ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1874 WG5 Business Plan and Convener's Report for ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 2011 Plenary PERIOD COVERED BY THIS REPORT: 29 July 2010 to 8 August 2011 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 22.02.01.01 Programming Language Fortran - Part 1: Base language - Revision The FDIS revision of the base language was sent to the SC22 Secretariat on 9 June 2010 and the ballot took place with a due date of 1 September. The ballot approved the FDIS with the vote 18-0-15, see ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22 N4567. The revised standard was published on 6 October as ISO/IEC 1539-1:2010. It is known informally as Fortran 2008 because the choice of technical content was completed in 2008. 1.2.2 PROJECTS UNDERWAY 22.02.01.01 Programming Language Fortran - Part 1: Base language - Maintenance The primary responsibility for maintenance of the base language has been delegated to INCITS/PL22.3. More than 80 'interpretations' are under consideration, most of which have tentative conclusions that are expected soon to be ratified by WG5. It is expected that the first corrigendum to Fortran 2008 will be submitted later this year. 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 was slow. Following the publication of the revision, there has been significant activity on this TR, culminating in a PDTR ballot that is underway at the time of writing, see ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22 N4633. Its due date is 2011-09-20. A new schedule for the work was agreed at the WG5 meeting in June 2011, involving forwarding the DTR to SC22 in December 2011 and eventual publication in May 2012. Should extensive revision be needed following the PDTR ballot, it may be impossible to keep to this schedule. In this case, a request will be made 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, there are a few functions that are not available in Part 1. The convenor is investigating whether a publicly available Fortran 2008 module could provide an adequate replacement. WG5 continues to have responsibility for maintenance of this part; there has been no maintenance activity during the period. 1.2.3 CANCELLED PROJECTS 22.02.01.05 Type 2 Technical Report on Enhanced Module Facilities The features of the TR on Enhanced Module Facilities have been incorporated in the revision of the base language. It was withdrawn on 2010-10-06. 22.02.03 Programming Language Fortran - Part 3: Conditional Compilation There appeared to be very little interest in Part 3 and there has been only one implementation (as far as I know). It was withdrawn on 2011-05-10. 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 Architecture 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. Of particular note in this period, there has been collaboration with the MPI Forum in connection with the TR on further interoperability with C. 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 has been some delay over the implementation of Fortran 2003, but Cray and IBM now have full implementations and several other vendors have implemented most of the features. 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 achievements during the period has been the completion of the revision of the base language (see section 1.2.1) and the construction of the PDTR for Further Interoperability of Fortran with C (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. 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 DTR on Further Interoperability of Fortran with C will be forwarded by December 2011. 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, projects for which WG5 is responsible may be handled by other Development Bodies, notably ANSI INCITS/PL22.3. 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 1539-1:2010, and the development of a TR on Further Interoperability of Fortran with C. Planning for the possibility of a TS on Further Coarray Features has commenced. It is intended that PL22.3 will begin to construct a draft requirements document for this TS during its meeting in October 2011 and a call for suggestions from the public has been made. 4. OTHER ITEMS 4.1 POSSIBLE ACTION REQUESTS AT FORTHCOMING PLENARY Depending on the comments made in the PDTR ballot, WG5 may request that consideration be given to granting a one-year extension for the Technical Report on Further Interoperability of Fortran with C. 4.2 PROJECT EDITORS ISO/IEC 1539-1: Malcolm Cohen, UK ISO/IEC 1539-2: John Reid, UK 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 2009/05/4-8 Las Vegas, USA 2010/02/15-19 Las Vegas, USA 2011/06/27-07/1 Garching, Germany 4.5 FUTURE MEETINGS 2012/06/25-29 Markham, Ontario, Canada 2013/06 Delft, Netherlands 2014/06 (tentative) 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 every four months. Other work is carried out via email.