brainerd@unmvax.unm.edu (Walt Brainerd) (07/28/89)
The following is excerpted from the next issue of the _Fortran Journal_. They represent my perception of what took place. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- WG5, the International Standards Organization group of Fortran experts, met in Ispra, Italy July 10-14. The main objectives were to review the work X3J3 has done over the past year and provide additional direction to X3J3. .pp The resolutions passed mainly reflected an overall appreciation of what X3J3 has done over the past year to implement the changes recommended by WG5 last fall in Paris. They understood how difficult it was to accomplish so much in the time given. .pp They were disappointed that X3J3 did some unnecessary additional things. Examples are changing the ARRAY attribute to the DIMENSION attribute and permitting structures in common blocks, but in the interest of getting a standard out as quickly as possible, they did not pass resolutions urging X3J3 to fix these things. .pp Only one item caused such grave concern that WG5 passed a resolution requesting X3J3 to undo the mess they created. This involves allowing a processor-dependent set of characters to be used in Fortran programs, for example, to construct variable and subroutine names. The claim was made during the rush job X3J3 did in accepting this change that the international community wanted this change. However, all countries, including at least seven that use character sets other than those of English, indicated that this would be a premature solution to a wanted functionality and it well might prevent the correct solution from being adopted at a later time. This can and should be done after other committees complete current work on the problem of how to handle this in all languages. .pp X3J3 met the following week in Vienna and devoted most of its time to making editorial fixes to the document. The processor-dependent character set problem was discussed and most members of X3J3 present favored getting rid of it, but the consensus was that the topic should be deferred until after the comments on the current draft have all been received. .pp X3J3 will probably not vote any technical changes again until January, 1989, but will continue to fix the text and small errors. -- Walt Brainerd Unicomp, Inc. brainerd@unmvax.cs.unm.edu