From Miles.Ellis@educational-technology-resources-centre.oxford.ac.uk Mon Jun 26 01:25:13 1995 Received: from oxmail2.ox.ac.uk by dkuug.dk with SMTP id AA22098 (5.65c8/IDA-1.4.4j for ); Mon, 26 Jun 1995 02:22:49 +0200 Received: from vax.ox.ac.uk by oxmail2.ox.ac.uk. with SMTP (PP) id <24162-0@oxmail2.ox.ac.uk.>; Mon, 26 Jun 1995 01:23:19 +0100 Received: from 163.1.85.1 by vax.ox.ac.uk (MX V4.1 VAX) with SMTP; Mon, 26 Jun 1995 01:22:41 +0100 X-Sender: MELLIS@vax.ox.ac.uk Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 26 Jun 1995 01:25:13 +0000 To: sc22wg5 From: Miles.Ellis@educational-technology-resources-centre.oxford.ac.uk (Miles Ellis) Subject: Project Editor for TR on Interoperability with C X-Charset: ASCII X-Char-Esc: 29 One of the three topics for Type 2 Technical Reports which was agreed in Tokyo was Interoperability with C. Many people, including myself, believe that this is a vital feature if Fortran is to survive as the ability to interface with system and other procedures, which are increasingly written in C, is becoming a mandatory requirement. This view has been given added strength by the news that CERN has decided to withdraw from Fortran Standards activities. I append an extract from an email sent to me by Jamie Shiers: >I regret to inform you that a decision was taken in >our Divisional Planning Group meeting today to cease >our participation in the Fortran standardisation >effort. > >This decision was tied to a discussion of the evolution >of the current CERN Program Library. It was also decided >to invest no more effort into migrating the library to >F90, at least for the currently running experiments. >(Which will continue until around 1999/2000). > >Depending on the final decisions taken by the LHC collaborations, >F90 (or F95) might have a role to play in the future. >However, F2K will almost certainly be too late - the >'final' decisions are supposed to be taken around 1998 >and the software must be developed several years before >LHC starts producing data (currently scheduled for 2004). > This actually gives added strength to the view expressed above concerning the impoortance of interoperability with C since, as Jamie has emphasised on several occasions, it was the lack of such an interoperability that was causing CERN users to move away from Fortran. However, CERN's withdrawal also means that there is no longer an interim Project Editor for this TR. Our current plan is to submit all three NPs to the SC22 Plenary which is being held from September 18-22, so that work can start immediately after the Plenary (insofar as it has not already done so ;-) on preparing the TRs. If they are not approved at the Plenary then a 3 month letter ballot will be required, which will mean that we will lose 4-6 months. The draft NP (WG5 N1114) contains most of the information required, but the most important thing is to identify the people who are willing to work on this important project, including, if possible, at least one member of X3J3, who will be known as the Development Body for this project, and a Project Editor, who will be resonsible for the actual production of the document. I desperately need a volunteer for this latter role, and also volunteers to help him/her as part of the Development Body. I am out of the office this week, but will be able to check my email on Friday morning. I believe that this is a key project. As CERN's decision has shown, we cannot wait until Fortran 2000 to add this capability to compilers. Producing a TR in this area will enable compiler writers to add the required functionality in the same way several years earlier than would otherwise be the case. Volunteers to me PLEASE Miles ======================================================================= Dr Miles Ellis CCCCCCCCCCC Director: Educational Technology Resources Centre C C University of Oxford, 37-41 Wellington Square C E Oxford OX1 2JF, ENGLAND C T C R Telephone: +44 1865 270528 Fax: +44 1865 270527 C C Email: Miles.Ellis@etrc.ox.ac.uk CCCCCCCCCCC =======================================================================