(j3.2006) Get_Command_Argument

[Craig Dedo]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: j3-bounces at j3-fortran.org [mailto:j3-bounces at j3-fortran.org] On Behalf Of
> Bill Long
> Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2011 13:56
> To: fortran standards email list for J3
> Subject: Re: (j3.2006) Get_Command_Argument
> 
> On 12/15/11 4:50 AM, Tobias Burnus wrote:
> >
> > PS: I wonder how widely non-8bit characters are used with Fortran; how
> 
> So far we have had no requests for it. But our customers tend to run applications
> that are shared internationally, and hence use only characters commonly available
> everywhere (ASCII, mostly).
> 
> > many users are (not) satisfied with UTF-8 and default characters; and
> > how widely the ISO_10646-kind characters are used. (I think the
> > compiler support is still a bit limited; GCC supports it since 4.4,
> > but still does not make it easy to type non-ASCII characters as
> > character literals in the source code.)
> 
> Compiler support is limited partly by lack of demand, but also because it is an
> optional feature in the language.  This allows vendors to not support ISO_10646 and
> still claim conformance.  If we want this more generally available, it would help
> to make it non-optional in the next revision. (Though vendors who don't support it
> now will grumble because of the large amount of work involved.)
> 
> Cheers,
> Bill
> 
> --
> Bill Long                                           longb at cray.com
> Fortran Technical Support    &                 voice: 651-605-9024
> Bioinformatics Software Development            fax:   651-605-9142
> Cray Inc./Cray Plaza, Suite 210/380 Jackson St./St. Paul, MN 55101

	Yes, I wholeheartedly agree that support for ISO 10646 should be required in the
next revision of the Fortran standard.  If the decision were mine, I would require support
for both UCS-2 and UCS-4 in the CHARACTER data type and I/O to and from files encoded in
UCS-2, UCS-4, and UTF-16 formats.  Such support would cover the vast majority of current
and expected future uses.  Such an implementation most likely would not require extension
or revision in many decades, if ever.

	I proposed that as a feature for Fortran 2008 in paper 04-252, on February 16,
2004.  The reasons that I gave in that paper have only become more important than they
were nearly 8 years ago.

	IIRC, this proposal attracted the largest number of negative votes of any feature
proposed for Fortran 2008.  I strongly suspect that it was due to the cost to implement
and the expectation on the part of vendors that there was little, if any, customer demand
for the feature.

	I may be mistaken, but I believe that the importance of ease of using non-Latin
scripts has grown markedly in the last 10 years.  I expect that the importance will
increase greatly in the near future, due largely to the growth of software development in
areas and cultures that use non-Latin scripts.

	Comments, anyone?

Sincerely,
Craig T. Dedo
17130 W. Burleigh Place
P. O. Box 423                  Mobile Phone:  (414) 412-5869
Brookfield, WI   53008-0423    E-mail:  <craig at ctdedo.com>
USA
Linked-In:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/craigdedo