Accredited Standards Committee*	X3, Information Technology

NEWS RELEASE

Doc No.:	PR/95-053
Reply To:	Deborah J. Donovan	(ddonovan@itic.nw.dc.us)

X3 Announces the Public Comment Period of ISO/IEC CD 1539-1 
for Initial Public Review, Information Systems - Programming languages, 
their environments and system software interfaces - Fortran, Part 1 


Washington, DC, July 7, 1995 -- Accredited Standards Committee X3, 
Information Technology announces the two-month public review of 
ISO/IEC CD 1539-1.  The public review extends from July 7, 1995 to 
September 5, 1995.

Fortran 95 is the proposed revision and replacement for ISO/IEC 
1539:1992. This part of Fortran 95, ISO/IEC CD 1539-1, specifies the form 
and establishes the interpretation of programs expressed in the Fortran 
language.  The purpose of this part is to promote portability, reliability, 
maintainability, and efficient execution of Fortran programs for use on a 
variety of computing systems. 

In addition, Fortran 95 contains several enhancements, such as:

(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.

Note:  This committee draft is being processed simultaneously as an 
American National Standard and an International Standard.  

Public Review Comment Instructions:

The public review period closes on September 5, 1995.  However, in order 
for comments to affect the position of the U.S. TAG, they must be received 
no later than July 31, 1995.  Therefore, all commentors are urged to 
submit comments as early in the public review period as possible.  Public 
review comments received after July31, 1995 will be addressed and 
considered for future balloting and/or revision.

To facilitate speedy consideration of comments, please submit them via
email (x3sec@itic.nw.dc.us).  Please note, however, that an original 
hardcopy with signature is *required* before the comment will be 
registered as a formal public review comment.

Submit all comments to:  X3 Secretariat, Attn.:  Deborah J. Donovan, 1250 
Eye St. NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC  20005.  Send a copy to :  ANSI, 
Attn.: BSR Center, 11 West 42nd St., New York, NY  10036.

A call is also issued at this time to the U.S. technical community for 
information regarding any known patent or like rights that may be 
required for compliance to this proposed ISO/IEC standards.  The 
applicable patent policy is contained in Annex A of the ISO/IEC Directives, 
Part 2 or may be obtained from the JTC1 TAG Administrator at, 1250 Eye 
Street NW, Suite 200, Washington DC 20005. Telephone: 202-737-8888, 
FAX 202-638-4922

The document is available for $50.00 from: American National Standards 
Institute, 11 W. 42nd St., New York, NY  10036, (212) 642-4900
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