ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N2253 WG5 Business Plan and Convenor's Report for ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 2025 Plenary PERIOD COVERED BY THIS REPORT: 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025 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 WG5 intends to request withdrawal of this part, at the next SR, as it is obsolete.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 organizations including - OpenMP Architecture Review Board MPI Forum - IFIP WG2.5 - Numerical Software - INCITS/C C - INCITS/C++ - C++ with several of the INCITS/Fortran and WG5 members and vendors also being members of the other organizations. Many of those responsible for the development of commercial Fortran compilers are members of INCITS/Fortran and/or WG5. Several members of WG5 collaborated 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. HPE (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 final work item list for the next revision was approved by WG5, and technical work on the major features is nearly complete. Corrigendum 1 for Fortran 2023 has been submitted to SC22 for ballot. 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 2025 meeting. 3.2 STRATEGIES The current schedule for this revision is contained in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5/N2249; it proposes publication in 2028. 3.3 RISKS For more than twenty years, WG5 meetings have been held jointly with INCITS/Fortran 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 2024 and 2025 meetings. We made it work, but it was a less efficient use of our time. If this policy continues, it will hinder our ability to do the work. A new and significant risk is the current political climate in the US, which has discouraged non-US WG5 members from fully participating in the 2025 annual meeting that was held in the US. Partly for this reason, we have scheduled the 2026 and 2027 meetings for outside the US normally we alternate between North America and elsewhere. (The 2025 meeting was originally planned for Helsinki, Finland, but that did not work out.) 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. 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 2025-2026 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 2024/06 Berkeley, CA, USA 2025/06 Berkeley, CA, USA 4.5 FUTURE MEETINGS 2026/06 Coventry, England 2027/06 Bergen, Norway 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 online.