[J3] work on F202X at #217?

[Bill Long]

Thanks, Malcolm, for specific guidance.  This looks good to me.  Having an early look at specifics might help avoid some of the unintended side effects of new features that have plagued us in the past. 

I assume that detailed edits should wait for 19-007, which will be the stable F2018 document for edits and interps.  However, Subclause/paragraph number edits can be done sooner and suffice for the purpose at hand. 

Cheers,
Bill

 
> On Jul 24, 2018, at 11:57 PM, Malcolm Cohen via J3 <j3 at mailman.j3-fortran.org> wrote:
> 
> > at least a rough sketch of the proposed syntax
>  
> I would prefer to see formal requirements.  In principle the sequence goes:
>  
> 1. use cases
> 2. formal requirements
> 3. formal specifications
> 4. syntax
> 5. edits
>  
> The last three are usually delegated by WG5 to J3 anyway, but it is the formal requirements that WG5 needs to do.  Although “example proposed syntax” can be useful to focus the mind, WG5 almost never votes on specific syntax anyway; J3 is trusted to “do the right thing” which quite often ends up changing the syntax.
>  
> Leaping ahead to syntax, skipping both requirements and specifications, is a bad idea.  Of course playing around with syntax ideas to illuminate the problems, requirements, and specifications, can be very useful, but focussing on syntax too early often leads to later problems.
>  
> Of course for trivial features some of these steps are just a single paragraph in a paper that combines lots of steps.  For large proposals intermediate steps may be useful, e.g.
> 1.5 informal requirements
>  
> Formal requirements might sound like pettifogging bureaucracy, but for anything of any size or complexity it is a really good idea.  And yes, they really are different from specifications.
>  
> Cheers,
> -- 
> ..............Malcolm Cohen, NAG Oxford/Tokyo.

Bill Long                                                                       longb at cray.com
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