ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1789 WG5 Business Plan and Convener's Report for ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 2009 Plenary PERIOD COVERED BY THIS REPORT: 5 July 2008 to 5 July 2009 SUBMITTED BY: John Reid 1 MANAGEMENT SUMMARY 1.1 CONVENER'S REMARKS I would like to express my appreciation to Rex Jaeschke, SC22 chairman, for his attendance at the meeting of WG5 in Tokyo, November 2008. 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 A draft revision of the base language began its CD registration and approval ballots on March 19, 2008, with an extended deadline of August 31, 2008. The result of the registration ballot was 9 Yes (Canada, China, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Romania, USA) 5 Abstention (Denmark, France, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine) 1 No (UK) which led to the CD being registered. The result of the approval ballot was 8 Approval as presented (China, Denmark, Italy, Korea, Netherlands, Romania, Switzerland, Ukraine) 3 Abstention (France, Japan, Spain) 3 Approval with comments (Canada, Germany, USA) 1 Disapproval of the draft (UK) which led to the CD being approved. All the comments were considered at a joint meeting of WG5 and PL22.3 in Tokyo, November 2008. WG5's responses to the comments are contained in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5/N1760. The main changes agreed were to add locks to the coarray feature and to alter the treatment of volatile coarrays. Concern was expressed over the schedule and it was decided that it should be delayed by up to 6 months. A revised draft incorporating the agreed changes was constructed by PL22.3 and considered at the joint meeting of WG5 and PL22.3 in Las Vegas, May 2009. Since the editorial improvements made at this meeting were extensive, it was decided that one more meeting of PL22.3 was needed before the draft would be ready for Final CD ballot. A new schedule was agreed, see ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5/N1781, that involves submission for Final CD ballot in September 2009 and publication in August 2010, which represents a delay of 2 months from the previous target (in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1693) and of 12 months from the schedule agreed in 2004. The largest item in the revision consists of the addition of coarrays for parallel programming, but part of this has been deferred for eventual inclusion in a TR. Further Interoperability of Fortran with C has been deferred to a TR (see later in this section). The primary responsibility for maintenance of the base language has been delegated to INCITS/PL22.3. The third Corrigendum was published in November 2008 and the fourth Corrigendum passed its ballot, June 29 2009, with requests for two minor corrections. The corrected Corrigendum was forwarded to ITTF for publication on 2 July. Work is continuing with the expectation that there will be a fifth and final Corrigendum for Fortran 2003 submitted for ballot late in 2009. 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". Because of the need to give priority to work on the revision of part 1, progress has been slow. A new schedule for the work was agreed at the WG5 meeting in May 2009, involving forwarding the PDTR to SC22 in April 2010 and eventual publication in March 2011. 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 None. 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 and or liason with several organisations including OpenMP Architecure Review Board MPI Forum IEEE 754 - Floating point hardware IFIP WG2.5 - Numerical Software UPC Consortium ANSI PL22.11 - C HPF Forum with several of the PL22.3 and WG5 members and vendors also being members of the other organisations. 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 WG23 (Programming Language Vulnerabilities). 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 a new draft revision of the base language, which is nearly ready for submission for Final CD ballot (see section 1.3.2). Corrigendum 3 of the base language has been published and Corrigendum 4 has been sent to ITTF for publication. 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. Most of the technical work involved in developing Standards and Technical Reports is performed by 'development bodies' that consist either of a national Fortran committee, such as INCITS/PL22.3, or a (small) multinational group under the leadership of the relevant project editor. WG5 currently has two such active development bodies, one for the new Standard and one for the TR on Further Interoperability of Fortran with C. 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 was one such additional meeting in November 2008, attended by 21 members, including the Convener, representing five 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 April 2010. 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 1.3.2), and the development of a TR on Further Interoperability of Fortran with C 4. ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION 4.1 WG5 Liaisons See Section 1.4. 4.2 Recent Meetings 2006/02/13-17 Fairfax VA, USA 2007/08/6-10 London, UK 2008/02/4-8 Las Vegas, USA 2008/11/16-21 Tokyo, Japan 2009/05/4-8 Las Vegas, USA 4.3 Future Meetings 2010/02/15-19 Las Vegas, USA 2011/06 (tentative) Garching, Germany 2012/06 (tentative) Markham, Ontario, Canada 2013/06 (tentative) London, UK 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 and from 2010 will meet every four months. 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 ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 That the schedule for the Technical Report on Further Interoperability of Fortran with C involve targets of forwarding the PDTR to SC22 in April 2010 and eventual publication in March 2011.