Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!iuvax!cica!gatech!ncar!unmvax!brainerd
From: brainerd@unmvax.unm.edu (Walt Brainerd)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Two Fortran Standards
Keywords: Fortran standard
Message-ID: <282@unmvax.unm.edu>
Date: 14 Aug 89 18:01:11 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico at Albuquerque
Lines: 34


I mailed this to all members of X3J3;  I know some of you in netland
also are interested in what is going on, so am posting to you as well.

We received word of the following in Vienna; I have not personally
seen documents to reflect what I am reporting, but thought the X3J3
membership should know about this ASAP.  I am sure Jeanne will send
and official version of what is going on.

X3J3 has voted consistently in opposition to both subsets and
separate standards.  However, based on the request of one member of X3J3,
SPARC has rewritten the project proposal for Fortran 8x.
The proposal makes 8x a companion standard to Fortran 77, a kind of superset.
8x would not replace F77 at all, and F77 would remain X3.9;
8x would have an X3.??? number in the 200's.

One of the ironies of all this is that apparently SPARC and X3 are doing
this because they think X3J3 has ignored public requests for a simpler
language, but many of the same folks who want subsets are the ones who
complicated the language with stuff like structures in common, namelist,
DO WHILE, INCLUDE, and processor-dependent character sets.

X3 and SPARC apparently were aware of the X3J3 position, just decided
it was wrong.  One likely effect is that ISO will drop F77 as a standard
and adopt F8x, so there will be two American standard Fortrans and
one of them will not be an international standard.
If you have an opinion regarding this matter, you should have a serious
discussion with your X3 representative as soon as possible.
The ballot has already gone out to X3, closing on September 20th.
-- 
Walt Brainerd  Unicomp, Inc.           brainerd@unmvax.cs.unm.edu
               2002 Quail Run Dr. NE
               Albuquerque, NM 87122
               505/275-0800