jim@mango.miami.edu (jim brown) (03/22/90)
[] What is happening with Fortran 90? Is the voting over? Has it become an ANSI standard? Is there any hope? -- Jim Brown, University of Miami, RSMAS/MPO [send mail to jim@umigw.miami.edu]
khb@chiba.Eng.Sun.COM (Keith Bierman - SPD Advanced Languages) (03/23/90)
In article <1990Mar22.021403.6989@umigw.miami.edu> jim@mango.miami.edu (jim brown) writes:
What is happening with Fortran 90? Is the voting over?
Has it become an ANSI standard? Is there any hope?
The final voting hasn't truly begun.
As reported late last year, X3 chose to keep X3.9-1978 alive as a
separate standard. ISO roundly criticized this US action. ISO wants
one standard, when Fortran 90 is finished, it will be that (for
International usage).
There is a reasonable expectation that work may be finished in time
for ISO ordination by year's end. There is an X3J3 meeting and an
implementors forum
Date: Implementors forum April 27-28 (Friday + 1/2 Saturday).
X3J3 Meeting, April 30 - May 4.
In the lake tahoe area. Tom Lahey (of f77l fame) is the host.
Given the differences in balloting rules ANSI ordination may possibly
lag ISO.
NIST has started to bring together interested parties to craft a
validation suite (child of FCVS ?, FCVS II ?, FCVS 90 ??).
--
Keith H. Bierman |*My thoughts are my own. !! kbierman@Eng.Sun.COM
It's Not My Fault | MTS --Only my work belongs to Sun* kbierman%eng@sun.com
I Voted for Bill & | Advanced Languages/Floating Point Group
Opus | "When the going gets Weird .. the Weird turn PRO"hirchert@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Kurt Hirchert) (03/23/90)
In article <1990Mar22.021403.6989@umigw.miami.edu> jim@mango.miami.edu (jim brown) writes: >What is happening with Fortran 90? Is the voting over? >Has it become an ANSI standard? Is there any hope? At its January meeting, X3J3 made most of the changes it intends to make in response to the second public comment. (For the most part, these were all very minor changes or fixes.) X3J3 ran out of time at that meeting to finish off everything, so a little bit more remains to be done at its April meeting. Once that is done, WG5 will probably forward the resulting document on for the next level of ISO processing (since the edits made were sufficient to convert all NO votes at the SC22 level into YES votes), so it would not surprise me if Fortran 90 were an ISO standard sometime this year. On the ANSI front, X3J3 must produce responses to all the letters received during the public comment period. Once that is done, the revised draft can be forwarded to X3. Since there have been no major changes to the draft, X3 could in theory vote the draft on to BSR, giving us an ANSI standard late this year or early next year. I suspect that because of procedural problems in the handling of the first public comment period, X3 will instead send the draft out for a third public comment period (but probably only a 2 month review). If Fortran 90 is an ISO standard by then, is it unlikely that any changes will be made in response to this comment period because everyone want the ISO and ANSI standards to be identical. Thus, a third public comment will delay Fortran 90 but probably won't change it. The responses to a third public comment period might easily be forms letters saying that comments were considered but that nothing was seen that would warrant the ANSI standard being different from the ISO standard. Then X3 could forward the standard to BSR, giving us an ANSI standard later next year. This is, of course, only my educated guess at to what will happen, but it appears that others are making similar assessments of the situation. Several vendors appear to have begun serious work on Fortran 90 compilers, and it appears that many more will begin once the ISO standard is adopted (on the theory that the ANSI standard won't be different). Of course, there were a number of vendors that lobbied for the retention of FORTRAN 77 as an active standard. It would not be surprising if these vendors do not do a Fortran 90 until market pressure forces them to. -- Kurt W. Hirchert hirchert@ncsa.uiuc.edu National Center for Supercomputing Applications