[comp.lang.fortran] so much for X3J3

dd@beta.lanl.gov (Dan Davison) (04/05/89)

In the March 20 Digital News there is an article on pg.8 about the new
standard and relations with WG5.  

" [X3J3 and WG5]...have agreed on content for a draft proposal, and 
members of each	are voting on documents that are essentially the same..."

"However, several members of the ANSI X3J3 committee said that their
group had capitulated to pressure from its parent committee,
ANSI X3, to stay in line with the ISO group, and that the new
draft proposal essentially ignores the  public comments that
killed the last draft proposal".

If I feel cheated from having spent time reading the draft standard and
writing comments, what about all the folks who put in so much time and
effort?

Whose standard is this anyway?

Oh well.  The article reported that "The language has been simplified;
identify [sic] and arrange [sic] [????] statements, and depreciation of
features have been removed; ...".  The pointer attribute, allocatable
arrays and non-advancing I/O were also mentioned as being added.

dan davison/theoretical biology/t-10 ms k710/los alamos national laboratory
los alamos, nm 875545/dd@lanl.gov (arpa)/dd@lanl.uucp(new)/..cmcl2!lanl!dd
If aliens were doing to the Earth what we're doing to the Earth,
we'd be a war.

khb@fatcity.Sun.COM (Keith Bierman Sun Tactical Engineering) (04/06/89)

In article <24032@beta.lanl.gov> dd@beta.lanl.gov (Dan Davison) writes:
>In the March 20 Digital News there is an article on pg.8 about the new
>standard and relations with WG5.  
>
>" [X3J3 and WG5]...have agreed on content for a draft proposal, and 
>members of each	are voting on documents that are essentially the same..."
>
>"However, several members of the ANSI X3J3 committee said that their
>group had capitulated to pressure from its parent committee,
>ANSI X3, to stay in line with the ISO group, and that the new
>draft proposal essentially ignores the  public comments that
>killed the last draft proposal".

It is true that some members don't like the WG5 pressure. It must be
remembered that x3j3 was given the charter to develop the text for ISO
in addition to ANSI and that the committee accepted that mandate.

Furthermore the public comment has NOT been ignored. Every letter was
read. Every proposal no matter how ill-informed was dealt with by the
appropriate subcommittee. Offical responses are still being crafted.

>
>If I feel cheated from having spent time reading the draft standard and
>writing comments, what about all the folks who put in so much time and
>effort?

You shouldn't feel cheated. The committee may not end up accepting
your proposed changes, but they were considered.
>
>Whose standard is this anyway?

Ours (the folks who rely on fortran). There is much to be gained by
having a single fortran. ISO recognized this, and accepted the ANSI
document in 1978. This time around the European community spent a huge
amount of effort (due to rules differences, they were able to better
educate their user community) and crafted a set of well thought out
proposals. They accepted the american committee's work for about 90%
of the language, and felt that the 10% or so that they felt strongly
about should go their way. There are many who think that this is not
unreasonable....which is why their propsals were accepted by a
majority of the voting memembers in attendance in the Palo Alto meeting.

Things are looking good for acceptance of the standard. 



Keith H. Bierman
It's Not My Fault ---- I Voted for Bill & Opus

dd@beta.lanl.gov (Dan Davison) (04/07/89)

In article <97753@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>, khb@fatcity.Sun.COM (Keith Bierman Sun Tactical Engineering) writes:
> It is true that some members don't like the WG5 pressure. It must be
> remembered that x3j3 was given the charter to develop the text for ISO
> in addition to ANSI and that the committee accepted that mandate.

Then perhaps if the committee had concentrated on improving Fortran
instead of molding it in the image of a CS language product none of the
travail would have been necessary.

> Furthermore the public comment has NOT been ignored. Every letter was
> read. Every proposal no matter how ill-informed was dealt with by the
> appropriate subcommittee. Offical responses are still being crafted.

True, that wasn't my point.  WG5 appears to have decided the content,
not the US public comment.  There's an important difference here.  Why
should anyone go to the trouble of reading the new draft when it comes
out? Our opinions won't change anything, apparently

> You shouldn't feel cheated. The committee may not end up accepting
> your proposed changes, but they were considered.
 Again, you appear to have missed my point.  

> >Whose standard is this anyway?
> Ours (the folks who rely on fortran). There is much to be gained by
> having a single fortran. ISO recognized this, and accepted the ANSI
> document in 1978. This time around the European community spent a huge
> amount of effort (due to rules differences, they were able to better
> educate their user community) and crafted a set of well thought out
> proposals. They accepted the american committee's work for about 90%
> of the language, and felt that the 10% or so that they felt strongly
> about should go their way. There are many who think that this is not
> unreasonable....which is why their propsals were accepted by a
> majority of the voting memembers in attendance in the Palo Alto meeting.
> 
> Things are looking good for acceptance of the standard. 
> Keith H. Bierman

Not to me.  I will read the proposed standard with a fairly open mind,
but it appears that we will get the European standard instead of a
US standard.

I must confess a great deal of frustration with the committee.  It would
seem fairly straightforward to take Fortran '77, add pointers, standard
bit operations, a structure or record data type, DO WHILE, REPEAT UNTIL,
fix up the I/O facilities (such as non-advancing I/O), intelligent DO
loop handling (EXIT <level>), a CASE statement, labels on the CASE, DO,
and IF statements.  Vectorization, perhaps, would also be a good
addition.

Instead, we have something that looks like a collision between Ada and
Pascal in a dark alley.  It also looks like some of the committee are
frustrated language developers who don't like Fortran.

I have a very bad feeling about this and I don't like it.  Let Fortran
be Fortran.

dan davison/theoretical biology/t-10 ms k710/los alamos national laboratory
los alamos, nm 875545/dd@lanl.gov (arpa)/dd@lanl.uucp(new)/..cmcl2!lanl!dd
"The emperor is not as forgiving as I am" -- D. Vader

shapiro@rb-dc1.UUCP (Mike Shapiro) (04/08/89)

In article <24066@beta.lanl.gov> dd@beta.lanl.gov (Dan Davison) writes:
  ... nearly all deleted ...
>I have a very bad feeling about this and I don't like it.  Let Fortran
>be Fortran.

But which Fortran should we let be Fortran?  The one with the PAUSE
that actually stopped the machine?  The one with the READ INPUT TAPE
statement?   The one with ENCODE and DECODE statements?  The one with
NAMELIST?  (QUIZ: Which of these is in Fortran-8x?)

I recall that when the FORTRAN 77 standard appeared, so did most of
the same arguments.  Who would need all those extra features like
comments beginning with an asterisk or an IF/THEN/ELSEIF/ENDIF
statement block?  FORTRAN 66 (or FORTRAN IV or FORTRAN ??) was enough!
And who would ever bother implementing the whole language?  We could
just stick to the left-hand pages of the standard, which defined the
subset.  How many FORTRAN 77 Subset compilers do you see on the market
these days?

Each of the times FORTRAN has been standardized, a subset was also
specified in the standard (a separate standard ANSI X3.10-1966 and
left hand pages in ANSI X3.9-1978).  I (and several other people) have
recommended that the FORTRAN 77 standard be retained as Fortran 8x
Subset (or some similar name).  And it should be noted that any
standard-conforming FORTRAN 77 program will continue to be a
standard-conforming Fortran 8x program.  Indeed, the most difficult
transition task for many people may be remembering to use the correct
capitalization rule (as used in this paragraph).

A question to anyone who cares:

The X3J3 committee continues to use "Fortran 8x" as the working name
of the draft proposed standard.  WG5 uses "Fortran 88" as its name for
the same draft.  My preference is to follow the convention of just
using the last digits of the year (e.g., COBOL 74), so that if it
becomes a standard this year, it would be "Fortran 89" and if it slips
to next year, "Fortran 90" and so forth.  What is your preference?
Why?
-- 

Michael Shapiro, Gould/General Systems Division (soon to be Encore)
15378 Avenue of Science, San Diego, CA 92128
(619)485-0910    UUCP: ...sdcsvax!ncr-sd!rb-dc1!shapiro

khb@fatcity.Sun.COM (fatcity) (04/08/89)

In article <24066@beta.lanl.gov> dd@beta.lanl.gov (Dan Davison) writes:
.....
>Then perhaps if the committee had concentrated on improving Fortran
>instead of molding it in the image of a CS language product none of the
>travail would have been necessary.

I suggest you study the last 10 years of meeting notes. It is not a CS
language product. It is the result of many "real world engineers and
scientsts" crafting a tool to solve their problems. CS types hate the
product. 
>
>> Furthermore the public comment has NOT been ignored. Every letter was
>> read. Every proposal no matter how ill-informed was dealt with by the
>> appropriate subcommittee. Offical responses are still being crafted.
>
>True, that wasn't my point.  WG5 appears to have decided the content,
>not the US public comment.  There's an important difference here.  Why
>should anyone go to the trouble of reading the new draft when it comes
>out? Our opinions won't change anything, apparently

Wrong. The sad fact is that the much of the US public comment was
clearly misinformed. People complained about features being deleted
(there are NO deletions from x3.9-1978) requesting that features be
added that were already in, and etc. Of the comment that was sensible,
much was accepted. It should be noted that the informed commentators
requested basically what WG5 did. There are bitter arguments about how
to "spell" things, but the functionality requested is generally the same.

Inasmuch as WG5 "held out" for a very short list of features, in a
very large document, it seems quite unreasonable to bitch about WG5
running the show.

Also note that you have had over a decade to voice your views.
Modulo the misinformed comments, the vast majority of the remaining
comment recapitulated long debates on the issues. You may feel
slighted because you invested a couple of days in reading the
document, and some hours crafting your remarks. But there are many
committee members who spent years negotiating the document, and who
articulated your (the group you :>) views over a period of months.... 


>> Things are looking good for acceptance of the standard. 
>> Keith H. Bierman
>
>Not to me.  I will read the proposed standard with a fairly open mind,
>but it appears that we will get the European standard instead of a
>US standard.

Since we (americans) wrote the document, and continue to do all the
technical work, this is simply silly.

>>I must confess a great deal of frustration with the committee.  It would
>seem fairly straightforward to take Fortran '77, add pointers, standard
>bit operations, a structure or record data type, DO WHILE, REPEAT UNTIL,
>fix up the I/O facilities (such as non-advancing I/O), intelligent DO
>loop handling (EXIT <level>), a CASE statement, labels on the CASE, DO,
>and IF statements.  Vectorization, perhaps, would also be a good
>addition.

And many of us who use fortran to earn our daily bread, and took the
trouble to follow along for the last decade (I only joined as a member
reccently) are very, very certain that much more is needed. During the
last several YEARS, the committee has tried to remove anything and
everything not nailed down. Each feature has a very strong reason for
being there, and this was the consensus (via voting) of those who
cared enough to be part of the process. If you think you can craft a
language which will displace fortran in your spare time good luck.
Wirth has tried very hard, and is very good....but he hasn't even
managed to displace C, much less fortran. I seriously doubt you will
fare better.
>
>Instead, we have something that looks like a collision between Ada and
>Pascal in a dark alley.  It also looks like some of the committee are
>frustrated language developers who don't like Fortran.

No. They do, however, have a larger view.

It makes no sense for a scientist to have to worry about how two
entities are multiplied. The power of this sort of notion should be
obvious from a quick study of linear algebra. The proposed standard
will allow me to write code which will be easier to read, port,
maintain and tune. This is what I DEMAND from a language for
scientific applications. Your proposed f77 hacks do not go anywhere
near far enough to solve the problems.

>
>I have a very bad feeling about this and I don't like it.  Let Fortran
>be Fortran.

It is. It shall be. But it must evolve. 

----------- Evolve or die. There is no other choice.



Keith H. Bierman
It's Not My Fault ---- I Voted for Bill & Opus

jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles) (04/08/89)

From article <442@rb-dc1.UUCP>, by shapiro@rb-dc1.UUCP (Mike Shapiro):
> [...]
> Subset (or some similar name).  And it should be noted that any
> standard-conforming FORTRAN 77 program will continue to be a
> standard-conforming Fortran 8x program.  Indeed, the most difficult
> transition task for many people may be remembering to use the correct
> capitalization rule (as used in this paragraph).

Just for the record, the correct capitalization rule is 'Fortran' not
'FORTRAN'.  This is, admittedly, not a very important point, but it
does conform to an international agreement (through ISO) for capital-
ization of programming languages and features (to which ANSI has agreed).
The rule is (simplistically put): if the word term is pronounced then
the spelling is with initial capital only; if the word is spelled out
verbally then it should be all capitalized in print.

dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter) (04/09/89)

In article <442@rb-dc1.UUCP> shapiro@rb-dc1.SanDiego.gould.UUCP (Michael Shapiro) writes:
 > The X3J3 committee continues to use "Fortran 8x" as the working name
 > of the draft proposed standard.  WG5 uses "Fortran 88" as its name for
 > the same draft.  My preference is to follow the convention of just
 > using the last digits of the year (e.g., COBOL 74), so that if it
 > becomes a standard this year, it would be "Fortran 89" and if it slips
 > to next year, "Fortran 90" and so forth.  What is your preference?

Fortran 88 of course.

 > Why?

Seeing that Fortran 66 became a standard in 1966 and  Fortran 77 became a
standard in 1978, it would be a logical follow up if Fortran 88
became a standard in 1990.
-- 
dik t. winter, cwi, amsterdam, nederland
INTERNET   : dik@cwi.nl
BITNET/EARN: dik@mcvax

urjlew@ecsvax.UUCP (Rostyk Lewyckyj) (04/11/89)

Mr Shapiro asks us what we would like the new Fortran standard 
to be called. Well I say ;-):

Make it FORTRAN 96. To symbolize two entities X3J3 - WG5 or commitee - 
users in juxtaposition directly opposite to a loving couple 69.
Also it may take up to 1996 to get this off the ground and into
working compilers.
I still think they should have cleaned up PL/I instead. I want:
- literal statement labels
- grouping of statements a la  DO ... END, which fit nicely into
   if (cond) then st1 else st2 , to replace st1 & st2. Rather than
   a similar looking but different semantics of if (cond) then
   + statements + endif, and the else elseif statements.
- multiple statements on a line,
and some other PL/I comforts, of course without many of the pains
like defaulting to FIXED DECIMAL for parameters, no backspace,
no variable FORMAT (run time FORMAT interpreter).
   
This was originally meant as a mailed reply to Mr. Shapiro,
but the news return path bounced, so I decided to post.
-----------------------------------------------
  Reply-To:  Rostyslaw Jarema Lewyckyj
             urjlew@ecsvax.UUCP ,  urjlew@unc.bitnet
       or    urjlew@tucc.tucc.edu    (ARPA,SURA,NSF etc. internet)
       tel.  (919)-962-9107

alm@a.lanl.gov (Alex Marusak) (04/11/89)

References: <24032@beta.lanl.gov> <97753@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <24066@beta.lanl.gov> <98041@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
In article <98041@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>, khb@fatcity.Sun.COM (fatcity) writes:
> In article <24066@beta.lanl.gov> dd@beta.lanl.gov (Dan Davison) writes:
> .....
> >Then perhaps if the committee had concentrated on improving Fortran
> >instead of molding it in the image of a CS language product none of the
> >travail would have been necessary.
 
> ...It is not a CS language product... CS types hate the product. 

Actually, that 'CS types hate the product....' means only that those
who had a hand in the design of Fortran 8x (CS types, engineers, scientists,
and all) have succeeded both in antagonizing the Fortran user community
and in incurring the disdain of the CS types.

alm@a.lanl.gov (Alex Marusak) (04/12/89)

Some comments cry out for a response:

In article <98041@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>, khb@fatcity.Sun.COM (fatcity) writes:
> .....
> Wrong. The sad fact is that the much of the US public comment was
> clearly misinformed....  Of the comment that was sensible,
> much was accepted. It should be noted that the informed commentators
> requested basically what WG5 did....
> 
Some of us on X3J3 disagree with the sentiment expressed above.

There will be a second public review period for Fortran 8x.  If you
are one of the people who took the time and made the effort to comment
the first time around, and you felt a jolt of adrenaline upon reading
that "The sad fact is that much of the US public comment was clearly
misinformed...", you will have another chance to comment.  Do so.

mike@arizona.edu (Mike Coffin) (04/12/89)

From article <98041@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>, by khb@fatcity.Sun.COM (fatcity):

> [Fortran 88] is not a CS language product. It is the result of many
> "real world engineers and scientsts" crafting a tool to solve their
> problems. CS types hate the product.

I think you exaggerate; I haven't met many CS types who *care* enough
to hate the product.  As far as language design goes, the "real world"
and CS long ago parted company; few in the "real world" are interested
in designing a new language, and few in CS are interested in designing
an old one.
-- 
Mike Coffin				mike@arizona.edu
Univ. of Ariz. Dept. of Comp. Sci.	{allegra,cmcl2}!arizona!mike
Tucson, AZ  85721			(602)621-2858

khb@fatcity.Sun.COM (Keith Bierman Sun Tactical Engineering) (04/12/89)

In article <863@a.lanl.gov> alm@a.lanl.gov (Alex Marusak) writes:
>Some comments cry out for a response:
>
>In article <98041@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>, khb@fatcity.Sun.COM (fatcity) writes:
>> .....
>> Wrong. The sad fact is that the much of the US public comment was
>> clearly misinformed....  Of the comment that was sensible,
>> much was accepted. It should be noted that the informed commentators
>> requested basically what WG5 did....
>> 
>Some of us on X3J3 disagree with the sentiment expressed above.

True. I should have toned down the reaction. My aplogies to anyone who
has taken offense.

>
>There will be a second public review period for Fortran 8x.  If you
>are one of the people who took the time and made the effort to comment
>the first time around, and you felt a jolt of adrenaline upon reading
>that "The sad fact is that much of the US public comment was clearly
>misinformed...", you will have another chance to comment.  Do so.

Hear! Hear!

Cheers
Keith H. Bierman
It's Not My Fault ---- I Voted for Bill & Opus