Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!ginosko!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!microsoft!bobal
From: bobal@microsoft.UUCP (Bob Allison)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: X3 Nukes J3 ... Oh What A Feeling!
Summary: Long, a lot of separate items
Message-ID: <8158@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 23 Oct 89 18:30:50 GMT
References: <126584@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Reply-To: bobal@microsoft.UUCP (Bob Allison)
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 87

In article <126584@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> khb%chiba@Sun.COM (Keith Bierman - SPD Advanced Languages) writes:
>
>  [...]                                           And,
>"interpretations" of X3.9-1978 which conflict with the ISO standard
>Fortran are (in the long run) quite likely. 
>

Gosh, I hope not.  If so, then 8x is clearly not upward-compatible with
77, which is what everyone is claiming is a high priority.

>>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. 
>

Well, this is something of a problem for X3J3: X3 has lost all faith
with X3J3.  This is partially due to the fact that we're in the twelfth
year of a five year project proposal (and they had to specially interpret
the rules to get around the ten year rule), and partially due to the
obviously divided nature of the committee.  Remember, X3J3 was relatively
close to coming out with a standard around 1982, when they changed direction
substantially (thus the demise of "core plus modules").  I think X3 views
X3J3 as just too unpredictable and essentially unreliable.

And, it might be argued that X3 does have a fairly good grasp of the
Fortran community and its needs (well, at least as good as X3J3's).

>
>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. 
>

It's a rough life, but someone has to do it ;-)  Seriously, this is
significant, if true.  Already, it is nearly impossible for an individual
to attend meetings without outside funding.  Although this premise does
seem somewhat extremist.  ANSI foots the bill for a lot of ISO standards
work, and I'm not sure where ISO is going to come up with the cash to
administer all these language standards they're going to take away from
ANSI.  Also, despite all the disagreements, the US is a significant factor
in retail compiler sales.  I don't think the ISO would work to encourage
a rift between the US and ISO (no matter how powerful you believe the
EEC will be, they will still want to sell into the US market and vice versa).

>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.
>

Well, they want an ISO standard which ANSI will approve, so I don't
think they'll take the current draft and go crazy.  And they might
still allow X3J3 to finish tweaking it based on public comment, so as
to allow for ANSI approval of the standard (otherwise, ANSI will have no
choice but to reject the draft).

>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.
>

This will be true anyway as long as there are still platforms without 8x.
I'm not sure whether this action made a significant difference in the time
line.

Suffice it to say that I honestly believe this is a tempest in a teapot.
I am glad that 77 will continue to be a standard, but I don't believe it
will affect the adoption of 8x (by coders) significantly enough to tilt
the scale one way or the other.  It will some delay vendors from bringing
out a product until they are sure of a market, but that just allows 
aggressive, risk-taking companies to try to cash in on the potential 
rewards of being there first.  For instance, I can say with assurance that
this hasn't changed our development plans for 8x at Microsoft one iota.

Bob Allison