirements for which Part 2 was written. However, no compilers are available yet. Therefore, WG5 continues to have responsibility for maintenance. There has been no activity during the period. 22.02.03 Programming Language Fortran - Part 3: Conditional Compilation There appears to be very little interest in Part 3 and there have been few implementations. WG5 continues to have responsibility for maintenance, but there has been no activity during the period. It expects to recommend withdrawal when renewal is next considered. 1.2.3 Projects Withdrawn None. 1.3 Cooperation and Competition WG5 cooperates closely with the ANSI INCITS/J3 Fortran Technical Committee, to whom it has delegated the technical development of Fortran as well as the maintenance of Fortran 2003 (ISO/IEC 1539-1:2004(E)). There is also close contact with the industry-driven HPF and OpenMP Architecture Review Board, with several members of the Board also being members of J3 and/or WG5. For example, the OpenMP board has aligned the OpenMP 2.0 Release with Fortran 95. Many of those responsible for the development of commercial Fortran compilers are members of J3 and/or WG5. Dan Nagle (J3 chairman) attended the meeting of the Other Working Group on Vulnerabilities, 26-27 June 2006, Washington, DC USA, and is liaising with WG5 on this matter. Other important liaisons are those with IFIP WG2.5 (Numerical Software), IEEE 754 (Floating-point hardware), ANSI INCITS/H2 (Data base), and ANSI INCITS/J11 (C). There are no competitive activities. 2 PERIOD REVIEW 2.1 Market Requirements Fortran is the language of choice for much scientific, engineering, and economic programming, particularly for very large programs that have evolved over many years. 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 95 are causing a growing number of scientific and technological users to move towards these latest versions of Fortran. Vendors have upgraded their Fortran 90 compilers to Fortran 95, most of them have incorporated the extensions of TR 15581 (allocatable array extensions) and some have incorporated the extensions of TR 15580 (exception handling and support of IEEE floating-point arithmetic). Most have begun implementing the new features of Fortran 2003. Most major Fortran compiler vendors are represented either on WG5 or its Primary Development Body, INCITS/J3, as are two of the major research establishments that rely on Fortran for their scientific computing. In addition to vendor-supplied and specific mailing lists, there is an active email list and an active usenet newsgroup 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 The main achievement during the period has been the choice of which features to include in the next revision (see section 1.2.2) and their development to the point of full sets of edits to the present standard. 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. The number of employers, especially among compiler vendors, has declined through corporate mergers and acquisitions. 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 INCITS/J3, 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 three 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, usually during the summer, and occasional other meetings at critical stages in the development of the base language standard. The meeting in February 2006 was attended by 20 members, including the Convener, representing 6 member bodies. 3 FOCUS FOR NEXT WORK PERIOD 3.1 Deliverables It is envisaged that the third corrigendum for Part 1 will be submitted in the summer of 2007. 3.2 Strategies WG5 operates under a strategic plan described in WG5 Standing Document 4, the latest version of which is WG5 N1349. In particular, the revision of the base Standard, IS 1539-1, is delegated to ANSI INCITS/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; 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. 3.2.3 Work Program Priorities WG5's priority activities this year are the maintenance of the base Fortran language Standard, ISO/IEC 1539-1:2004(E) and the development of a draft revision that included the items chosen from the Repository (see Section 1.2.2). 4. ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION 4.1 WG5 Liaisons See Section 1.3. 4.2 Recent Meetings 2004/05/02-07 Las Vegas, USA 2005/05/9-13 Delft, Netherlands 2006/02/13-17 George Mason University, Fairfax VA, USA 4.3 Future Meetings 2007/08/6-10 London, UK 2008/02/? Las Vegas (probably), USA 2008/08/? Las Vegas (probably), USA 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, INCITS/J3, meets quarterly. Other work is carried out via email. 5. SC22 PLENARY ACTIONS RELATED TO WG5 5.1 The final stages of publication of standards WG5 would like to remind SC22 that is passed this resolution last year: ................................... Resolution 05-06: Document Submission to ITTF JTC 1/SC 22 notes that its project editors have been having substantial problems with the publication process. For example, in a number of recent publications, internal bookmarks were removed, rendering the documents difficult to navigate. JTC 1/SC 22 instructs its Secretariat to request the ITTF to allow the following mode of processing to be applied at the request of the project editor before publication of a JTC 1/SC 22 standard, TR, or corrigendum. 1. The project editor sends the approved format file (currently PDF) together with any additional source files necessary for ITTF to note and verify changes. 2. The ITTF lists the changes it requires. 3. The project editor constructs a new approved format and source files and sends them. 4. Steps 2. and 3. are repeated until no changes are needed. The purpose of this procedure is to improve the quality of the final document. Unanimous .................................... Despite this resolution, WG5 had difficulties with its Corrigendum, see 1.2.2. WG5 requests that this procedure be commenced forthwith. 5.2 Free Availability of Documents WG5 would like to remind SC22 that is passed this resolution last year: .................................... Resolution 05-02: Free Availability of JTC 1/SC 22 Documents JTC 1/SC 22 requests the following JTC 1/SC 22 documents be made freely available via the ISO On-Line Store: Technical Reports ISO/IEC TR 15580: 2001, Programming languages Fortran - Floating-Point Exception Handling, Type 2 TR, Second edition ISO/IEC TR 15581: 2001, Programming languages Fortran - Enhanced Data Type Facilities, Type 2 TR, Second edition ISO/IEC TR 19767: 2005, Enhanced Module Facilities in Fortran, Type 2 TR ISO/IEC TR 18015, C++ Performance, Type 3 TR Standard ISO/IEC 10967 (Parts 1, 2), Language Independent Arithmetic Upon publication: Technical Corrigendum ISO/IEC 1539:2004, Programming languages Fortran: COR1 Standard ISO/IEC 10967 (Part 3), Language Independent Arithmetic JTC1/SC 22, noting JTC 1 Sendai Resolution 32, instructs its Secretariat to take necessary administrative actions to make these documents freely available. Unanimous .................................... The Fortran corrigendum is available free of change, but the three Fortran TRs are not. 5.3 New Work Item - revision of Part 1 the Fortran Standard WG5 requests approval of this work item, see 1.2.2. 5.4 New Work Item - Type 2 TR on Further interoperability with C WG5 requests approval of this work item, see 1.2.2.