Issue 311 - Annex B is Obsolete

To:	J3

From:	Craig Dedo

Date:	March 22, 2001

Subject:	Issue 311 - Annex B is Obsolete

Issue

The editor writes:

It might seem amusing that the Annex on obsolete features is obsolete, but I doubt that most readers of the standard will appreciate the humor. :-) This annex has mostly been ignored while revising material that it refers to. There might be some of this that is still correct, but I wouldn't trust any of it without carefully checking.

I suggest the possibility that it is sufficient to describe the deleted features rather than giving edit diffs to effectively insert them. Specifically, keep B.1.0, but remove the B.1.x subsections. One could argue for expanding the material in B.1 to discuss possible conversions, just as B.2 does. It seems odd that we discuss conversion of the obsolescent features that are still in the language, but not of the deleted features. All we do for the deleted ones is give edits for undeleting them.

While I acknowledge that many vendors will continue to implement the deleted features, they shouldn't need such explicit detail in the standard. Furthermore, we should not spend our time worrying about how to standardize any interactions between deleted features and new ones. If we craft exact edits to insert the deleted features, that's in essence what we will have to do.

Analysis

While acknowledging the merit of fixing the current state of Annex B, there are at least three (3) ways of resolving the issue of detailed edits in Annex B.

1.	Keep the current detailed edits and fix them up to be consistent with the current draft of the standard.

2.	Delete the detailed edits and only keep the very brief overview at the beginning of section B.1.

3.	Replace the detailed edits with a technical specification of each of the deleted features.

On March 20, 2001, J3 took a first straw vote on which option it prefers. Here are the results of the first straw vote.

0	Keep the detailed edits.

6	Delete the detailed edits and only keep the brief overview.

6	Replace the detailed edits with technical specification.

After discussing the result of the straw vote, JOR originally decided to recommend replacing the detailed edits with technical specification.

On March 22, 2001, J3 took a second straw vote on which option it prefers. Here are the results of the second straw vote.

4	Keep the detailed edits.

4	Delete the detailed edits and only keep the brief overview.

1	Replace the detailed edits with technical specification.

1	Undecided

The second issue of the lack of recommendations for conversion of the deleted features also has merit. This paper includes edits to insert such recommendations into part B.1.1.

Edits

Edits are with respect to the 01-007.

[411:4-20]	Delete Issue 311.

Following are edits to add recommendations for conversion of the deleted features to standard-
conforming features.

[411:28]	Add at the end of the paragraph, "Programmers can achieve a similar result by using a DO construct with no loop control and the appropriate exit test."

[411:31]	Add at the end of the paragraph, "Programmers can achieve a similar result by branching to a CONTINUE statement that is immediately after the END IF statement."

[411:34]	Add at the end of the paragraph, "Programmers can achieve a similar result by writing a message to the appropriate unit followed by reading from the appropriate unit."

[411:39]	Add at the end of the paragraph, "Programmers can achieve a similar result by using other control constructs instead of the assigned GOTO statement and by using default character variables to hold valid format specifications instead of the assigned FORMAT statement."

[412:3]	Add at the end of the paragraph, "Programmers can achieve a similar result by using character string edit descriptors instead of H edit descriptors."

[412:4-5]	Replace the existing text with the following text.

The following is a list of the previous editions of the international Fortran standard, along with their informal names.

ISO/IEC 1539:1972	Fortran 66

ISO/IEC 1539:1978	Fortran 77

ISO/IEC 1539:1991	Fortran 90

ISO/IEC 1539:1997	Fortran 95

Following are edits for replacing the detailed edits in sections B.1.1 - B.1.5 with references to the Fortran 90 standard.

[412:6-414:26]	Replace the existing text with the following text.

The interested reader is referred to the appropriate locations in the Fortran 90 standard for detailed rules of how these deleted features work.

References

01-007, Fortran 2000 Draft

01-102, Changes to List of Unresolved Issues

[End of J3 / 01-116r3]