psmith@mozart.uucp (Presley Smith) (09/20/88)
There have been several summaries posted on the network of the X3J3 Meeting that was held in August. This week, the WG5 meeting is being held in Paris. WG5 is the FORTRAN group of the International Standards Organization (ISO). At that meeting, the various plans that were discussed at the X3J3 meeting in August will be presented to the international body of FORTRAN experts. It would appear from the letters received as part of the public comment on the FORTRAN 8x draft, that FORTRAN users in ISO countries favored the current draft of FORTRAN 8x more than the reviewers in the US favored that draft. If one looks more closely at this situation, there were a series of FORTRAN forums held in Europe by some of the major authors of the FORTRAN 8x draft. Many of the letters from Europe were generated as a result of these forums. The book, Fortran 8x Explained was written by two members of X3J3 from Europe. Since both the authors of the FORTRAN 8x draft and the authors of the book are very much in favor of the FORTRAN 8x draft as it went our for public review, you would expect that this opinion would be present in letters generated as a result of these forums. Since most of the negative seniment came from the major vendors, IBM, DEC, Harris, etc. in this country, one would expect a more negative reaction in the U.S. Many of the concerns of the vendors have been things like it's too complex, etc. Many of the vendors are worried about the effects of the proposed changes on the current FORTRAN customer base... There concerns have been voiced more loudly in the US. On to the saga of the WG5 meeting... It appears that there may be a move underway to have the ISO group break away from the American group and produce a separate standard for FORTRAN for ISO based on the current FORTRAN 8x proposal. It is probable that such options will be discussed at the WG5 meeting in Paris this week. Such a move could cause a split between the two standardization groups and could result in two different non-compatible FORTRAN standards being produced. If successful in such a move, ISO would go out for a public review of their proposal and try to make it an ISO standard. The X3J3 group would still have to address the negative public comment and possibly produce an incompatible standard in order to gain support for passage... Then your favorite vendor will be put in a position of which standard to implement and FORTRAN could go the way of other languages that have gotten into similar situations. That could result in a real MESS! So, stay tuned for more information from the WG5 meeting in Paris... The future of FORTRAN may be being decided this week...