psmith@convex.UUCP (02/10/88)
There has been a lot of "religion" expressed on the net over FORTRAN 8x in the last few days. In answer to some of the questions, I have included a summary of the balloting in this paper. The key issue right now is not what your religion is on the subject, but the fact that the ballot period is about to close. IF YOU DON'T EXPRESS YOUR OPINION NOW...YOU WILL NOT GET AN OPPORTUNITY TO EXPRESS IT LATER... Letters MUST be at this address no later than February 23, 1988. Send your comments to: X3 Secretariat CBEMA 311 First Street NW, Suite 500 Washington, DC 20001-2178 Now, a few notes on some of the comments from the net... Kurt Hirchert: I count about 9 government agencies in the list...You are certainly welcome to comment again, but if you do, please give us the correct information in each case... My counts are later in this paper. Also, there is NO subset defined for this proposed standard...Maybe the vendors are free to "implement a subset, just don't call it standard Fortran" but I don't think that would be a wise move for any rational vendor to take. The bottom line is that FORTRAN 8x is a much larger language than FORTRAN 77. We can argue about the magnitude...but it is much larger. I tend to believe Richard Weaver from IBM when he compares it to both Ada and Pascal in his ballot comments. We did not include the Pascal comparison...but it makes 8x look even larger. The ballot comments are public record...anyone can get a copy. I believe that Dick is right when he states: "The difficulty with 8x lies not in the quality of the work that X3J3 has done, but rather in the somewhat surprising observation that the result of X3J3's work is a new language and not a revision of Fortran." Maybe it corresponds more to Pascal...but the term on the street is "Adatran." In the comments that 8x warns that Decremented statements will become obsolete over a "very, very long period of time", the official rules of ANSI state that a standard must be re-certified every 5 years or a revision made at that time. With the current rules that Decremented statements are moved to Obsolescent statements and then may be removed...this COULD be done within a 10 year time period... COULD... It also seems odd that the proposed standard is so complex that someone had to write a book..."Fortran 8x Explained" to explain it?? That flags me that we have a problem if we can read the proposed standard and understand it...without having an explanation. Kent, the man from xanth Maybe you are not interested in the performance of the compilers...just being a user, but that is the number 2 issue with the customers we have... That is customer feedback...not the "desire" of the compiler group. Sometimes, major surgery on very ill patients results in them croaking on the operating table... On the issue of "every vendors favorite construct..." the project proposal for the FORTRAN 8x effort states: "it is likely that augmentations (new features) will mainly be drawn from functionality that exists in advanced implementations of existing processors..." Of the 4 major areas of new functionality, only part of one area exists in any advanced implementation. Did the committee violate the charter?? On the issue of dusty decks...there has already been other responses on the net. How about some more opinions in this area??? On the issue of carrying along deprecated features...and cost effectiveness... Let me quote again from the project proposal: "One of FORTRAN's most important characteristics is that efficient processors can be implemented at a reasonable cost. One of the most important goals during the next revision will be to retain this characteristic." When the major vendors and compiler writers are telling the public it going to take a long time to implement and is going to be expensive (and YOU will bear the cost because the vendor will pass it on to you) you might want to listen... Again a quote from Dick Weaver's IBM ballot: "Permits inexpensive implementations? NO. 8x impacts implementation costs in several ways: - The size of the language; there is simply lots more work to do - Dependent compilation. The USE statement requires information from other (prior) compilations. This requires new library servies (an "environment"), both to store and control this information. - Other operating system services are impacted; Link editing must now handle scopes for external names, for example. " I hope you are right that the FORTRAN community will be willing to bear the cost of moving from "the old to the new compilers." It is NOT going to be cheap. I think it is interesting that you find exception with some of the overview material that was copied from directly from the FORWARD of the draft proposal, pages i to iii. I left NOTHING out unless I made a typo... You had comments on Derived Data Types, Modular Definitions, and Language Evolution... I would suggest that you expland on your comments and send them to the committee. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Having made more comments, I shall sit back and wait for the FLAMES... Time is running short. SEND YOUR COMMENTS TO THE COMMITTEE...and let them know your feelings. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The following is a summary of the X3J3 Ballots. The Letter Ballot was held in December, 1986 and the Role Call in May, 1987. The addition of the affiliations for each group is mine. I count Universities - 4 Vendors - 15 Government - 9 Businesses - 6 ??? - 4 Summary of X3J3 Ballots... Letter Role Company Name A Ballot Call 1. Advanced Computer Techniques Adamezyk, J. Stephen ? Aff Neg 2. National CTR for Atmospheric Res. Adams, Jeanne C. G Aff Aff 3. Gould, Inc. Barber, Graham V Aff Resigned Phillamore, David Aff, New 4. UNISYS Bowe, Valerie V Neg Neg 5. UNICOMP (University of New Mexico) Brainerd, Walter U Aff Aff 6. Hewlett-Packard Burch, Carl D. V Aff Aff 7. Aberdeen Proving Ground Campbell, Lloyd G Aff Aff 8. CSP Inc. Crowley, Ted V Aff Absent 9. Harris Allison, Robert V Aff Neg 10. Oxford University Ellis, T. Miles U Aff Aff 11. Bell Communications Research Freeman, Murray B Aff Absent 12. Masscomp Gridley, Kurt V * Aff,New 13. DEC Harris, Kevin V Neg Neg 14. CRAY Hendrickson, Richart V Neg Aff 15. Natl Ctr Supercomputting Appl Hirchert, Kurt W. U Aff Aff 16. Data General Hoover, Tracy Ann V Aff Aff 17. Prime Johnson, Andrew V Aff Aff 18. Peritus International, Inc. Lakhwara, Anil ? Neg Absent 19. EG&G Idaho Incorporated Marshall, Neldon G Aff Aff 20. Grumman Aircraft Syst. Martin, Bruce B Aff Aff 21. Lawrence Livermore Lab Martin, Jeanne G Aff Aff 22. Los Alamos National Lab Marusak, Alex G Aff Neg 23. Computer Sciences Corp. Matheny, James B Aff Aff 24. DD CERN Metcalf, Michael G Aff Aff 25. Edinburgh Portable Compilers Millard, G.G. B Aff Aff 26. SLAC Moss, Leonard G Neg Neg 27. Boeing Phillips, Ivor B Neg Neg 28. Control Data Corp Ragan, Richard V Aff Aff 29. Aere Harwell Reid, J.K. G Aff Aff 30. Data-Term Schenk, Werner ? Aff Aff 31. University of Liverpool Schonfelder, J.L. U Aff Aff 32. Argonne National Lab Smith, Brian G Aff Aff 33. Alliant Computer Corp Swift, Richard C V Aff Aff 34. Concurrent Computer Corp Thompson, Brian V Aff Aff 35. Amoco Production Co Wagener, Jerrold B Aff Aff 36. NCC, Manchester, UK Wearing, Allison ? * Neg 37. IBM Weaver, Richard V Neg Neg 38. International Computers, Inc. Wilson, Alan V? Aff Aff