ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N2237 WG5 Business Plan and Convenor's Report for ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 2024 Plenary PERIOD COVERED BY THIS REPORT: 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024 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 1539-1:2023 Fortran 2023 was published November 2023. 1.2.2 PROJECTS UNDERWAY 22.02.01.01 Programming Language Fortran - Part 1: Base language A Preliminary Work Item ISO/IEC PWI 1539-1 was registered April 2024; this will eventually become a new project for the next revision of the Fortran language, with a proposed publication year of 2028. 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 WG5 intends to request withdrawal of this part, at the next SR, as it is obsolete.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. At the 2023 meeting, WG5 gave permission to WG23 to complete and publish the Fortran Annex on its own, though that has not yet occurred. 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, Intel and NAG now have full support for Fortran 2018. Other compilers have various degrees of completeness of Fortran 2003, 2008, 2018 and 2023. 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 publication of Fortran 2023. Proposals for new and changed features for a future revision have been gathered and a final work list formed. One major feature, Templates with Requirements, has been under development since 2018 and is far along, with full specification and syntax agreed to by WG5. 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. 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 final work plan was accepted at the June 2024 meeting. 3.2 STRATEGIES The current schedule for this revision is contained in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5/N2232; it proposes publication in 2028. 3.3 RISKS For more than twenty years, WG5 meetings have been joint with INCITS/Fortran in order to optimize its use of human resources. Unfortunately, in 2024 INCITS enforced a new rule forbidding its committees from meeting jointly with any other committee. Given the nearly complete overlap between WG5 and INCITS/Fortran this artificial restriction greatly complicated our plans for the June 2024 meeting. We made it work, but it was a less efficient use of our time. If this policy continues, it may hinder our ability to do the work. 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. The ISO Editor raised numerous objections to the Fortran 2023 FDIS, making demands for changes that in many cases would be technically incorrect. Furthermore, ISO keeps changing its policies for formatting the document. During the FDIS processing, WG5 was told that the document was using the wrong fonts and font sizes - attributes that had been consistent for Fortran since the 2003 revision. WG5 received dispensation to submit with the previous fonts and font sizes as long as they would be changed for the next revision. This change will require months of rework of tables and other text to prevent overflow, but the ISO House Style guide's prescribed method of processing documents restricts the choices that can be made. Another editing issue relates to the way the Fortran standard denotes features classified as "obsolescent". These are older features that are still part of the language but with more modern alternatives that are recommended. Simply deleting these features is not acceptable, as many thousands of Fortran applications depend on them and the standard needs to specify how they interact with the rest of the language. In the Fortran standard, obsolescent features have been denoted with a smaller font size since 1991; the ISO Editor insisted that this was unacceptable, with no suggestion for correction other than complete removal. A plan for how to deal with this is under discussion, but any solution that correctly conveys the technical meaning will take significant work, and may yet fall afoul of a future change to ISO House Style. 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 for the 2024-2025 year is to work with INCITS/Fortran to develop the features from the work list for the next revision. 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 2022/07/18-22 Boulder, CO, USA 2023/06/12-16 Manchester, UK 2024/06/27-28 Berkeley, CA, USA 4.5 FUTURE MEETINGS 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.