Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!cmcl2!lanl!beta!dd
From: dd@beta.lanl.gov (Dan Davison)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Responses to M. Shapiro & K. Bierman, re: X3J3 and WG5 (long)
Keywords: WG5, X3J3, F8X draft
Message-ID: <24091@beta.lanl.gov>
Date: 8 Apr 89 04:04:48 GMT
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 104

[A long answer to two messages in response to my message about
a Digital News article on the upcoming Fortran 8X draft vote.
The vote is by committee members to submit the draft to the public for
comment. (Or maybe that's "subject to public abuse" ;->) ]

Mike Shaprio says:
>But which Fortran should we let be Fortran?  The one with the PAUSE
>that actually stopped the machine?  

Aaaaacccck!

>The one with the READ INPUT TAPE statement?   The one with ENCODE and 
>DECODE statements?  The one with NAMELIST?  (QUIZ: Which of these is in
>Fortran-8x?)

Namelist (I looked ;-> ).

>I recall that when the FORTRAN 77 standard appeared, so did most of
>the same arguments.  Who would need all those extra features like
>comments beginning with an asterisk or an IF/THEN/ELSEIF/ENDIF
>statement block?  FORTRAN 66 (or FORTRAN IV or FORTRAN ??) was enough!
>And who would ever bother implementing the whole language?  

True.  I hope I'm wrong.  Given my experience with Cray compilers I
suspect the development time will be a tad longer than the block
structure.  Besides, ever compare compile times on CFT1.14 and CFT77?
You can get old waiting on CFT77, but at least the result is worth it.

> Michael Shapiro, Gould/General Systems Division (soon to be Encore)

Keith Bierman says:

> I suggest you study the last 10 years of meeting notes. It is not a CS
language product.

How would an outsider get copies of these?

>Inasmuch as WG5 "held out" for a very short list of features, in a
>very large document, it seems quite unreasonable to bitch about WG5
>running the show.

Waitaminnit.  My comments were based on the only information I had, the
Digital News article.  Your comment does not jibe with the article.

I now have a copy of the draft, and with the '77 standard in hand,
and the old 8x standard, I plan a cozy weekend of reading it over.
Hopefully all my perceptions are wrong.

BTW, there are others out there whose *perceptions* match mine.  
Perhaps the confusion over the last document had something to do 
with its presentation.

>Also note that you have had over a decade to voice your views.

Not me, I've only had the money to pay for the draft in the last two
years. That's not exactly encouraging comment.

>Modulo the misinformed comments

Perhaps if ANSI cared enough to make proposed standards available at
a sensible cost, you'd get the informed comment you prefer.  It's not
X3J3's responsibility, but complaining seems a little out of place.

>You may feel slighted because you invested a couple of days in reading the
>document, and some hours crafting your remarks. But there are many
>committee members who spent years negotiating the document, and who
>articulated your (the group you :>) views over a period of months.... 

No quarrel here.  I don't envy them, or deny that they did a enormous
amount of mostly thankless work.

>>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.

>Since we (americans) wrote the document, and continue to do all the>
>technical work, this is simply silly.

Ahh, semantics.

>And many of us who use fortran to earn our daily bread, and took the
>trouble to follow along for the last decade (I only joined as a member
>recently) are very, very certain that much more is needed. 

No argument here.  I've been Fortranning since 1973 and there's lots
that I'd add if I were designing a language, but then, I really liked
SAIL (a collision between Algol, Lisp, and assembly language on a *very*
dark night).  BTW, about 90-95% of my coding is Fortran.

>It makes no sense for a scientist to have to worry about how two
>entities are multiplied. 

Amen. I much prefer having the compiler figure out the most efficient
ordering of a matrix multiplication.  There are a phenominal number
of ways to do it badly on a Cray.

>The proposed standard will allow me to write code which will 
>be easier to read, port, maintain and tune. This is what I DEMAND 
>from a language for scientific applications. 

This is what I *wish*, or just give up  and use APL.  The problems
with APL write-once-APL are legendary.

dan davison