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WG5 Convener's report
Prepared for the BCS Fortran Specialist Group AGM, May 2001
1. Content of Fortran 2000
The main enhancements that will be in Fortran 2000 (the official name has not been chosen but WG5 uses this as a placeholder) are as follows:
| Floating point exception handling | TR 15580 | |
| Allocatable components | TR 15581 | |
| R1 | Derived type I/O | N1322 |
| R2 | Asynchronous I/O | (see N1189 item #52) |
| R3 | Procedure pointers | (see N1189 item #43) |
| R4d | Control of I/O rounding | T9 in N1323 |
| R4f | Constants for opaque types | T9 in N1323 |
| R5 | Parameterized derived types | (see N1189 item #14) |
| R6a | Inheritance | (see N1189 item #88 and N1272) |
| R6b | Polymorphism | (see N1189 item #88 and N1272) |
| R6c | Implicit root type | (see N1358) |
| R6d | WITH-like construct | (see N1364) |
| R7a | Constructors | (see N1355) |
| R7b | Destructors | (see N1189 item #89) |
| R8 | Internationalization | N1320 |
| R9 | Interoperability with C | N1321 |
and all these have been incorporated in the latest draft standard, though some polishing is still in progress.
2. WG5 meeting in Oulu, August 2000
We confirmed the content of Fortran 2000 (see above) and constructed Corrigendum 1 to the Fortran 95 standard. We then went in a mode supporting J3's work. We made good progress in constructing first drafts of interpretations for J3 to consider at its next meeting. We did technical work on the items (R6 and R9 in the above list) that most needed it at that time, again for J3 to consider at its next meeting. We reviewed the current draft and suggested many minor changes. It was a productive meeting and J3 appreciated our input.
3. SC22 meeting in Nara, Japan, September 2000
This was my first meeting as WG5 convener and it was an easy one for me since there were no new projects to propose.
WG5 asked me raise the matter of junk mail coming from the SC22 site; this was very sympathetically received and the site manager promised to do something about it.
I also discussed the availability of cheap standards via the internet, following the successful Oulu downloading of the C standard for 18 dollars. SC22 resolved to participate in any trial of making inexpensive standards available.
Most of the discussion involved WG20 - internationalization - and I got landed to chair a breakout session, probably because of not being involved. I did my best in a pretty impossible situation.
4. Publications
It has been a productive year for publications.
Part 3 of the standard (conditional compilation) was reprinted in late 2000 because a line of normative text was omitted.
Revised versions of the two TRs are about to appear. The revisions were needed because of problems found when the ideas were integrated into the draft standard.
Corrigendum 1 is about to appear.
5. WG5 meeting in London, July 30 to August 3 2001
Much work will be needed on the interpretations and to generate Corrigendum 2. We will review the content of the new standard and we will review the current draft. As in Oulu, I see the main role to be supporting J3's work.
6. Timetable
The current timetable is as follows:
| J3 delivers to WG5 edits for draft corrigendum 2 | 2001-06 |
| J3 delivers to WG5 current working draft | 2001-06 |
| WG5 constructs corrigendum 2 | 2001-08 |
| WG5 provides J3 with review of F2000 working draft | 2001-08 |
| Corrigendum 2 submitted for processing | 2001-10 |
| J3 delivers proposed CD to WG5 | 2002-06 |
| WG5 approval of CD | 2002-08 |
| First CD submitted for registration and approval | 2002-09 |
| First CD ballot initiated | 2002-10 |
| First CD ballot comments available | 2003-02 |
| WG5 meeting to resolve comments | 2003-04 |
| J3 delivers final CD to WG5 | 2003-06 |
| WG5 review meeting | 2003-08 |
| Final CD submitted for approval | 2003-09 |
| Final CD ballot initiated | 2003-10 |
| Final CD ballot comments available | 2004-03 |
| WG5 approval of draft DIS | 2004-04 |
| DIS registered | 2004-06 |
| DIS ballot initiated | 2004-07 |
| DIS ballot results available | 2004-10 |
| Standard published | 2004-12 |
My immediate concern is with corrigendum 2. It will be hard to get this done by August. There are a lot of outstanding interpretations.
John Reid,
JKR Associates,
24 Oxford Road, Benson, Wallingford, Oxon OX10 6LX
Details of current Fortran standardization activities can be found in WG5's own World Wide Web pages.
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FSG Web Editor.