Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!sun!chiba!khb
From: khb%chiba@Sun.COM (Keith Bierman - SPD Advanced Languages)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: X3 Nukes J3 ... Oh What A Feeling!
Message-ID: <126584@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 20 Oct 89 06:32:54 GMT
Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM
Lines: 111


>psmith@convex.com (Presley Smith)....

>....This vote is good news for the ENTIRE FORTRAN community. ...

Nice hyperbole. 

I take it that you do not count the 2/3 of X3J3 that voted the draft
out of committee as not being members of the FORTRAN community ?


>FORTRAN 77 will continue to be an active ANSI Fortran Project so that 
>interpretations may continue to be made on that standard by X3J3, but 
>no major updates to that standard are anticipated.
 ^^------------------------------------------------               

Not anticipated ? There is nothing to prevent it. And,
"interpretations" of X3.9-1978 which conflict with the ISO standard
Fortran are (in the long run) quite likely. 

>The X3 committee voted today by a large margin to retain ANSI X3.9-1978,

As I understood things, ISO tasked ANSI to write the next rev of the
world standard for FORTRAN (chose your capitialization to taste) way
back '78ish to follow up the work of the last committee ('77). X3
tasked J3 to do this (i.e. "own" the future of FORTRAN).

So what X3 has effectively done is to repudiate its subcommittee. Of
course, X3, tasked to preside over the standards _process_ (not actual
standards), has a much better understanding of the FORTRAN communities
needs than J3. 

>Internationally, the Fortran Extended standard will be the SAME as the 

Unless WG5 as agent for ISO changes its tune there will be no Fortran
Extended Int'l standard. There will simply be an international Fortran
standard. 

I am not foolish enough to think this is in NO ONEs best interest;
clearly there are those who feel quite strongly that X3.9-1978 is the
"right thing". But what are the consequences for the rest of us ?

1)  There will be 2 US standards. If for no other reason than clever
    vendor reps will finagle a FIPS for it. Thus there will be 2
    validation suites. Given the "play" in Fortran standards documents
    it is quite unlikely that it will be possible to pass both
    validation suites with the same code (of course compiler flags
    "solve" this problem).

RESULT:  Higher cost of developing compilers. Will retard development
	 of ISO compliant compilers by US vendors strapped for
	 resources. Probably result in lower quality of implementation
	 for _both_ standards.

2)  As pointed out by others, the International community is unlikely
    to view the X3 act as responsible. But we americans have lived
    down worse embarassments ... of course one might suspect that ISO
    might not be willing to entrust future work to X3 (I wouldn't, if
    I were in their shoes).

RESULT:  More foreign travel for folks involved in standards work. 

RESULT:  There would appear to be little reason for WG5 to worry about
	 X3J3 activities anymore; this might enable quicker
	 International adoption now that the US is out of the picture.

RESULT:  Library vendors will have a strong disincentive to provide
	 features which rely on ISO-compliant features ... no matter
	 how much better it would be supporting two source trees per
	 machine is costly.

	 Of course, this means reduced functionality for users.
  
I am fairly certain that ISO will ordain a single version of Fortran
(at least one hopes that some bodies operate rationally); and that
some US vendors simply will not have the resources to do both American
standards. Since it is safer to bet on Fed. Gov't mandating the obsolete
standard, those vendors will go with X3.9-1978.... of course this will
severely impact their ability to compete overseas ... thereby helping
increase the trade deficit (but we can fix that with trade barriers,
eh ?)

Who will benefit ?

1)  Users whose codes were written on a single system and never
    ported them; they can continue to use their systems with faith
    that their environment will never improve (and I've worked at sites
    where that was clearly a design goal ... and one can always argue
    that fixing up the environement only robbed resources from solving
    the real problems the organization was tasked to solve... and for
    any given Lab this is likely to be true).

2)  Vendors who have dominated their market segment with their x3.9-1978
    extended compilers. Adopting a single (new) standard would have
    promoted competition in each niche.


I can't come up with a third group. But then it is self-evident that the
union of these two groups constitutes the ENTIRE FORTRAN COMMUNITY.

A wonderful day indeed. 

But then up here in the Bay Area we've learned to really enjoy "Turf
Surfing" 
Keith H. Bierman    |*My thoughts are my own. !! kbierman@sun.com
It's Not My Fault   |	MTS --Only my work belongs to Sun* 
I Voted for Bill &  | Advanced Languages/Floating Point Group            
Opus                | "When the going gets Weird .. the Weird turn PRO"

"There is NO defense against the attack of the KILLER MICROS!"
			Eugene Brooks