ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1834 WG5 Business Plan and Convener's Report for ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 2010 Plenary PERIOD COVERED BY THIS REPORT: 5 July 2009 to 29 July 2010 SUBMITTED BY: John Reid 1.0 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 FCD revision of the base language was sent to the SC22 Secretariat on 27 August 2009 and the ballot took place from 29 August 2009 to 29 December 2009. The result of the ballot was 9 Approval as presented (China, Germany, Italy, Kazakhstan, Korea, Netherlands, Romania, Russia, Ukraine) 3 Approval with comments (Canada, Japan, USA) 1 Disapproval of the draft (UK) 6 Abstention (Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Spain, Switzerland) which led to the FCD being approved. All the comments were considered at a joint meeting of WG5 and PL22.3 in Las Vegas, February 15-19 2010. WG5's responses to the comments are contained in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5/N1829. Most of the comments were editorial and were considered carefully. There were three comments from the UK that were not accepted by WG5. The first proposed a new project to define a compatible subset; here, opinion was divided but a majority of WG5 was opposed, mainly because progress is being made by vendors towards full implementation of Fortran 2003 and the construction of a subset would discourage this. The second proposed that coarrays be developed separately as an optional feature; this had already been discussed extensively by WG5, so was not discussed further. The third identified a defect re the arithmetic IF statement and suggested deleting it; WG5 was sympathetic to the idea of deletion, but felt that the change was not necessary and corrected the defect since this involved fewer changes. A revised draft was constructed as a FDIS and sent to the SC22 Secretariat on 21 April 2010. Some very minor changes were requested by the ISO Secretariat on 26 May 2010 and a revised version was sent to SC22 Secretariat on 9 June 2010. The ballot is in progress with a due date of 1 September. The delay in commencing this ballot is disappointing. The primary responsibility for maintenance of the base language has been delegated to INCITS/PL22.3. The fourth Corrigendum was published in September 2008. Work continued and an informal fifth Corrigendum for Fortran 2003 was constructed as ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5/N1815. Corresponding edits were made to the draft of Fortran 2008 before submission as an FDIS. All interpretation requests are now processed against Fortran 2008. 22.02.01.05 Type 2 Technical Report on Enhanced Module Facilities The TR on Enhanced Module Facilities is now in a maintenance stage. It was the subject of a systematic review ballot, with the deadline of 15 June 2010. The result was confirmation, see ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/N4532. The votes were 1 Withdraw (USA), 9 Confirm, 22 Abstain. The features of the TR have been incorporated in the revision of the base language. Once this is published, withdrawal of this TR would be appropriate. 22.29113 Type 2 Technical Report on Further Interoperability of Fortran with C Because of the need to give priority to work on the revision of part 1, progress on the TR on Further Interoperability of Fortran with C has been slow. A new schedule for the work was agreed at the WG5 meeting in February 2010, involving forwarding the PDTR to SC22 in December 2010, forwarding the DTR to SC22 in July 2011 and eventual publication in November 2011. Since this is slightly behind the SC22 time frame for the project, consideration should be given at the Plenary for a one-year extension. 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 has been only one implementation (as far as I know). WG5 continues to have responsibility for maintenance, but there has been no activity during the period. It was the subject of a systematic review ballot, with the deadline of 15 June 2010. The result was confirmation, see ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/N4528. The votes were 2 Withdraw (UK, USA), 7 Confirm, 23 Abstain. WG5 would like to see this part of the standard withdrawn. 1.2.3 CANCELLED PROJECTS None. 1.2.4 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 2008. There is also contact and or liaison 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. 2.0 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. Some features of Fortran 2008, notably coarrays are being implemented. 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 FDIS revision of the base language (see section 1.2.2). Corrigendum 4 of the base language has been published. 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 INCITS/PL22.3 under the strategic direction of WG5. All WG5 meetings since 2002 have been joint meetings with INCITS/PL22.3 in order to optimize its use of human resources. 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. 3.0 FOCUS FOR NEXT WORK PERIOD 3.1 DELIVERABLES It is envisaged that the first draft of the TR on Further Interoperability of Fortran with C will be forwarded by December 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 may be handled by other Development Bodies, which liaise with the Primary Development Body as required. 3.3 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. 3.4 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. 3.5 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 TR on Further Interoperability of Fortran with C 4. OTHER ITEMS 4.1 POSSIBLE ACTION REQUESTS AT FORTHCOMING PLENARY 1. That consideration be given to granting a one-year extension for the Technical Report on Further Interoperability of Fortran with C. 2. That the TR on Enhanced Module Facilities be proposed for withdrawal at a suitable interval after the publication of Fortran 2008. 3. That Part 3 of the Fortran standard (Conditional Compilation) be proposed for withdrawal at a suitable interval after the recent vote for confirmation. 4. That SC22 comment on the time taken between submission of the FDIS and the start of the ballot. 4.2 PROJECT EDITORS ISO/IEC 1539-1: Malcolm Cohen, UK ISO/IEC 1539-2: John Reid, UK ISO/IEC 1539-3: Dan Nagle, USA TR on Enhanced Module Facilities in Fortran: Van Snyder, USA TR on Further Interoperability of Fortran with C: Bill Long, USA 4.3 ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT DISTRIBUTION WG5: http://www.nag.co.uk/SC22WG5/ PL22.3: http://www.j3-fortran.org/ 4.4 RECENT MEETINGS 2008/02/4-8 Las Vegas, USA 2008/11/16-21 Tokyo, Japan 2009/05/4-8 Las Vegas, USA 2010/02/15-19 Las Vegas, USA 4.5 FUTURE MEETINGS 2011/06/27-07/1 Garching, Germany 2012/06 Markham, Ontario, Canada 2013/06 (tentative) Delft, Netherlands 2014/06 (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 every four months. Other work is carried out via email.