The International Fortran Committee and the US Fortran Committee, X3J3, met back to back in Edinburgh, Scotland recently, and hacked out some standards for the future of Fortran. Hosted by Edinburgh Portable Compilers Ltd and Edinburgh University, the Fortrannies were assembled to complete the technical work on the features of Fortran 95, and to establish initial requirements for Fortran 2000. Historically, Fortran standardisation has been slow, with Fortran 90 taking some 13 years. By contrast, Fortran 95 has been an exercise in enlightenment. The euphmistically-tagged Fortran 90 should have seen the light of day in 1986, but became a victim of political in-fighting, for which one insider laid much of the blame at IBM Corp’s door. At one point WG5 considered leaving the US contingent to bicker among themselves but was saved from the decision by a change in the US team’s attitude. More recently, the standardisation process has been a model of negotiation, with the WG5 meeting annually and having responsibility for establishing requirements and setting the schedule, while X3J3, which meets quarterly, has the task of technical development of the standard. Changes to Fortran 95 are likely to be small, with X3J3 committed to integrating the technical proposals into a draft standard for WG5 next year. Fortran 2000 will be a major revision of the language.
