ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1215





Requirements for Fortran 2000



1.	Future direction of the Fortran language



At its meeting in Dresden, 22-26 July 1996, WG5 examined the requirements for

Fortran 2000 that had been submitted by member bodies and identified the major

issues represented by these requirements.  As a result of this process WG5 believes

that Fortran 2000 should be



A language for high performance numerical, scientific and engineering

programming



A modern language with high quality data abstraction and user extensibility

features





2.	Specific Requirements for Fortran 2000



WG5 has identified the highest priority requirements for Fortran 2000 to be the topics

covered by its three proposed Technical Reports:



	Floating-Point Exception Handling 

	Enhanced Derived Type Facilities

	Interoperability with C



In addition, WG5 identifies the following five items as firm requirements for Fortran

2000, and requests its primary development body, X3J3, to carry out the necessary

technical work to incorporate them into the draft CD:



	Derived type I/O

	Asynchronous I/O

	Procedure variables / pointers to procedures

	Interval arithmetic (WG5 N1209)

	Parameterized derived types (WG5 N1217)



WG5 has already prepared initial proposals for the last two items, as indicated.



In addition, WG5 requests X3J3 to continue to work on developing solutions for

minor technical enhancements.

 

WG5 has established three subgroups charged with working by correspondence (email

or otherwise) to produce additional requirements, including, where appropriate, the

production of detailed proposals and/or specifications, in order to better meet the

broad objectives of Fortran 2000, as indicated above.  The recommendations, or other

documents, produced by these subgroups will be distributed to both WG5 and X3J3

prior to the joint WG5/X3J3 in February 1997 at which a final definition of these

additional requirements will be made, together with any necessary alterations to the

schedule for Fortran 2000.