Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!pprg.unm.edu!hc!lll-winken!uunet!microsoft!bobal From: bobal@microsoft.UUCP (Bob Allison) Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran Subject: Re: Responses to M. Shapiro & K. Bierman, re: X3J3 and WG5 (long) Summary: It gets longer every day Keywords: WG5, X3J3, F8X draft Message-ID: <4008@microsoft.UUCP> Date: 11 Apr 89 00:04:04 GMT References: <24091@beta.lanl.gov> <98161@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Reply-To: bobal@microsoft.UUCP (Bob Allison (uunet!microsoft!bobal)) Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA Lines: 119 In article <98161@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> khb@sun.UUCP (Keith Bierman Sun Tactical Engineering) writes: >In article <24091@beta.lanl.gov> dd@beta.lanl.gov (Dan Davison) writes: >> >>Keith Bierman says: >> >>>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. > >No. I understand what I'm talking about. Well, it is semantics again. From my point of view, your "short" list includes MODULE/USE, overloaded operators, what is now called KIND= real precision, and pointers. Frankly, I consider that a substantial portion of the language. At Jackson Hole, the committee was pretty seriously affected by the public comment, to the point of seriously considering alternatives which stripped the language significantly (perhaps a third to a half depending on your metric). By the next meeting, after the "ultimatum", the committee added substantial features to 8X, including vector-valued subscripts (which no one really asked for), and considered this to be an appropriate response to the public. Frankly, my feeling (and that of others, even some who are going to vote "YES") is that the American public has been ignored as part of a political solution in the face of very well organized ISO members. >> >>BTW, there are others out there whose *perceptions* match mine. >>Perhaps the confusion over the last document had something to do >>with its presentation. >> > >Much did. Walt Brainard, does seminars. Jeanne Adams (chair) and J. >Wagoner (vice chair) have given tons of them. Learning the language >from the standards document is not a pleasant process. Alas, the > [...] > A fact that I find substantial is that, despite all these seminars, the American viewpoint is very negative. Admittedly there were some uninformed voices out there (hell, I have a hard time keeping up with what is in and out myself), but there were also a fair number of well-informed letters who had cogent arguments (albeit ones which have been heard before, which doesn't make them intrinsically wrong or right) against certain features and in favor of certain missing features. >The speakers listed above (and many others from the committee) work >for users (ncar, ammocco, university, for starters) and have been >speaking with, and for their user communities. If your organization >isn't represented, you can't blame the committee! All meetings are >open to the public. Actually, the public comment letters we recieved from Amoco and NCAR were against 8X. Which is ironic. Yes, meetings are open to the public, if you can afford to come. The next meeting is at Long Island and the hotels are $108/night. Also, please deposit $80 at the door to cover coffee and meeting room expenses. >>>>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. > >No. Those who write the document have the most control. Working from >memory (which is quite fallible) WG5 held out for : > >1) pointers, with a certain syntax > > [...] >2) some misc "spelling" changes > >3) 4, 5 escapes me this moment. > >From where I sit, the pointer debate was the biggest difference >between the US and europeans. The committee debated the issue at >length over a period of years (long before I got there). And the >forces of optimization had won out. The american public comment, and >the euopean comment went strongly in favor of pointers. The syntax >selected has some chance of allowing optimization (unlike c). See my comments above. I think you missed some fairly significant events at Jackson Hole and the subsequent ISO meeting. I agree the American comment was in favor of pointers. (In another article, Keith says:) >It has been a couple of years since I last used MS fortran. When I >last checked into it, I decided to stick with Lahey. I seriously doubt >that MS will ever build a compiler as good as Tom's. Well, the Lahey compiler certainly has the advantage that it hasn't changed hands twice in the last two years (Austec just sold RM Fortran), so I would have to say it is now a strong second. However, I suspect we sell a few more compilers than Tom does and I think there are a few reasons why. (In case someone can't tell, I work on the Fortran compiler at Microsoft, so any obvious biases apply; however, I have some pretty solid marketing information at my disposal). For that matter, I could say I doubt Sun will ever build an 8X compiler as nice as their 77 compiler. Words are cheap. Finally, as someone who has had to draft a fair number of the public review comment responses, I object strongly to you overuse of the term "craft" in previous articles (at this point, I prefer the term "crank" as in "crank out responses"). Bob Allison uunet!microsoft!bobal (Yup, another of those pesky NO votes on X3J3, too)