Hello,

While J3 and WG5 are most anxious to hear comments
concerning the draft of the Fortran 2008 revision
of the Fortran standard, please do not post your comments
to the J3 list.

Please post them here, so everyone can read and comment
on them.  That is the best way to have a full discussion
of the features proposed for f08.

If you do want a paper published as a J3 paper, please
follow the posting guidelines, 07-013r1.txt, available
from the J3 web site, www.j3-fortran.org
The automatic upload process will not work for papers
not meeting the required format.  I have disabled
the automatic upload process now as an emergency measure,
to ensure no one is unduly frustrated when attempting to use it.

Aleksandar Donev wrote:
> Dear Fortran programmers,
> 
> The US and international Fortran committees (J3 and WG5) have been
> working diligently on a new revision of Fortran scheduled to be
> published in 2010. The main feature in this revision, currently still
> being drafted, is intrinsic explicit parallelism based on Co-Array
> Fortran (Numrich & Reid). This extension of the current Fortran 2003
> language is similar to the extensions to C made in UPC and to Java in
> Titanium.
> 
> To help you in learning more about co-arrays there are two WG5 white
> papers, one an overview of the features, by John Reid, found at:
> ftp://ftp.nag.co.uk/sc22wg5/N1651-N1700/N1697.pdf
> and the other a Rationale for some of the technical decisions made in
> the design of the base language, by myself, found at:
> ftp://ftp.nag.co.uk/sc22wg5/N1701-N1750/N1702.pdf
> 
> I would like to ask for comments on the proposed co-array features from
> all of you. Compiler developers, experts in parallel programming and
> languages, and especially users of Fortran, are welcome to comment. The
> most useful comments are technical in nature and focused, so that they
> can be taken into account with reasonable amount of work and
> modifications to the existing specifications. Both praise and critique
> are welcome.
> 
> I personally think that explicit parallelism in the major programming 
> languages for scientific computing is essential for increasing the 
> productivity of scientific programmers and believe that co-arrays are an 
> essential addition to Fortran 2008. However,
> there is a danger that co-arrays will not be included as a mandatory
> part of Fortran due to internal divisions in the committee. I would
> prefer if the final decision is influenced by the community.
> 
> You can submit comments (or questions) to myself via e-mail (and I will
> relay them accordingly), or directly to WG5's convenor John Reid 
> ([log in to unmask]). Official papers can also be submitted to J3 (US 
> committee) for technical consideration and development at:
> http://j3-fortran.org/upload.html
> Note that the next WG5 meeting is in Las Vegas in February.
> 
> Please share these with others that you think are interested. The
> earlier we get comments, the better we can respond. Once an FCD official
> draft of the standard is prepared, it will be important to submit formal
> comments to your country representative body, but more on that later.
> 
> Thank you,
> Aleksandar
> 


-- 

Dan Nagle
Purple Sage Computing Solutions, Inc.