(j3.2006) [Re: Spreadsheet from meeting 167]

[Van Snyder]

Fri Nov 2 03:03:15 MDT 2012 Malcolm Cohen wrote

> willing to delay the standard

My repeated advocacy during the last four years to start work on the
next standard will delay it now????

J3 began work on Fortran 2008 in 2004, at meeting 167, the second one
after we finished 2003 -- before ISO publication.  166 was consumed
answering public comment on the 2003 draft ballot.  We have now done
essentially nothing for FOUR YEARS since completing technical work on
2008, and Malcolm is sniveling about ME advocating delay!!!  The FOUR
YEAR delay we have already endured is not of my making.  I have
repeatedly tried to AVOID the delay, by asking several times to know
when we would start considering new features.  The question was met
sometimes with dead silence, sometimes with a polite "later," and
sometimes with hostility.

Meanwhile, why did we piss away a goodly chunk of the last five meetings
working on Dan's half-baked favor for a sister working group, that WG5
promised to do even though it has almost nothing to do with Fortran,
developing NON-NORMATIVE material that ought to be in textbooks, not
standards?  At Garching, it was agreed that Dan, John, David and Makki
would finish it.  The only reason I did not oppose it at Garching is
that it was clearly advertised as a WG5 project.  Why is J3 doing all
the work?

The NON-NORMATIVE text J3 has so far labored over should have been much
more polished before J3 saw anything of it in plenary or subgroup.  I
sent extensive comments in e-mail, and nothing was done about them until
we were told to waste time on the project during 199.  David observed
there is no urgency for it.  I have never submitted such an unpolished
piece of work, nor have I insisted that J3 clean up such a mess in
plenary and subgroup.  We have been fiddling with this since meeting
179, five years ago, and it's still not ready for plenary or subgroup
action.  Why has it pushed Fortran work off the table?

In 2003, we asked for public input for 2008 requirements.  Walt set up a
web page.  John specified the format for proposals -- one page, not a
few lines.  We spent five meetings conducting a fair and well-organized
process to consider and prioritize proposals.  This year, without
notice, Dan's little paper 12-183 appeared, without solicitation for
input from anybody.  It appeared on Monday of the meeting, not two weeks
in advance, so it was technically out of order.  It now appears that
J3/USTAG will be expected to finish preparing the US delegation's
proposal for work items for the next revision at meeting 200, and WG5
will prepare the entire work plan at meeting 201.  How are we to do this
if technical proposals, which we promised in 2005 to take up again, are
ignored for eight years, and then polite requests to review them are met
with abuse instead of reasoned technical discussion?

I view what happened during the last four years, and especially at 199,
as being nowhere near our prior standard of conduct.  Calling it a
"process" is an insult to the word "process."

We finished the enormous work plan for Fortran 2008 in five years,
despite BSI schizophrenia of presenting a tutorial on coarrays at
Trollhattan in 1998, between J3 meetings 145 and 146, asking WG5 for
them officially at 166 (UK-001), and then asking at 186 to remove them
from the work plan, after the project was completed!

Now, after having spent FOUR YEARS treading water, against my
objections, when we could have been nearly finished with the next
revision, why am I the one being abused for advocating, and having
advocated for a very long time, to do something productive?

> and delay the compilers implementing other features

This is insulting nonsense.

Compiler developers put their individual priorities upon the projects in
the standard's revision.  If they delay implementing one feature in
favor or another, that's their decision, not mine, not J3's, not WG5's.