(j3.2006) (SC22WG5.3506) February meeting of WG5

[John Reid]

WG5,

Please may I remind Heads of Delegations (HoDs) to prepare country reports? 
Please ask me for an N number when you are ready.

In view of the 2-0-3 country vote in London on the resolution
    L5.  Content of the revised Fortran standard
    That WG5 makes the following changes to the content of the revision:
    - type BITS is removed and ancillary bit manipulation facilities are
      revised as shown in WG5-N1695
    - co-arrays are simplified by removal of CO_FINDLOC
    - intelligent macros are removed.
I have been corresponding by email with the delegations of Canada, Japan, and UK 
without waiting for HoD reports.

Canada (HoD Jim Xia) would like the extent of co-arrays to be further reduced 
and has some new suggestions. I have helped him to write up these suggestions, 
and the result is N1712, which is attached.

Japan is preparing a proposal paper for separation of the co-arrays feature as a 
new part of the standard. I have offered to help write this.

UK opinion is divided. Since there is a significant number of people who think 
that co-arrays should be moved to a TR, David Muxworthy and I have written a 
paper on this, which is attached (N1710). It explores the option in far more 
detail that was done during the London discussion. Were this to be adopted, we 
would need a version of the draft without co-arrays. Since the Editor has a 
"no-co-arrays" switch in his Latex source, I asked him to throw it and the 
result is visible on the WG5 site as N1709. He took the opportunity try a 
different page format, so not all the length reduction is due to removing 
co-arrays (some 25 pages are due to compression). He also tells me that the 
syntax rule annex in this version is broken - the tool that constructs it needs 
attention.

We need to discuss these papers on the first day of the meeting (Sunday). I hope 
we manage to decide on these issues before the end of the day.

With best wishes,

John.