Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!oliveb!sun!fatcity!khb
From: khb@fatcity.Sun.COM (Keith Bierman Sun Tactical Engineering)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Responses to M. Shapiro & K. Bierman, re: X3J3 and WG5 (long)
Keywords: WG5, X3J3, F8X draft
Message-ID: <98450@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 11 Apr 89 18:12:27 GMT
References: <24091@beta.lanl.gov> <98161@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <4008@microsoft.UUCP>
Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM
Reply-To: khb@sun.UUCP (Keith Bierman Sun Tactical Engineering)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 57

In article <4008@microsoft.UUCP> bobal@microsoft.UUCP (Bob Allison (uunet!microsoft!bobal)) writes:

>... stuff about x3j3, the standard, etc.

It should be noted that Bob and I are speaking for ourselves. It has
been pointed out (*privately*) that ANSI rules require all public
comment to be answered. Said private party is taking notes and expects
to use it to torpedo the standards effort by the moral equivalent of
phillabustering (sp). *sigh*

Our feelings aside, there is no offical "silly proposal" bucket. All
public comments are formally responded to, as per the rules.

Bob and I disagree (clearly) in many areas. I was quite happy with the
standard before Jackson; and my current interest is to get us back to
where we were...or the best we can. (* btw: for the record, bob is a
nice guy and I bear him no ill will :> *)

One of the very anti-standard members and I discussed the issue of
presentation. He pointed out that when he gave a f8x presentation the
audiance came away anti. When he watched, say, J. Adams give one the
audiance was always strongly pro. Before I became I vendor, I used to
run into customers (we were consultants) who had just been briefed on
the standard by their vendor (who will remain nameless). They were
stongly against. Typically I was able to turn them around in 15 minutes
or less. Interestingly enough he had exactly the same experience. 

The current draft is different than the pre-Jackson document, but not
massively so. Code written to work with PJ document would be easy to
fix to work under the new document; with some notable changes (RANGE,
etc). But the features which I expect to be most heavily used (dynamic
arrays, simple array notation, portable numerics, operator
overloading, modules and keyword argument passing) have been modified
a bit, but for the most part the functionality is still there.

We should sign off the document and let the vendors and the buyers
take the next step.

Two footnotes:

1)	Bob, I still get stuck with PC based programs now and then,
	and I still think Tom's compiler is much better than yours.
	MS may have the marketshare, but Tom's is better.

	Since neither of you is working with Sun, I am completely unbiased.
	(may, of course, be wrong :>)

2)	I fully expect Sun's f88 compiler to be MUCH better than the
	f77 compiler; in _every_ respect. But the proof will take some
	time...

Cheers all.

As always, I speak for myself, by myself and with myself. Myself will
never be divided.
Keith H. Bierman
It's Not My Fault ---- I Voted for Bill & Opus