ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1928 WG5 Business Plan and Convener's Report for ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 2012 Plenary PERIOD COVERED BY THIS REPORT: 9 August 2011 to 1 July 2012 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 - Maintenance The primary responsibility for maintenance of the base language has been delegated to INCITS/PL22.3. Corrigendum 1 to Fortran 2008 was completed during this period. More than 50 'interpretations' are under consideration, most of which have tentative conclusions that are expected soon to be ratified by WG5. It is expected that the second corrigendum to Fortran 2008 will be submitted later this year. 22.29113 Type 2 Technical Specification on Further Interoperability of Fortran with C The DTS on Further Interoperability of Fortran with C was been submitted for ballotting in May and the ballot concludes on 26 August 2012. 22.02.02 Programming Language Fortran - Part 2: Varying Length Character Strings WG5 continues to have responsibility for maintenance of this part of the Fortran standard; there has been no maintenance activity during the period. It was reaffirmed during the period. 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 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. Dan Nagle (PL22.3 chairman) has been actively involved with WG23 (Programming Language Vulnerabilities). A first draft Fortran annex has been constructed, see N1929. 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. i 2.2 ACHIEVEMENTS The main achievement during the period has been the construction of the DTS or 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 Corrigendum 2 will be forwarded by December 2012. 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. Detailed plans for the next three years are contained in WG5 N1925. 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 TS on Enhanced Parallel Computing Facilities in Fortran. 4. OTHER ITEMS 4.1 POSSIBLE ACTION REQUESTS AT FORTHCOMING PLENARY WG5 requests approval for a new work item on a TS on Additional Parallel Features in Fortran. 4.2 PROJECT EDITORS ISO/IEC 1539-1: Malcolm Cohen, UK ISO/IEC 1539-2: John Reid, UK TS 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 2010/02/15-19 Las Vegas, USA 2011/06/27-07/1 Garching, Germany 2012/06/25-29 Markham, Ontario, Canada 4.5 FUTURE MEETINGS 2013/06/24-28 Delft, Netherlands 2014/06/23-27 Las Vegas, USA 2015/08 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.