Public Review of the Fortran 95 Draft Standard

Fortran 95 is a proposed revision of and replacement for Fortran 90.  It is a
relatively minor revision, with primary emphasis on clarifications,
corrections, and interpretations of Fortran 90; Fortran 95 reflects the
resolution of approximately 170 such "cci" items.

In addition, Fortran 95 contains the following enhancements to Fortran 90:

  (1) The FORALL construct provides additional parallel array computational
      capability and simplifies conversion of array-oriented sequential DO
      loops to parallel array notation.

  (2) User-defined pure and elemental procedures provide additional robustness
      for parallel computations and, because they can be used in specification
      expressions, provide increased specification expressiveness.

  (3) Default initialization of pointers and structures extends (and completes)
      the initialization features of Fortran 90 and resolves a deficiency
      related to pointer association status.

There are several other technical enhancements to Fortran 90, but these three
are the major ones.
    
The public review period is July 7 to September 5, 1995.  Note that there is
a simultaneous ballot taking place in ISO SC22 to

  (a) register the draft standard (ISO/SC22/WG5 document N1122) as a
      committee draft (CD), and
  (b) approve the resulting CD.

This ISO/SC22 ballot has already commenced and will end on September 28, 1995.

Comments on the draft standard are welcome, and may be sent, by either
hard-copy or email, to

             X3 Secretariat, ITIC
             1250 Eye St NW, Suite 200
             Washington, DC   20005

             email:  x3sec@itic.nw.dc.us

A copy of your comments should be sent to  

             Jerrold L. Wagener
             Amoco E&P Technology
             4502 E. 41st Street
             Tulsa, OK   74135

             email:  jwagener@amoco.com

Comments should be postmarked (or email time-stamped) no later than September
5, should clearly indicate that they are intended as official public comments
on the Fortran 95 draft standard, and should contain the commentor's mail/email
address(es).

Note that although the ending date of the U.S. public review is September 5 and 
comments up through and including that date are welcome, please be aware that
X3J3 is meeting in Breckenridge, Colorado, the week of August 21-25, 1995, 
and must formulate the U.S. position on the ISO SC22 ballot during the course 
of that meeting.  Thus, although your comments are valid through September 5,
if you wish your comments to possibly influence X3J3's position on the draft
standard, you should submit your comments no later that August 1 to the X3
Secretariat or no later than August 11 directly to Jerry Wagener, X3J3 Chair.

Copies of the draft may be obtained from the X3 Secretariat at the above
address or by anonymous FTP from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu, directory
sc22wg5/N1122/ps (for printing on 8 1/2" x 11" paper) or from directory 
sc22wg5/N1122/ps-a4 (for printing on A4 paper).  All of the files have been
compressed by gzip and will need to be uncompressed by gunzip or another 
processor capable of uncompressing files in gzip format.

Current plans are to produce a more extensive revision in about the year 2000
(Fortran 2000).  Work has already begun on several areas of Fortran 2000:
exception handling, interoperability with C, allocatable components,
parameterized derived types, and object-oriented programming.  Some of these
are scheduled to appear earlier as technical reports, suitable for early
implementation in Fortran 95 compilers.  Simultaneous with these efforts, the
remaining requirements for Fortran 2000 will be developed over the next two
years.  Suggestions for Fortran 2000 requirements should be sent to

             Stan Whitlock
             Digital Equipment Corp.
             ZK02-3/N30
             110 Spit Brook Rd.
             Nashua, NH   03062

             email:  x3j3-jor@ncsa.uiuc.edu

All such suggestions, which should be in the proper format, will be
acknowledged, incorporated into the Fortran Journal of Requirements (JOR), and
considered for inclusion in Fortran 2000; suggestions should contain the
commentor's mail/email address(es).  The current version of the JOR and the
description of the format for suggestions may be obtained by anonymous FTP from
ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu, documents x3j3/95-004.gz and 
x3j3/pFR-call.r1.ascii.gz


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Larry Rolison          lrr@cray.com     X3J3 Vice-Chair
Cray Research, Inc.     
655F Lone Oak Drive
Eagan, MN  55121
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