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From: brainerd@unmvax.unm.edu (Walt Brainerd)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Fortran 90
Keywords: Fortran standards
Message-ID: <605@unmvax.unm.edu>
Date: 13 Jan 90 04:57:02 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico at Albuquerque
Lines: 37


         I t ' s   F o r t r a n   9 0  ! ! !

I just returned a few hours ago from the Dallas X3J3 meeting.
The spirit was to fix the known problems and ship it.

Typical of the size of the technical changes was the one
to change the unequal operator from <> to /= because (among other things)
"less than or greater than" does not read too well for complex values.
Also, the idea of user-specified character sets (which implied the
possibility of using strange letters in identifiers) was dropped.
There were a few other small items that I and others will pass along
as soon as I have a chance to collect every thing and produce the
next version of the document.

The biggie was to agree to give the language the informal name "Fortran 90".
So it turns out that the X in Fortran 8X was a Roman numeral.

The committee has directed the US delegation to the WG5 meeting
next month to vote "no", but change to "yes" as soon as the edit
changes and small changes such as those above are accepted
(the vote must be done this way unless you propose no changes).
So the expectation is that it will enter the last stages of processing
as both an ISO and American standard with few technical changes.

Even the people at the meeting who have traditionally opposed the standard
did a LOT of hard and good work to make sure that we identified all
of the new arguments raised in the second round of public comments
and turn them into editorial or technical change proposals,
but the mood was that if it was a request for things that had been
considered many times before, we would just work to get it done.

-- 
Walt Brainerd  Unicomp, Inc.           brainerd@unmvax.cs.unm.edu
               2002 Quail Run Dr. NE
               Albuquerque, NM 87122
               505/275-0800   505/275-0801 (fax)