Dr W.W. Schulz writes:

 > -Are any of the members on the j3 committee listening to our
 >  debate (with the exception of van snyder and m cohen, of course)?

Quite a few.  But I, for example, don't have time to participate at
the moment.  I was thinking of responding to your original post, but
I never got the time to do so decently, and I dropped it when I saw
most of the things I'd probably have said covered by others.

And, sorry, but I still don't have time to get involved in an extended
discussion here.

 > -Is J3 actively seeking opinions on wanted features from users
 >  other than the main computer and compiler vendors?
 >  Is there feedback from classes learning Fortran, from
 >  Computer Science departments (if you like it or not, they
 >  set the fashion on computer languages, and Fortran is
 >  rather old-fashioned to them), from other science departments
 >  (physics, chemistry, engineering, etc)?

J3 seeks opinions from all over, as much as it can.  Some of the J3
members ARE academic, for example.  Not many, but since the J3
membership is under 20, even one or two is a significant influence.
For myself, I'm a user.  Never had a connection to a compiler vendor.

Alas, being a user, J3 stuff is *NOT* my primary responsibility.
And I'm behind on everything else because of spending all last
week at the J3 meeting (well, that makes a good excuse - I'm afraid
I was actually behind before the meeting), which is why I don't
have time for much of a discussion.  But I do always at least
read the postings here.


 > -Some new features show problems. Is the committee willing to
 >  correct/change them to something better? If the F90 base is
 >  not very big yet this should not cause to many problems.
 >  Asking colleagues and friends most of them still don't use F90!
 >  They even don't know some of the most important features!

That's too general a question to have a real answer.  It depends on
how broken the feature is and a lot of other considerations.  Some
things that are really, obviously wrong do get changed.  But making an
incompatable change needs a pretty big argument.  And that needs to
include explanation of why the new feature can't be added in a way
that allows also retaining the old one for compatability sake.  Your
colleagues may not be using the new f90 features, but there are many
people that do (for instance, I do).  So whereas incompatable changes
have on occasion been made,it requires a *STRONG* argument.  Just
passing it off by saying that not many people are probably using it
yet isn't likely to fly.

When there turns out to be disagreement on whether a proposed change
is even a good idea, then the existing standard is almost certain to
win out.  This turns out to be the case on quite a few of the items
that are regularly discussed.  Some people think they are badly
broken, but others disagree.

To give a real answer, you need to talk about specific cases though,
not generalities.

I could discuss your specific points at length.  Some I agree with;
others I don't.  But time does not permit.  I've already spent more
time than I should have answering this, and I haven't said anything
specific.  All I meant to say was the first line - that yes, people
are listening.  They are.

-- 
Richard Maine
[log in to unmask]



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