Fortran Specialist Group AGM 2011 Agenda

1. Apologies for absence
2. Minutes of the previous AGM (30th September 2010)
3. Matters arising
4. Chairman's report
5. Treasurer's report
   SG Development Fund report
6. Membership Secretary's report
7. Web Editor's report
8. Election of Officers and Committee members
   (The following is taken from the Fortran SG Constitution:
   The name of any member accepting nomination for election or re-election as an Officer or as a Committee member shall be submitted in writing to the Secretary 7 clear days prior to the date of the AGM by two members of the Group with the written consent of the nominee.
   "In writing" applies equally to email or paper copy.)
9. Future activities for the Group
   including discussion of online Fortran resources
10. Any other business
11. Date of next meeting

A brief talk by Fortranplus tutors about their experiences of giving Fortran training around the world over the last few years and how local weather conditions were sometimes a challenge!

We will look at how new features in Fortran are being embraced and which compilers and hardware are used.

Fortran 2003 contains features for interoperability of Fortran with C, and they are widely implemented as extensions of Fortran 95 compilers. This provides for interoperability of procedures with non-optional arguments that are scalars, explicit-shape arrays, or assumed-size arrays, but not with arguments that are assumed-shape, allocatable, pointer, or optional.

To fill this gap, WG5 has been working on a Technical Report since 2004. The original aim was to complete in 2007, but work on Fortran 2008 took precedence. With Fortran 2008 complete, it has had high priority, but did not reach the DTR (first formal ballot) stage until recently. The ballot ended on 20 September.

In this talk, I will explain how the new features are provided in the DTR and summarize the issues raised in its ballot.

The Programming Language Subcommittee of ISO has produced a report 'Guidance to Avoiding Vulnerabilities in Programming Languages through Language Selection and Use'. The first edition, published in 2010, was written in general terms and language-specific annexes are now being produced. With annexes in progress for Ada, C, Python, Ruby, SPARK, SQL and possibly others, WG5 decided this year that Fortran should not be left out and that an early draft from two years ago should be updated and expanded. This talk gives a summary of the present situation.

In 2008, WG5 decided to move some coarray features from Fortran 2008 to a Technical Report (now called a Technical Specification (TS) by ISO/IEC), with the intention that they be included in the next revision of Fortran. It has been delayed by giving priority to other work, but a draft TR, containing the features that were proposed in 2008 is available as ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1858.

At its Garching meeting (27 June to 1 July 2011), WG5 decided that while the overall complexity of the TS (from the point of view of both implementation and edits to the standard) should be as planned in 2008, the public should be invited to comment on the technical contents. It is intended that J3 begin to construct a draft requirements document during its meeting in October (10-14 October).

In this talk, I will discuss the requirements that have been suggested and invite the audience to comment so that its views are available for J3 to consider in October.

Later comments on requirements will also be welcome. Please contact John Reid for advice on how best to do this.