Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!ncar!oddjob!uxc!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!hirchert
From: hirchert@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: (none)
Message-ID: <50500069@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 19 Aug 88 19:53:00 GMT
References: <651@<8052>
Lines: 26
Nf-ID: #R:<8052:651:uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:50500069:000:1639
Nf-From: uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!hirchert    Aug 19 14:53:00 1988


Two comments on Bob Allison's comments on the last X3J3 meeting:
1. Bob is quite right that proposals to do away with the concept of
   deprecation did not also include changes to better integrate the formerly
   deprecated features with new features (in particular to do storage
   associating on new data types).  Some of us never expected them to.  I
   would argue that failing to properly integrate the language is a mistake
   even if some parts of the language are deprecated.  This makes language
   integration a separate problem from deprecation, and thus I expected a
   separate solution.  Fortunately, X3J3 now seems amenable to adopting such a
   solution.
2. Bob suggests that if the concept of obsolescence remains in Fortran 8x,
   there will be nothing to stop the Fortran 9x committee from making
   features like COMMON and EQUIVALENCE obsolescent in the next standard.
   a. Assuming COMMON and EQUIVALENCE are still as heavily used as they are
      now, I would suggest that the public comment on such a draft would
      make the recent 8x public comment look tame.
   b. If you think that the committee could somehow ignore that kind of
      public comment, then in the absense of the concept of obsolescence,
      there would be nothing to keep the 9x committee from deleting those
      features outright.  The concept of obsolescence was originally
      proposed not as an attack on the obsolescent features but as a
      guarantee of the continued availability of the featues not
      identified as obsolescent.

Kurt W. Hirchert     hirchert@ncsa.uiuc.edu
National Center for Supercomputing Applications