From Miles.Ellis@educational-technology-resources-centre.oxford.ac.uk Fri Jul 21 17:41:11 1995 Received: from oxmail2.ox.ac.uk by dkuug.dk with SMTP id AA15954 (5.65c8/IDA-1.4.4j for ); Fri, 21 Jul 1995 17:45:09 +0200 Received: from vax.ox.ac.uk by oxmail2.ox.ac.uk. with SMTP (PP) id <01029-0@oxmail2.ox.ac.uk.>; Fri, 21 Jul 1995 16:38:58 +0100 Received: from 163.1.85.1 by vax.ox.ac.uk (MX V4.1 VAX) with SMTP; Fri, 21 Jul 1995 16:38:13 +0100 X-Sender: MELLIS@vax.ox.ac.uk Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Fri, 21 Jul 1995 16:41:11 +0100 To: sc22wg5 From: Miles.Ellis@educational-technology-resources-centre.oxford.ac.uk (Miles Ellis) Subject: Subdivision or New project - ballot result Cc: gorelik@applmat.msk.su (Alla Gorelik), honmarou@soft.hitachi.co.jp (Honma Ichiro), lignelet@vcnam.cnam.fr (Patrice Lignelet), nishimura@math.keio.ac.jp (Kazuo Nishimura), Bernard.Pichon@obspm.fr (Bernard Pichon), schonauer@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Willi Schoenauer), Snoek@rc.tudelft.nl (J A M Snoek), C21101@SUCEMI.BITNET (V L Ushkova), yoshi@lang1.bs1.fc.nec.co.jp (Yukimasa Yoshida) X-Charset: ASCII X-Char-Esc: 29 The ballot on the question of using subdivision or new projects for the proposed TRs closed at noon GMT today (or yesterday, since I said Thursday 21st July when I meant Thursday 20th July - but it seemed only right to allow the extra 24 hours in the circumstances!). The result was 16 in favour of my request to use subdivision, 4 against and one abstention. By countries, if one simply aggregates the votes from each country, the result was 4 in favour (D, J, NL and UK), one against (US by 4 to 3) and one abstention (Russia - I don't know the accepted shorthand for Russia, and SU doesn't seem quite right ;-). This seems to be fairly conclusive, and so I shall forward the proposals to both the SC22 Secretariat (for circulation) and WG5 (for final review) in the form of requests to subdivide our main project (22.02.01). These requests, or amended versions if the WG5 review requires that, will be on the agenda at the SC22 Plenary with a request that they be approved. There does, however, seem to have been some confusion about the procedure, if I am to interpret the comments appended to the four NO votes from the US, and so I shall repeat what I said earlier again for the benefit of anyone who is still confused (which is quite easy with ISO procedures ;-). 1. If SC22 approves WG5's request to subdivide its main project to allow work on these TRs then each of the (multinational) development bodies will be required to provide a draft of their proposed TR to WG5 by a date to be determined in San Diego. 2. That draft will then have to be approved by WG5 in just the same way as any other item for inclusion in a Standard. 3. When we have an agreed document it will be submitted to SC22 for a PDTR ballot (the TR equivalent of the CD ballot which the Fortran 95 draft standard is currently undergoing). 4. Once any comments have been dealt with in whatever way WG5 sees fit the resulting document will be submitted for a DTR ballot by JTC1 (analogous to the DIS ballot for a Standard). 5. If it passes that ballot then it will become an official Technical Report. Since each of the TRs will include a form of words which commits WG5 to incorporating the syntax and semantics described therein in the next revision of the Fortran Standard unless any errors are found as a result of their implementation and/or use, it is hoped that this will give implementors the confidence to add the feature(s) to their compilers without waiting for formal standardization - since by definition there is supposed to be a significant user demand for such features already. Those implementors who were represented in Tokyo seemed to be happy with this. There will be no compulsion to do so, of course, until the next revision when they become part of the Standard (unless any errors have been found as a result of their implementation and use), but the intention is to be more responsive to user requirements - an area where we are clearly, and very signally, failing at present in such areas as exception handling. Thus the procedures that the TRs go through is no less thorough than those that apply to a Standard - and I would never have suggested such a procedure if it were otherwise. The only difference is that, if it works, we can deal with a limited number of features more quickly than would otherwise be possible. The world is moving much faster than the Fortran Standardization process and unless we find a way to be more responsive we shall be overtaken by events and Fortran with it. I shall send out the requests for subdivision next week, together with details of the people who have agreed to work on the TRs if such work is approved. They will be distributed in paper form, together with the formal announcement of the San Diego meeting and the provisional agenda (since I am committed to sending these out in paper form), and will also be distributed electronicaly. But for now it's a hot, humid, sunny day here in Oxford, and I'm going to tidy up my desk and go home shortly! 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 =======================================================================