ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1737 WG5 Business Plan and Convener's Report for ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 2008 Plenary PERIOD COVERED BY THIS REPORT: 13 August 2007 to 4 July 2008. SUBMITTED BY: John Reid 1 MANAGEMENT SUMMARY 1.1 CONVENER'S REMARKS It is a pleasure to record that the first Committee Draft revision of the base language began its ballot on March 19. I would like to record my appreciation of the work of all those involved, in particular the US Fortran committee INCITS/PL22.3 and the project editor Malcolm Cohen. 1.2 JTC1/SC22/WG5 STATEMENT OF SCOPE The development and maintenance of ISO/IEC Fortran programming language standards. 1.3 PROJECT REPORT 1.3.1 Completed Projects None in this period. 1.3.2 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. To determine the other contents 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 largest item consists of the addition of coarrays for parallel programming. One item, Further Interoperability of Fortran with C, has been deferred to a TR (see later in this section). The schedule agreed in 2004 (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1590) was revised at the WG5 meeting in 2007. The new schedule 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). This delay was accepted by SC22 at the 2007 Plenary (and rounded up to a year), see SC22 Resolution 07-04 in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 N4351 and ISO/IEC JTC1 N8892. INCITS/PL22.3 constructed a draft revision of the base Fortran language in accord with this plan ahead of the WG5 meeting in February 2008 and the content was reconsidered then. Concerns were expressed by the delegations of Canada, Japan, and UK. On the third day, a compromise proposed by the USA delegation was found acceptable to most delegates. It is to separate the parallel programming features into a "core" set that remains in Fortran 2008 and features that are moved into a separate Technical Report on "Enhanced Parallel Computing Facilities". A draft revision based on this plan began its CD ballot on March 19, with an extended deadline of August 31. This was chosen to allow the US comments to be considered at the August meeting of INCITS/PL22.3. The primary responsibility for maintenance of the base language has been delegated to INCITS/PL22.3. Our procedure is that each interpretation request is first considered by PL22.3. Once a response has been agreed at a PL22.3 meeting, a PL22.3 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 three times for Fortran 2003 (ISO/IEC 1539-1:2004(E)); corrigenda were published in 2005 and 2006 and a further corrigendum was sent to the secretariat in May and is being balloted at the time of writing, see ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 N4343 with due date of 20 August. WG5 continues this process for handling defect reports and expects to construct further corrigenda. 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. Its features have been incorporated in the draft revision of the base language. 22.29113 Type 2 Technical Report on Further Interoperability of Fortran with C The proposal for a new work item on further interoperability with C was accepted by SC22 at the 2007 Plenary, see SC22 Resolution 07-11 in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 N4351. WG5 constructed a response to the country comments on the proposal, see ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 N4282. In particular, the title is changed to "Further Interoperability of Fortran with C". 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 yet available that implement all of the features of Fortran 2003. 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. 1.3.3 Projects Withdrawn 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 this TR has been withdrawn, see SC22 Resolution 07-07 in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 N4351. 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 this TR has been withdrawn, see SC22 Resolution 07-07 in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 N4351. 1.4 CO-OPERATION AND COMPETITION WG5 cooperates closely with the ANSI INCITS/PL22.3 Fortran Technical Committee, to whom it has delegated the technical development of Fortran as well as the maintenance of Fortran 2003. There is also contact with the industry-driven HPF and OpenMP Architecture Review Board, with several members of the Board also being members of PL22.3 and/or WG5. Many of those responsible for the development of commercial Fortran compilers are members of PL22.3 and/or WG5. Dan Nagle (PL22.3 chairman) has been actively involved with the Other Working Group on Vulnerabilities. Other important liaisons are those with IFIP WG2.5 (Numerical Software), IEEE 754 (Floating-point hardware), UPC, MPI, and ANSI INCITS/PL22.11 (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/PL22.3, 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 construction of the first Committee Draft revision of the base language. This began its ballot on March 19 (see section 1.3.2). Another corrigendum of the base language has been constructed and is being balloted at the time of writing. 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/PL22.3, 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 (there will be such an additional meeting in November 2008). The meeting in February 2008 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 final Committee Draft for the revision of Part 1 will be submitted for ballot in September 2009. It is envisaged that the first draft of the TR on Further Interoperability of Fortran with C will be forwarded by March 2009. 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/PL22.3 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. 3.3 WORK PROGRAM PRIORITIES WG5's priority activities this year are the maintenance of the base Fortran language Standard, ISO/IEC 1539-1:2004(E), the further development of a draft revision (see Section 1.2.2), and the development of a TR on Further Interoperability of Fortran with C 4. ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION 4.1 WG5 Liaisons See Section 1.3. 4.2 Recent Meetings 2005/05/9-13 Delft, Netherlands 2006/02/13-17 Fairfax VA, USA 2007/08/6-10 London, UK 2008/02/11-15 Las Vegas, USA 4.3 Future Meetings 2008/11/16-21 Tokyo, Japan 2009/05/11-15 Las Vegas, 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/PL22.3, meets quarterly. Other work is carried out via email. 4.4 Web sites WG5: http://www.nag.co.uk/SC22WG5/ PL22.3: http://www.j3-fortran.org/ SC22: http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/ 5. REQUESTS FOR ACTION BY JTC1 SC22 The approval of John Reid as Convener for a further term. He has been endorsed by his national body, see ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 N4361.