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

[Keith Bierman]

Yeah, I noticed that. It was just the same old pattern for our old friend
BIT.

My point, such as it is, stands. There are lots of good things which were
considered, liked, and for one reason or another didn't make it. Sometimes,
over and over again.

Sometimes the bucket is just too full. Van's point nets out to "when can we
get a bigger bucket" and the counter may well be "there is no bigger
bucket".

It is an unfortunate state of affairs, and not one I can contribute to
fixing; and the folks who "can" are investing in other areas.

Keith Bierman
khbkhb at gmail.com
kbiermank AIM
303 997 2749


On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 11:16 AM, Bill Long <longb at cray.com> wrote:

>
>
> On 11/7/12 11:20 AM, Keith Bierman wrote:
> > Not having been involved in these rounds, I can't and won't comment on
> > what may or may not have happened in the meetings.
> >
> > Dredging up old history, may be slightly educational. For many years
> > there was nearly total agreement that a "bit" datatype would be a
> > GoodThing. However, it got on and off the work list many times due to
> > the underlying disagreement about what kind of "bit" we wanted.  The net
> > result was a signigicant waste of scarce committee and subgroup time,
> > AND nothing to show for it for a  very long time.
> >
>
> Actually a BITS data type did come back again for F2008, after you left
> the committee (no correlation, I assume), and we got to the point of
> having the edits incorporated into the standard.  Then WG5 reconsidered
> and the whole feature was backed out.  At least if it comes up again, we
> have the edits basically done, so it would be straightforward to add it
> back. (Though still a substantial vendor implementation effort, which
> was a major motivation behind removing the feature.)
>
> 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
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> J3 mailing list
> J3 at mailman.j3-fortran.org
> http://mailman.j3-fortran.org/mailman/listinfo/j3
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.j3-fortran.org/pipermail/j3/attachments/20121107/4d475efb/attachment.html