ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1692 WG5 Business Plan and Convener's Report to the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 2007 Plenary PERIOD COVERED BY THIS REPORT: August 2006 to August 2007. 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 It was agreed at the May 2004 meeting of WG5 that the next revision of the base Fortran language should be minor (as was Fortran 95 as a revision of Fortran 90) with a target publication date of 2009. WG5 was already committed to including the enhanced module facilities of ISO/IEC TR 19767:2005. The schedule agreed then (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1590) was reaffirmed at the WG5 meetings in 2005 and 2006. To accord with this, the status of the standard was changed to 'under revision' in late 2006. To determine the content of the revision, WG5 established a Repository of Requirements (Standing Document 5) and revised it several times; the latest version is ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1679. 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 the primary development body, INCITS/J3, found time after working on the high-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 of Fortran with C was not and would be better as a Type 2 Technical Report. A proposal for the TR has been submitted and voted upon (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 N1674). The response is document ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1694. INCITS/J3 constructed a draft revision of the base Fortran language in accord with this plan ahead of the WG5 meeting in August 2007 and the schedule and content were reconsidered then. Given that no full implementations of Fortran 2003 were yet available (though some near-full implementations were available), it was felt essential to delay the revision and reduce its extent. The new schedule that was agreed is in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1693 and involves a 10-month delay in the target date for final publication (2010-06 instead of 2009-08). For the content, it was agreed that one of the major items, co-arrays for parallel programming, was of prime importance in view of the universal availability of parallel hardware. It was therefore agreed that only a small reduction in this feature was appropriate, but that intelligent macros be removed and that data type BITS be replaced by a simpler extension that does not involve a new intrinsic type. WG5 therefore requests approval for the new schedule. The primary responsibility for maintenance of the base language 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. Only after this procedure has been followed is a corrigendum and response document constructed. This has been done twice for Fortran 2003, with corrigenda published in 2005 and 2006. WG5 continues this process for handling defect reports and will construct further corrigenda even if these cannot be approved officially. WG5 requests that official approval be allowed. Although the standard is under revision, it will not be replaced until 2010 and will be the base for implementations for many years thereafter. 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 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. Many of those responsible for the development of commercial Fortran compilers are members of J3 and/or WG5. Dan Nagle (J3 chairman) has attended meetings of the Other Working Group on Vulnerabilities. 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 and have implemented many of 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 development of a draft for the next revision (see section 1.2.2). 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. A development body for the TR on further interoperability of Fortran with C will be established soon. 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 August 2007 was attended by 18 members, including the Convener, representing 5 member bodies. 3 FOCUS FOR NEXT WORK PERIOD 3.1 Deliverables It is envisaged that the first Committee Draft for the revision of Part 1 will be submitted for registration and approval in May 2008. 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 (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 2007/08/6-10 London, UK 4.3 Future Meetings 2008/02/11-15 Las Vegas, USA 2008/11/16-21 Tokyo, Japan (probably) 2009/5/ 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 Schedule for the revision of Part 1 the Fortran Standard WG5 requests approval of new schedule, set out in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1693, leading to first CD in 2008, final CD in 2009, and publication in the summer of 2010. 5.2 Type 2 TR on Further Interoperability of Fortran with C WG5 requests approval of Bill Long as Project Editor for this TR. 5.3 Corrigenda for Part 1 the Fortran Standard WG5 requests that official approval be allowed for further corrigenda to Part 1 of the Fortran Standard.