(j3.2006) (SC22WG5.5315) Draft convener's report to SC22

Wed Aug 6 11:36:32 EDT 2014

WG5,

Here is my draft report to SC22. I am afraid I have left it to the last 
minute - the deadline is Friday. Any comments before then will be welcome.

John.
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                                               ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N2026-1

WG5 Business Plan and Convener's Report for ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 2014 Plenary

PERIOD COVERED BY THIS REPORT: 1 July 2013 to 1 August 2014

SUBMITTED BY: John Reid  

1.0 MANAGEMENT SUMMARY

1.1 JTC1/SC22/WG5 STATEMENT OF SCOPE 

The development and maintenance of ISO/IEC Fortran programming language
standards.

1.2 PROJECT REPORT 

1.2.1 COMPLETED PROJECTS

None.

1.2.2 PROJECTS UNDERWAY

22.02.01.01 Programming Language Fortran - Part 1: Base language 

WG5 has decided that the next revision of the base language will be limited to
the incorporation of corrigenda, editorial improvements, and the Technical 
Specifications, plus the removal of simple deficiencies in, and discrepancies 
between, existing facilities. The list of deficiencies and discrepancies was
chosen during the June meeting of WG5.

The primary responsibility for maintenance of the base language has been
delegated to INCITS/PL22.3. Corrigendum 3 to Fortran 2008 was completed during
this period and awaits puplication, having passed its ballot on 3 June (see 
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22 N 4925). About 18 'interpretations' are under 
consideration. It is expected that the fourth corrigendum to Fortran 2008 will 
be submitted later this year. 

22.02.02 Programming Language Fortran - Part 2: Varying Length Character
Strings

WG5 continues to have responsibility for maintenance of this part of the 
Fortran standard; there has been no maintenance activity during the period.

22.18508 Type 2 Technical Specification on Additional Parallel Features in 
Fortran 

A New Work Item on a Technical Specification on Additional Parallel 
Features in Fortran was approved on 5 December 2012. The TS will provide 
support for features that were deferred during the development of Fortran 
2008 because of insufficient time to reach consensus on their details.
Progress has not been as fast as was intended, but a working draft has been 
constructed and it is hoped that a PDTS will be available for balloting in 
December 2014.  

1.2.3 CANCELLED PROJECTS

None.

1.2.4 CO-OPERATION AND COMPETITION

WG5 cooperates closely with the ANSI INCITS/PL22.3 Fortran Technical
Committee, to whom it has delegated the technical development of Fortran as
well as the maintenance of Fortran 2008. There is also contact and or 
liaison with several organisations including
  OpenMP Architecture Review Board
  MPI Forum
  IEEE 754 - Floating point hardware
  IFIP WG2.5 - Numerical Software
  UPC Consortium
  ANSI PL22.11 - C
  ANSI PL22.16 - C++
with several of the PL22.3 and WG5 members and vendors also being members of 
the other organisations. Many of those responsible for the development of 
commercial Fortran compilers are members of PL22.3 and/or WG5.

Dan Nagle (PL22.3 chairman) has been actively involved with WG23 
(Programming Language Vulnerabilities). A draft Fortran annex has been
constructed, see ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5/N1965, and has been forwarded to
WG23. Subject to editorial corrections, it will be included in the next 
release of the WG23 TS.

There are no competitive activities.

2.0 PERIOD REVIEW

2.1 MARKET REQUIREMENTS

Fortran is the language of choice for much scientific, engineering, and
economic programming, particularly for very large programs that have evolved
over many years. There has been some delay over the implementation of Fortran 
2003, but Cray and IBM now have full implementations and several other vendors 
have implemented most of the features. Intel has implemented coarrays and 
gfortran expects to do so in 2015. 

Most major Fortran compiler vendors are represented either on WG5 or its
Primary Development Body, INCITS/PL22.3, as are three of the major research
establishments that rely on Fortran for their scientific computing. In
addition to vendor-supplied and specific mailing lists, there is an active
email list and an active usenet newsgroup for users of Fortran, which
provide valuable feedback from users. All these diverse sources are being
used to guide the development of the language, both through revisions to the
base language Standard, and through other related standards and technical
reports.

2.2 ACHIEVEMENTS 

The main achievements during the period have been the construction of 
Corrigendum 3 and the development of additional parallel features.

2.3 RESOURCES

As elsewhere in the Standardization world, it is becoming increasingly
difficult to persuade employers to provide the necessary funding for
Standards activity. Most of the technical work involved in developing 
Standards and Technical Reports is performed by INCITS/PL22.3 under the 
strategic direction of WG5. All WG5 meetings since 2002 have been joint 
meetings with INCITS/PL22.3 in order to optimize its use of human resources. 

WG5 itself carries out much of its discussions via email, with an annual
meeting, usually during the summer, and occasional other meetings at
critical stages in the development of the base language standard. 

3.0 FOCUS FOR NEXT WORK PERIOD

3.1 DELIVERABLES

It is hoped that the PDTS on Additional Parallel Features in Fortran will be 
constructed by December 2014. 

It is intended that Corrigendum 4 will be forwarded by December 2014. 

3.2 STRATEGIES

WG5 operates under a strategic plan described in WG5 Standing Document 4,
the latest version of which is ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5/N1349. In particular, 
projects for which WG5 is responsible may be handled by other Development 
Bodies, notably ANSI INCITS/PL22.3. Detailed plans for the next three years 
are contained in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5/N2024. 

3.3 RISKS

As far as possible, WG5 tries to anticipate technical comments during
international ballots by holding informal ballots of its members before any
documents are submitted for ballot. Nevertheless, unexpected technical
comments can always delay the planned schedule.

3.4 OPPORTUNITIES

WG5 has made extensive use of email for over a decade to speed up technical
development. Since 1995 most documents have been distributed via an official
file server in the UK; all documents have been distributed in this way since
1997. This is being switched to LiveLink. An open web site is also used to 
provide non-technical, and other publicly available, information to interested 
parties.

In addition to speeding up the distribution of documents, the use of
electronic distribution and communication systems also provides many other
benefits, such as the ability to rapidly carry out informal ballots of the
members for various reasons.

3.5 WORK PROGRAM PRIORITIES

WG5's priority activities this year are the maintenance of the base Fortran
language Standard, ISO/IEC 1539-1:2010, and the development of a TS on 
Additional Parallel Features in Fortran.

4. OTHER ITEMS

4.1 POSSIBLE ACTION REQUESTS AT FORTHCOMING PLENARY

WG5 requests that its convener be reappointed for another term.

4.2 PROJECT EDITORS

ISO/IEC 1539-1: Malcolm Cohen, UK
ISO/IEC 1539-2: John Reid, UK
TS on Further Interoperability of Fortran with C: Bill Long, USA
TS on Additional Parallel Features in Fortran: Bill Long, USA

4.3 ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT DISTRIBUTION

WG5: http://www.nag.co.uk/SC22WG5/
PL22.3: http://www.j3-fortran.org/
LiveLink: http://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink?func=ll&objId=8919787&objAction=browse&viewType=1

4.4 RECENT MEETINGS

2012/06/25-29 Markham, Ontario, Canada
2013/06/24-28 Delft, Netherlands
2014/06/23-27 Las Vegas, USA

4.5 FUTURE MEETINGS

2015/08/3-7  London, UK
2016/06/6-10 Boulder, Co, USA
2017/06      Garching, Germany

Note that WG5 normally meets annually, with extra meetings being held
as/when necessary to process ballot comments or other high priority
activities that do not accord with the regular meeting schedule.
WG5's Primary Development Body, INCITS/PL22.3, meets three times each 
year. Other work is carried out via email.