Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!accuvax.nwu.edu!tank!ncar!unmvax!pprg.unm.edu!hc!lanl!beta!dd
From: dd@beta.lanl.gov (Dan Davison)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: so much for X3J3
Summary: perhaps, but I don't believe it
Keywords: WG5, standard, wasted everybody's time
Message-ID: <24066@beta.lanl.gov>
Date: 6 Apr 89 17:25:07 GMT
References: <24032@beta.lanl.gov> <97753@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 59

In article <97753@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>, khb@fatcity.Sun.COM (Keith Bierman Sun Tactical Engineering) writes:
> It is true that some members don't like the WG5 pressure. It must be
> remembered that x3j3 was given the charter to develop the text for ISO
> in addition to ANSI and that the committee accepted that mandate.

Then perhaps if the committee had concentrated on improving Fortran
instead of molding it in the image of a CS language product none of the
travail would have been necessary.

> Furthermore the public comment has NOT been ignored. Every letter was
> read. Every proposal no matter how ill-informed was dealt with by the
> appropriate subcommittee. Offical responses are still being crafted.

True, that wasn't my point.  WG5 appears to have decided the content,
not the US public comment.  There's an important difference here.  Why
should anyone go to the trouble of reading the new draft when it comes
out? Our opinions won't change anything, apparently

> You shouldn't feel cheated. The committee may not end up accepting
> your proposed changes, but they were considered.
 Again, you appear to have missed my point.  

> >Whose standard is this anyway?
> Ours (the folks who rely on fortran). There is much to be gained by
> having a single fortran. ISO recognized this, and accepted the ANSI
> document in 1978. This time around the European community spent a huge
> amount of effort (due to rules differences, they were able to better
> educate their user community) and crafted a set of well thought out
> proposals. They accepted the american committee's work for about 90%
> of the language, and felt that the 10% or so that they felt strongly
> about should go their way. There are many who think that this is not
> unreasonable....which is why their propsals were accepted by a
> majority of the voting memembers in attendance in the Palo Alto meeting.
> 
> Things are looking good for acceptance of the standard. 
> Keith H. Bierman

Not to me.  I will read the proposed standard with a fairly open mind,
but it appears that we will get the European standard instead of a
US standard.

I must confess a great deal of frustration with the committee.  It would
seem fairly straightforward to take Fortran '77, add pointers, standard
bit operations, a structure or record data type, DO WHILE, REPEAT UNTIL,
fix up the I/O facilities (such as non-advancing I/O), intelligent DO
loop handling (EXIT <level>), a CASE statement, labels on the CASE, DO,
and IF statements.  Vectorization, perhaps, would also be a good
addition.

Instead, we have something that looks like a collision between Ada and
Pascal in a dark alley.  It also looks like some of the committee are
frustrated language developers who don't like Fortran.

I have a very bad feeling about this and I don't like it.  Let Fortran
be Fortran.

dan davison/theoretical biology/t-10 ms k710/los alamos national laboratory
los alamos, nm 875545/dd@lanl.gov (arpa)/dd@lanl.uucp(new)/..cmcl2!lanl!dd
"The emperor is not as forgiving as I am" -- D. Vader