ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N2228 WG5 Business Plan and Convenor's Report for ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 2023 Plenary PERIOD COVERED BY THIS REPORT: 1 July 2022 to 30 June 2023 SUBMITTED BY: Steve Lionel 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 1539-1:2018 Fortran 2018 was published November 2018. ISO/IEC 1539-1:2018/Cor 1:2021 was published June 2021. ISO/IEC 1539-1:2018/Cor 2:2023 was published March 2023 1.2.2 PROJECTS UNDERWAY 22.02.01.01 Programming Language Fortran - Part 1: Base language A new project ISO/IEC AWI 1539-1 was registered October 2020. The scheduled publication date is October 2023. The project entered the FDIS stage in July 2023. Corrigendum 2 for Fortran 2018 was published March 2023 (N2210). Interpretations continue to be considered for inclusion in a future Corrigendum. The primary responsibility for maintenance of the base language has been delegated to INCITS/Fortran. 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. WG5 intends to request withdrawal of this part, at the next SR, as it is obsolete. Most features provided by Part 2 have been subsumed by deferred-length allocatable character variables in Fortran 2008. The remaining functionality is included in Fortran 2023. 1.2.3 CANCELLED PROJECTS None. 1.2.4 CO-OPERATION AND COMPETITION WG5 cooperates closely with the ANSI INCITS/Fortran Technical Committee, to whom it has delegated the technical development of Fortran as well as its maintenance. There is also contact and or liaison with several organisations including OpenMP Architecture Review Board MPI Forum IFIP WG2.5 - Numerical Software INCITS/C - C INCITS/C++ - C++ 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 INCITS/Fortran and/or WG5. Several members of WG5 collaborate with WG23 on the creation of a "Fortran Annex" for that project. 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. Cray and Intel now have full support for Fortran 2018. Other compilers have various degrees of completeness of Fortran 2003, 2008 and 2018. Most major Fortran compiler vendors are represented either on WG5 or its Primary Development Body, INCITS/Fortran, as are three 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. Additionally, a new web site (fortran-lang.org) and discussion list have been established to develop tools and ideas for future Fortran revisions. 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 creation and submission of the FDIS for the next revision, informally called Fortran 2023. Proposals for new and changed features for a future revision have been gathered and a preliminary work list formed. One major feature, Generics/Templates, has been under development since 2018 and is far along in specification. 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/Fortran under the strategic direction of WG5. All WG5 meetings since 2003 have been joint meetings with INCITS/Fortran 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 Planning for the next revision of the Fortran language is underway. A preliminary work plan has been created - this will be finalized at the 2024 meeting. 3.2 STRATEGIES The current schedule for this revision is contained in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5/N2220. It proposes publication in 2028. 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 and editorial comments can always delay the planned schedule. INCITS has recently adopted a policy prohibiting its Technical Committees from having joint meetings with any other organization, unless prior permission has been granted. If INCITS/Fortran were to be prohibited from meeting with WG5 (there is considerable overlap in membership), this would significantly impair our work. While we expect that INCITS/Fortran's requests for shared meetings in the future will be granted, there remains a possibility that they will not. 3.4 OPPORTUNITIES WG5 has made extensive use of email for over 20 years to speed up technical development. Documents are now distributed by ISO Documents. An open web site is 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 straw ballots. 3.5 WORK PROGRAM PRIORITIES WG5's priority activity this year is developing the work plan for the next revision, called Fortran 202Y as an informal placeholder. (Fortran 2023 was initially referred to as Fortran 202X.) 4. OTHER ITEMS 4.1 POSSIBLE ACTION REQUESTS AT FORTHCOMING PLENARY WG5 has repeatedly expressed concerns, shared with other SC22 working groups, that JTC1 still has not made available the promised ability to provide public access to WG documents (excluding draft and published standards). WG5, like other WGs, has resorted to separately hosting these documents so that the public can review and comment on them, an important part of the development process. WG5 asks SC22 to again request JTC1 to provide such a mechanism, which was lost when ISO transitioned away from its earlier repository. 4.2 PROJECT MANAGERS ISO/IEC 1539-1: Malcolm Cohen, UK ISO/IEC 1539-2: John Reid, UK 4.3 ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT DISTRIBUTION INCITS/Fortran: https://j3-fortran.org/ WG5: https://wg5-fortran.org/ ISO Documents: https://sd.iso.org/documents/ui/#!/browse/iso/iso-iec-jtc-1/iso-iec-jtc-1-sc-22/iso-iec-jtc-1-sc-22-wg-5 4.4 RECENT MEETINGS 2019/08/05-09 Tokyo, Japan 2020 Canceled 2021/06/21-30 Virtual 2022/07/18-22 Boulder, CO, USA 2023/06/12-16 Manchester, UK 4.5 FUTURE MEETINGS 2024/06 Berkeley, CA, USA 2025/06 Helsinki, Finland (Tentative) 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/Fortran, meets three times each year. Other work is carried out via email.