[comp.lang.fortran] Fortran 8x: ISO compatibilty

corbett@beatnix.UUCP (Bob Corbett) (07/08/89)

     One of the bugbears pointed out by members of X3J3 is the possibility
that if the current draft of the standard is not approved, ISO may adopt it
as a standard in any case.  The result would be two incompatible Fortran
standards.  I am not frightened by this prospect.  I would rather have
a good ANSI standard for Fortran and a lousy ISO standard for Fortran than
have the same lousy standard for both.

				   Yours very truly,
				   Bob Corbett
				   uunet!elxsi!corbett
				   ucbvax!sun!elxsi!corbett

mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu (07/16/89)

>     One of the bugbears pointed out by members of X3J3 is the possibility
>that if the current draft of the standard is not approved, ISO may adopt it
>as a standard in any case.  The result would be two incompatible Fortran
>standards.  I am not frightened by this prospect.  I would rather have
>a good ANSI standard for Fortran and a lousy ISO standard for Fortran than
>have the same lousy standard for both.

The possibility of this happening is the one good excuse for the
obnoxious way one has to get a copy of the draft standard. It is
copyrighted. IF ANSI dissapproves it, and doesn't want ISO to steal it,
ISO is going to be in big legal trouble. They would have to rewrite
it from scratch. And, as pointed out in another recent posting, that
would be a really tough job, keeping the same functionality!!!!!!

brainerd@unmvax.unm.edu (Walt Brainerd) (07/27/89)

In article <50500144@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>, mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
> 
> 
> >     One of the bugbears pointed out by members of X3J3 is the possibility
> >that if the current draft of the standard is not approved, ISO may adopt it
> >as a standard in any case.  The result would be two incompatible Fortran
> >standards.  I am not frightened by this prospect.  I would rather have
> >a good ANSI standard for Fortran and a lousy ISO standard for Fortran than
> >have the same lousy standard for both.
> 
> The possibility of this happening is the one good excuse for the
> obnoxious way one has to get a copy of the draft standard. It is
> copyrighted. IF ANSI dissapproves it, and doesn't want ISO to steal it,
> ISO is going to be in big legal trouble.

No, there is no problem because it is not legal to copyright a document
that has been distributed widely with no copyright notice (even though
ANSI may claim otherwise).  The only reason it is hard to get the draft
is that the ANSI procedures must be followed or there is a change the
standard will not be approved, so X3J3 has followed their directions
not to pursue having the draft published in ACM SIGPLAN, for example.

Because ANSI/CBEMA/X3 (or whoever) have not been able to give Global
Engineering a decent copy of the draft to distribute (even though they
get a pile of money from the money you folks have to pay Global for your
copy), I have had to spend another half day making a new copy and
Fed Exing it to Global.

Incidentally, some of us think the ISO standard would be the "good" one
and the ANSI standard the poor one, if they did turn out different,
but that is looking less likely after the recent WG5 and X3J3 meetings.
I will post a little more detailed report of these meetings as soon
as I get rid of my jet lag!

-- 
Walt Brainerd  Unicomp, Inc.  brainerd@unmvax.cs.unm.edu