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Croc River Canyon
Croc River Canyon- update
Note: Current access is as follows. The guards at the gate have a key to the entrance of the gorge. They are aware of climbers going to and from the gorge. They will open for you. Please treat them nicely.
The rightmost section of the Main Wall
The Croc River Canyon is an afternoon crag, that is at its best in the Winter seasons. Although the crag can be climbed all year round, summer brings soring temperatures of 35C to 40C+! The routes are particularly runout, even for some easier grades. The main wall is just over 30metres high, so a 70m rope would be a safe bet. The croc river runs next to the crag, which gives the place great ambience, despite it being located right by the Riverside Mall. In summer do a few routes and grab an ice-cream afterwards(or a latte for winter time)!
Getting there
Animals/insects one needs to keep an eye out for are: 1) Black Mamba's(Or any other poisonous snake) 2) Crocodiles 3)Wasps on routes(Summer seasons)
There has been spottings of crocs near the crag). Don't let this put you off- generally there have been few incidents.
Park at the Riverside Mall in Nelspruit. Head for the government buildings(The egg shaped building), and go to the security located just to the right(looking from the malls side), of the big traffic circle. There is a gate there which is padlocked, ask the security to open up and tell them your going climbing. Walk next to the fence for 50m, and turn right on a faint path.(In summer this may be hard to find, because of the Lowveld plant life!) You should pass an old derelict small building on your left, then make your way down the gorge until your at the river(There will be a cairn there). Turn left and walk for 100m or so, until the crag appears on your left.
The routes below are listed from the first route as you get to the crag, to last route on the main wall.
Robert Vincent on the ultra classic 'I IS Baboon' 21
Super Fly 7b/26 *** 60m Starts on polished holds, move your way up to better friction. Short and sweat. This would be a good first 7b, its easy to access from 'Megachilide'. FA: Gary Lowther 2007
Megachilide Start just right of 'Super Fly', but just left of a large buttress. Do some interesting moves. 17*[10D] 60m
FA:Nicole Hemphill 2002
Creature Comforts The first route on the prominent buttress. Has some great climbing, on steepish rock. Could well be soft. 7b/ 26***[9D] 60m
FA:Alard Hufner 2002
The Full Spectrum 7c+/29****[] 60m Starts on the crack of 'Puppy Love', then breaks left onto the middle of the buttress. This route has all sorts to offer. Bring your full repertoire!(This was the Invaders must die project, and has subsequently been renamed not to scare people off)
FA: Donovan Willis
Puppy love 7b+/27 ***[12D] 60m
If you are that rare bread that enjoys hard off-widths, then this one is for you! Climb the prominent crag on the buttress, right of 'Creature Comforts'. FA:Hunt Cheney 2003
Beetle juice 19***[9D,R] 70m The slabbish route about 15m right of 'Puppy love' FA:Mike Mason 2002
Raboebie 16*****[14D,60m!] This is a fantastic two pitch route! Climb the first pitch or if you have a 70m rope, combine both pitches. There is a fair amount of rope drag, if you combine both pitches, even though the line is quite straight. Starts by an overhanging boulder about 6m right of 'beetle juice'. FA;Craig Kluckow 2002
Pumpin pistons 17***[] Just right of raboebie. Do some delicate maneuvering to the chains. FA:Rudy Halbich
The concertina effect 18* Description... FA:?? BB:Nicole Hemphil
Active suspension 7c+/29****[9D] The slightly overhanging wall just left of spongebob squarepants. No hidden grips on this one! What you see is what you get...Be prepared to take some big air if you're not comfortable at the grade. The tree at the start of the route is off-route- do not be tempted!!!
FA:Donovan Willis 2008
Spongebob squarepants 7a/24****[9D]
An excellent face climb on a prominent block. The bottom has been made safer, with an extra bolt. FA:Jonothan Salzwedel 2004
The Pope's Nose 7a/24****[9D]
Climb the arête feature of the buttress, after a steep start. Groovy arête climbing all the way! Starts right of 'SpongeBob squarepants'.
FA: Hunt Cheney 2012
The Swarm Project 7c+ CLOSED project
BB: Donovan Willis
I IS baboon 21*****[13D] 70m Immaculate Yosemite style climbing. Climbs the open book feature.
FA;Hunt Cheney 2002
Pirates Project 7a OPEN Project. Just plausible. Scramble up to the 2nd bolt of I IS Baboon, then belayer clips in and climber fires diagonally right on the waves of granite, finish up at the chains of the 'My Mona Lisa' project. Will have to be back climbed... The ships waiting... BB: Donovan Willis
Smooth Apricot jam 22*****[13D]70m The most perfect warm-up one could get! Or just amazing sustained climbing on good holds far apart... Enjoy the jam! FA:Hunt Cheney 2002
Juste a Temps Project 7c/7c+ CLOSED PROJECT. Tests the mind and body. BB: Donovan Willis
Emergancy Exit 7a/24**** Dance your way through the bottom, and do some weird climbing higher up. The thorn bush has been cleared away making this quite a pleasant climb. BB:Hunt Cheney
My Mona Lisa Project 8c/8c+/9a 20meters of hard bouldering. CLOSED PROJECT! BB: Donovan Willis
Futuristic impressions of the past 19***[N] Walk past the main wall, to near the waterfall. The line starts in an open book. A great line... Awaiting a retro bolt. FA:Alard Hufner 2002


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Description:HP Proliant 6400R Dual P3-500 Xeon 1024MB 2MBOption Part# 388394-002
Overview:The new ProLiant 6400R is the latest addition to Compaq's high-density server product line. This new server merges an innovative new form factor with the latest technology to create the ideal combination of 4-way computing power and density for space constrained data center environments. The ProLiant 6400R is a perfect platform for data center customers using external storage and external back-up solutions that want maximum 4-way system performance to run demanding business applications implement clustering solutions or run active intranet Internet and e-commerce sites. With the latest performance reliability manageability and serviceability features in a space saving 4U (7) design this server provides an ideal solution for the space constrained data center customer.

subset: commoncrawl


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Can anybody help me in finding out the distances between vertices in a vertex transitive graphs. Is there any specific formula to calculate distance between vertices in this graph. Thanks for your kind help.
In other words i want to know how to show that vertex transitive graphs are self-centered graphs. self-centered are those graphs where eccentricity is same for all vertices


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JimmiBoi (Feat Sean P & Boo Man) - Down South Boyz
Music Video For Houston's JimmyBoi called Down south Boyz Feat. Sean P and Boo Man&IP=184.108.40.206
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Editor's Summary
A thesaurus should quietly streamline website operations behind the scenes but can become an obstacle if it is inadequate or falls out of date, the situation the Public Library of Science (PLOS) realized in 2011. The organization sought help from Access Innovations, Inc., to bring its thesaurus up to speed, comply with the Z39.19 standard and ensure support of machine categorization of content. An analysis revealed over- and under-used terms and provided recommendations and specific guidance. With this knowledge and various use cases, PLOS determined a new customized thesaurus was needed. Access Innovations expanded and organized the original PLOS vocabulary of 3,132 terms to produce a thesaurus of more than 10,000 terms covering 10 science topics in seven levels. PLOS monitored weekly progress, and subject matter experts reviewed the draft for terminology and organization. Thesaurus terms will be applied to content as subject metadata using Data Harmonys MAIstro, a rule-based categorization system permitting editorial oversight and incremental improvements. After testing and tuning rules for accuracy, the system will be used to automatically index all PLOS content.
index language construction
thesaurus management
machine aided indexing
automatic categorization
Bulletin, December 2012/January 2013
Special Section
Case Study: Developing the PLOS Thesaurus
by Jonas Dupuich and Gabe Carr
When a good thesaurus is working well, you barely notice it. People searching your website click on relevant terms and find relevant results. Those responsible for creating metadata do so with pleasure and ease. Yes, they may say, this concept perfectly captures a key aspect of this work.
Thesauri less suited to their tasks lead to any number of difficulties. Creating metadata becomes a slow and difficult task, and results suffer. Discovery is hindered, and users shy away from relying on selected terms. Analysis becomes impossible.
In late 2011, the Public Library of Science (PLOS) found itself struggling to get value from its thesaurus. Key terms were missing across a variety of disciplines while over 1000 terms went unused. It was time for a change.
To gain a better understanding of the problem, PLOS contracted with Access Innovations (AI), an information services provider, to analyze its thesaurus. AI created a study with the aims of
- creating a robust and standards (Z39.19) compliant version of the thesaurus adequate for machine analysis;
- testing the thesaurus against the published PLOS corpus over 21,000 papers;
- identifying the work needed to produce a thesaurus that meets PLOS needs; and
- developing a budget for the work.
AI completed the study in January 2012. It identified over-used terms, under-used terms and unused terms. Radial graphs highlighted imbalances among term distribution. Most importantly, it provided a path forward. Key recommendations provided general guidance about term selection:
- All terms should be ones that would normally be typed into search queries.
- All terms should represent concepts in articles covered by PLOS journals.
In addition, it provided specific guidance about how to build out the PLOS thesaurus:
- Review as possible synonyms, the terms used less than five times.
- Break up terms used more than 1,000 times into smaller conceptual areas.
- Review unused terms with an eye toward removal.
- Check for under-indexed articles as a way of analyzing for missing concepts.
- Add terms from AIs STEM thesaurus.
One of the biggest outstanding questions for PLOS was whether existing thesauri would meet its needs or whether rebuilding its current thesaurus would provide the most effective starting point. AIs study recommended the latter.
Well-known thesauri like MeSH, the National Library of Medicines controlled vocabulary thesaurus, are great for the areas they cover, but they tend to be deep within defined fields or shallow across a broad array of subjects. As a multi-disciplinary publisher, PLOS publishes papers that dont fit into neat categories. For a thesaurus to successfully represent content across all biomedical fields as well as disciplines as diverse as information science and paleontology, PLOS needed a custom-built thesaurus.
With a clear understanding of the project scope and the resources required to complete it, PLOS committed to rebuilding the thesaurus.
Rebuilding the Thesaurus
Before starting the work to rebuild the thesaurus, PLOS collected the use cases that would define its utility and guide its development.
The collection of use cases extended beyond current cases to include future uses for the thesaurus. One of the more painful consequences of an ill-suited thesaurus was that it became a barrier to the adoption of new services designed to leverage well-classified content.
As a primary use case, PLOS uses terms from its thesaurus to enhance the metadata of its published papers. Once terms have been assigned to a given paper, they assist in discovery services, including the search and browse features available on PLOS websites. Future cases include strategic activities like trend and data analysis and identifying gaps in editorial boards. Table 1 illustrates a complete list of use cases.
|Table 1. Current and proposed use cases for the PLOS thesaurus.
Workflow and Matching Activities
Strategic Activities
A final decision leading up to the rebuild was vendor selection. As AI had outlined the scope of the project and completed a lot of the prefatory work, PLOS was able to leverage this effort by contracting with AI to rebuild the thesaurus.
To kick things off, PLOS delivered the following to AI:
- current copy of the PLOS thesaurus
- use cases for the thesaurus
- over 2,000 changes and additions collected by editorial staff
- guidance for developing a research analysis and methods branch
As a resource for expanding the thesaurus, AI drew upon an internally created science, technology, engineering and medicine thesaurus (STEM). AI produced a list of approximately 15,000 STEM terms that were absent from the existing thesaurus and the frequencies with which they appeared in the PLOS corpus. From this list, AI added those terms that were judged to be sufficiently significant and specific enough to be valuable for detailed subject coverage and optimum indexing accuracy.
During the rebuild process, the structure of the hierarchy developed naturally, with the placement of new terms often suggesting the need for new branches or reorganization of existing ones. PLOS met with AI weekly to discuss any concerns that arose during the week. These conversations usually revolved around basic questions of term organization such as, Where does cognitive science belong? What is the relationship between information science and computer science? Will we limit the thesaurus to five tiers or six or more?
Following AIs progress over the course of the project was easy as AI provided PLOS with web access to the current draft thesaurus. While AI put the finishing touches on the thesaurus, PLOS lined up reviewers and subject matter experts to provide feedback on AIs draft. This allowed PLOS to begin the review the day after the draft arrived.
The review focused on two tasks ensuring the right terms were included in the thesaurus and ensuring the terms were organized in a fashion that suited the PLOS use cases. The latter task proved difficult. On one hand, PLOS wanted the terms to be organized in an absolute sense that accurately reflected the relationships between terms. On the other hand, PLOS wanted the terms to provide users with clear categories that represented the areas in which it publishes. The tension between these goals extended the review period beyond the original estimate of two weeks, but it ultimately allowed PLOS to address important questions that were not identified up front. An outline of the review process included the following steps:
- Senior editors provided feedback about the top-level terms.
- A subject matter expert used this feedback to create a candidate list of top level terms.
- A thesaurus policy group reviewed all feedback and forwarded its recommendations to AI.
- AI suggested minor enhancements, which were later approved by the thesaurus policy group.
The result was a 10,400-term thesaurus comprising seven tiers. Table 2 displays a list of top-tier terms.
|Table 2. Top-tier terms
Applying the Thesaurus
Rebuilding the PLOS thesaurus goes a long way toward addressing PLOS needs for a controlled vocabulary, but it only gets at half the problem. In addition to identifying deficiencies in the PLOS taxonomy, AIs initial study made it clear that terms had not been adequately applied to the published corpus. Typically, submitting authors select terms from the PLOS taxonomy to identify concepts addressed in their papers. Journal staff supplement these terms to ensure that submissions have a minimum number of appropriate terms.
While this process captures many of the more important concepts present in papers, significant numbers of concepts were being neglected. This finding is not surprising given the approach. Machine suggestions can be far more complete than manual suggestions. Experts selecting from machine-suggested terms tend to produce even better results, but as this approach isnt currently available, PLOS decided to investigate machine-aided indexing to improve its subject area metadata.
Relying on industry contacts and previous experience, PLOS identified candidate software applications to perform machine-aided indexing. After analyzing the top contenders, PLOS selected AIs MAIstro for the job.
Figure 1. PLOS 2012 thesaurus in Data Harmony's dynamic view. In line with PLOS' strong emphasis on medicine, disciplines like neurology and its associated pathologies received particular attention as the thesaurus was rebuilt and expanded.
One of the benefits to PLOS of the MAIstro approach is that indexing relies on a flexible rule-based system that can be enhanced over time to produce high quality results. By default, every thesaurus term has a simple rule (for example, apply Biology when the term biology appears in the text). By applying conditions, such as requiring upper or lower case, proximity with other text strings or position within the sentence, AI creates complex rules that can better isolate concepts and index with more appropriate terms (for example, distinguish between plant cells and prison cells). The better the rule base, the better the metadata. At AIs suggestion, PLOS will aim for a mix of 80% simple rules and 20% complex rules as a starting point before integrating the service into its production workflow.
The rule building is proceeding as this article is being written. Upon receipt of the final rules, PLOS will test sample output, make necessary adjustments and prepare for implementation. Implementation will include the following steps:
- PLOS will submit article text to MAIstro.
- MAIstro will return terms and term frequencies to be indexed for search purposes.
- PLOS will re-index all previously published articles (now over 50K articles).
- PLOS will make the new terms available to users in Editorial Manager, the peer-review workflow management system produced by Aries Systems.
As AI is working to complete the rule building, PLOS is preparing an implementation plan. As a starting point, PLOS is looking to submit the following sections of published content to MAIstro for indexing:
- Title
- Abstract
- Methods and Materials (when present)
- Results (when present)
From these sections, PLOS will add the top seven terms returned by MAIstro in an effort to capture the key concepts present in submitted articles.
Although PLOS doesnt expect to obtain optimal results from this approach as trade-offs are involved, it believes these additions will be a good starting point from which it can learn and continue to improve in the future.
Jonas Dupuich is product manager at the Public Library of Science (PLOS). He can be reached at jdupuich<at>plos.org.
Gabe Carr is a taxonomist at Access Innovations. He can be reached at gabe_carr<at>accessinn.com
Articles in this Issue
Taxonomies in Practice Introduction
Evaluating Classification Schema and Classification Decisions
Case Study: Developing the PLOS Thesaurus
Building User Experiences: Synchronizing User Experience Design and the Supporting Metadata and Taxonomy Infrastructure
Indexing Electronic Medical Records Using a Taxonomy
Building a Taxonomy for Auto-classification
Building Controlled Vocabularies for Metadata Harmonization
President's Page: Diane Sonnenwald
President's Page: Andrew Dillon
IA: On What Assumptions Do You Base Your Thinking? Contextual Challenges and Strategic Possibilities
RDAP: Digital Curation Postdoctoral Fellowship - The Hybrid Role of Data Curator


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It's a family reunion for Sookie (Anna Paquin) and Jason (Ryan Kwanten) Stackhouse in "True Blood" Episode 62 ("The Sun") when they discover a mysterious stranger, Niall (Rutger Hauer), is their faerie grandfather. And not just any faerie — he's king of the fey, making Sookie a princess. As for earnest but dim Jason? Well, the faerie genes skipped a generation.
We learn that Warlow, perhaps the world's oldest vampire, massacred Niall's village long before murdering Sookie and Jason's parents. Niall then tracked Warlow over the centuries, "like an intergalactic bounty hunter," as Jason puts it.
Now Warlow has escaped a dark realm and entered sunny Bon Temps through an invisible portal in Sookie's bathroom — depressing real estate values, no doubt. Sookie has a secret weapon in her faerie arsenal, however: She can channel light into a single ball of vampire-killing energy.
PHOTOS: True Blood Season 6 premiere
But there's a catch: Because Sookie is a "halfling" — a human/faerie hybrid — she can use this special power only once. "After that, you'll be fey no more," Grandpa cautions.
Speaking of halflings, Sookie encounters one named Ben (Rob Kazinsky) who fell victim to a vampire. After treating his wounds, Sookie walks Ben toward a safe haven. When he asks her for a date, Sookie declines. "I shouldn't be taking walks with handsome strangers," she says. "It never ends well."
Meanwhile, at the Fangtasia vamp bar, Tara (Rutina Wesley) screams in pain after being shot by government forces. Vampire Eric (Alexander Skarsgård) digs out the bullet, which is made of silver and emits UV light. It's a new kind of ammo invented to slay vampires.
This revelation freaks out Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten), but Eric maintains a steely resolve. "If the humans want war, we'll give them war," he vows.
To that end, Eric poses as a nerdy staffer with Wildlife and Fisheries and tries to "glamor" Louisiana Gov. Truman Burrell (Arliss Howard) into halting his vampire vendetta. But hypnosis fails because the governor now wears anti-glamoring contact lenses. Who knew?
Eric has more luck with the governor's lovely daughter, Willa (Amelia Rose-Blaire), who removed her protective contacts before bedtime. She sees Eric hovering outside her window and invites him in. Not a good idea, Willa.
At Merlotte's Bar and Grill, out-of-town customer Nicole (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) seeks out restaurateur Sam (Sam Trammell). "I know what you are," she says. "You're a shifter, right?"
Nicole, the granddaughter of civil rights pioneers, is on a mission to ease the violence between humans and supernaturals. Sam can help, she believes, by exposing his true self and inspiring others to do the same. But Sam wants to maintain a low profile.
"People are dying out there," Nicole pleads. "You can't just sit this one out."
Along with his other responsibilities, Sam cares for Emma (Chloe Noelle), the werewolf daughter of his deceased girlfriend. But the pack wants Emma back, demands werewolf leader Alcide (Joe Manganiello), who pummels Sam and takes the child.
Elsewhere in Bon Temps, Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) — now a vampire god of sorts — has terrifying visions of his subjects being tortured. "I can feel all of them," Bill laments to his progeny Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll). Slipping into a trance, he communicates with Lilith (Jessica Clark), the mother of all vamps.
"Events have been set in motion," Lilith tells Bill, and he must finish the work she started. "You will know what to do," she assures him. "Trust what you see."
What Bill sees is a horrific future in which Eric, Jessica, Pam, Tara and other vampires are imprisoned in a room filling with deadly sunlight. "They're all going to burn," he reveals, as the vamps suddenly burst into flames!
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Members of the DeSales High School boys and girls cross country teams continue to try to come to grips with the sudden death of longtime coach Bob Lennon.
Members of the DeSales High School boys and girls cross country teams continue to try to come to grips with the sudden death of longtime coach Bob Lennon.
Lennon, 64, was killed Sept. 15 in a hit-and-run crash while riding his bicycle on Miller Paul Road in Galena.
On Sept. 18, the day before his funeral, the Stallions competed in Whetstone's Arrowhead Invitational. The boys team recorded its third consecutive top-four finish, amassing 140 points to place fourth of 17 teams behind champion Bexley (70), and the girls team finished eighth (197) of 16 teams as Bexley (42) won.
The Stallions wore black armbands with the words "run for Bob" in the meet. About 30 teachers came to the race, as well as principal Dan Garrick, athletics director Tom Neubert and the entire boys soccer and girls volleyball teams.
"We've been to regionals as a team the past two years and I thought that was big when I got 20 people to come out. But this was just incredible," senior Ian Lawson said of the support shown by faculty members and fellow student-athletes. "There are 1,000 questions running through your head just about cross country, let alone the rest of your life. It really was good to just get out there today and run."
Assistant coaches Emily Rizek and Katie Shelton will share head-coaching duties for the remainder of the season. Rizek, a 1999 DeSales graduate, ran for Lennon and has been on his staff for five years. Shelton, a guidance counselor at the school, has been on Lennon's staff since 2007.
Both also were friends of Lennon away from the sport, often biking with him.
"It's overwhelming," Shelton said. "(Lennon) would always say that Emily and I did so much for him and always thank us for everything, but he did everything for the team. He was the backbone. He did so much that we're overwhelmed right now thinking of everything we have to do, to organize and take over. We have a lot to take on."
Lawson led the boys team in the Arrowhead Invitational, placing seventh in 17 minutes, 21 seconds. Sophomore Creighton Barrett (10th, 17:31) was next, followed by junior Ben Hippler (37th, 19:09), senior Parker Beck (42nd, 19:20) and senior Anthony Hayes (44th, 19:22).
Barrett edged Lawson in the Central Ohio Invitational on Sept. 14 at Three Creeks Metro Park, placing fifth (17:26.95) as Lawson finished sixth (17:32.18).
"I was gone for a few weeks and when I got back to practice, (Barrett) was kicking my butt," said Lawson, who also is on the boys soccer team. "We've been up there with some good finishes, but we sure haven't hit our stride quite yet. We'll see where we are when districts roll out and if we have any chance at the top four (that advances to regional)."
Senior Kristin Faulkner led the girls team in the Arrowhead Invitational, placing 26th (21:43). Sophomore Logan Agin (27th, 21:53) was next, followed by sophomores Andrea Coffey (33rd, 22:19) and Claire Draminski (52nd, 23:33) and junior Bailey Cadena (55th, 23:52).
DeSales will compete in the Erin Nance Fall Distance Classic on Saturday, Sept. 28, at London Country Club.
According to Garrick, Lennon was pleased with the Stallions' recent performances. The two traded text messages the night before the Central Ohio Invitational, with Lennon promising to pass on results as he always did.
"They're young," Lennon told Garrick in one of the texts, "but I like this group."Boys golf team takes2nd in CCL tourney
Senior Danny Helin shot a 76 and senior Ben Dumm carded a 79 to lead the boys golf team to a second-place finish in the CCL postseason tournament Sept. 21 at Cooks Creek.
DeSales shot a 318 to finish behind St. Charles (304) and ahead of Hartley (328), Watterson (330) and Ready (348).
Also competing for the Stallions were sophomore Kyle Ransom (80) and juniors Chris Modie (83), Jacob Erwin (86) and Holden Chapman (111).
"The first four holes or so were ugly (because of heavy rain), but the guys really took off after that," coach Tom Eckl said. "It was a real strong round in challenging conditions on a course not many of our guys have played before. I was pretty happy with all of them."
DeSales competed in a 11-team Division II sectional Sept. 24 at Granville Golf Course. The Stallions were seeded 10th and their sectional included top-seeded Caledonia River Valley and third-seeded Bexley.
The top three teams and top three individuals not on a qualifying team advance to district Monday, Sept. 30, at River Greens.
"We're looking forward to playing a course we're more familiar with," Eckl said of Granville. "I think we're starting to peak at the right time. The guys are confident in their abilities right now."Football team facesmajor challenge
The football team will meet an opponent it never has faced before for the second consecutive week when it plays host to defending Division IV state champion Clarksville Clinton-Massie on Friday, Sept. 27.
The Stallions, who beat Toledo Rogers 41-20 on Sept. 20 to improve to 2-2, should be in for one of their toughest tests this season when they face Clinton-Massie. The Falcons, who were first in the Division IV state poll last week, defeated Greenfield McClain 62-0 on Sept. 20 to improve to 4-0.
DeSales' defense, which recovered two fumbles and intercepted three passes against Rogers, will be challenged by a Clinton-Massie running game featuring brothers Bayle Wolf and Chayse Wolf.
Bayle, a 6-foot-1, 195-pound senior, rushed for 220 yards and four touchdowns in a 46-36 win over St. Clairsville in the state final last season.
In a 35-7 win over Jonathan Alder on Sept. 13, Bayle ran for 146 yards and three touchdowns and Chayse, a junior, had 88 yards rushing and two scores.
DeSales's offense, which was held to a combined seven points in its first two losses, had 265 total yards against Rogers, including 250 on the ground.
Running back Tucker Yinger rushed for 50 yards and quarterbacks Brandon Krietemeyer and Gage Righter and running backs Austin Andrews and Emmanuel Mawutor each scored a touchdown. Krietemeyer also threw a touchdown pass, connecting with wide receiver Luke Melsop for a 15-yard score.


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Life Hints
Market Insights
An interview with Yamate Homes President Koji Takeda
Yamate Homes has mostly been working with real estate in Tokyo. How did you get into the resort real estate market?
About five years ago, we were in Niseko (Hokkaido), looking to purchase some resort land and saw the market there was already changing, so we started picking up some properties in the area.
Where are most of your customers from?
In Tokyo, we have Japanese and foreign customers, but resort buyers are 90 percent foreigners; many from Australia and Asia, in particular Hong Kong, often with Japanese spouses. Most of our business is private residential, with some corporate buyers.
On what resort areas do you focus?
Right now, we are concentrating on Niseko, especially the Hanazono and Hirafu areas, and Hakuba (Nagano), mostly Happo-one and Wadano with a few properties in Misorano and other areas. Pricing depends on location and preference. For instance, Hirafu is still the most popular and pricy in Niseko.
Do you feel the market is still growing in Niseko?
It is difficult to say since Hirafu, Annupuri, Hanazono and Higashiyama all are different markets. In general, I don't believe we have hit the price ceiling there. The prices have increased a lot in the central Hirafu area, but other areas are still growing. Some think Hirafu has maxed out, but it really depends on the property. The number of visitors to the area is still rising each year, and some landmark hotels and resort lots are opening up, which reignites the market.
Do you see any major differences between the real estate markets in Niseko and Hakuba?
There is not a large fundamental difference, but the Hakuba market is relative cheaper because foreign interest in the Hakuba market came later than Niseko. When development began in Niseko, there were virtually no guidelines or building codes, so a lot of condos were built. Since then the local government has begun to create a set of codes for urban planning and to preserve the environment and scenery in thearea. Hakuba maintains a similar set of local regulations but, because there are a number of long-standing hotels and pensions and a limited amount of land available, the situation is different.
Are there any other resort areas about which you are excited?
If I were completely sure of a certain area, I'd keep it to myself (laughs). I'm joking, but there are many other ski resort areas with great potential as some interesting off-the-beaten-path places away from the resorts.
Some areas we are looking at are Hakone, Okinawa, Lake Toya, and Izu, among others. Properties near water are usually a good bet. Any place near the ocean, a river, a snow resort with decent entertainment and the right facilities. It is important to look at the town's environment and character as well.
For what purpose are people purchasing resort properties?
About half our buyers are purchasing second houses while others as investment properties; however most keep both in mind. Some investors are looking for capital gains and others want a regular rental income. Some also purchase houses to live in or for retirement.
Anything else you would like to add?
Growing up, I toured most of the ski resorts in Honshu and Hokkaido, so I am fortunate to have a good grasp of these areas. We always look forward to introducing these areas to foreign customers, and I hope people can find a comfortable place where they can enjoy the outdoors and take the time to have fun with their properties.
Yamate Homes Corporation
8F Central Shibuya 246 1-1-6, Shibuya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0002
Tel: (03) 5766-7850
Web: www.yamate-homes.co.jp
For an extended version of this interview plus a detailed guide to the main areas in Hakuba and Niseko, visit www.japanpropertylistings.com.


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The Last Mile, at Last?
It looked like an ordinary little drugstore. A reasonable supply of medication on the right, and man behind a small desk in the middle.
But what was on the desk was not ordinary: a netbook laptop and a fingerprint scanner. And on the left were boxes, all the same medication, with names written on them. "Try it," Neema said. "Scan your finger." I did and the screen turned yellow. "You have never been here yet" said Neema, "I cannot give you any medication."


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To create your BEHR Faux Glaze finish, you will need some special supplies. In addition to your BEHR Paint base color, you will need a top glaze color and a supply of BEHR Faux Glaze. You will also need a plastic bucket for mixing, and implements specific for your desired glaze technique such as sponges, rags, a whisk broom, etc.
Paint the base color and allow it to dry completely before glazing.
For full instructions on painting interior walls, refer to the How To Paint a Wall how-to.
To prepare the BEHR Faux Glaze, you will combine four parts glaze to one part BEHR Paint. For example, in an average sized room, you will use one gallon of BEHR PREMIUM PLUS with Style® Faux Glaze and one quart of PREMIUM PLUS ULTRA® Paint and Primer in One or PREMIUM PLUS® Paint. Stir the paint and glaze mixture thoroughly. Next, choose your application method (brush on, sponge on, sponge off, etc.) and follow the steps specific to that method.


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Follow RFF News on your cell phone. Text follow rff to 40404 you will receive txt messages with RFF News
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Emmy-winning dramas "Homeland", "Mad Men" and British period piece "Downton Abbey" will compete for the annual Producers Guild Awards for the top shows on U.S. television, organizers announced on Wednesday.But last year's winner - HBO's lavish Prohibition-era gangster drama "Boardwalk Empire" - failed to make the cut this year with the Producers Guild of America, one of the leading professional guilds in Hollywood.Instead, the producers of popular fantasy drama "Game of Thrones" and drug underworld show "Breaking Bad" round out the nominees for the top PGA prize in television.The PGA also nominated the producers of comedies "Modern Family", "The Big Bang Theory", "Louie", "30 Rock" and Larry David's wry "Curb Your Enthusiasm" as contenders for its 2013 awards on the small screen.In the reality genre, singing contest "The Voice" will go head to head with fashion show "Project Runway", "Top Chef", "Dancing with the Stars" and Emmy darling "The Amazing Race".Hollywood's guilds represent professionals in their respective industries, and recognition by peers can go a long way toward boosting a producer's career.The PGA will announce nominees in its closely watched movie category in early January, and hand out its awards for film and television at a ceremony in Hollywood on January 26.(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Dale Hudson)
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Rio Tinto, the mining giant, was in turmoil Thursday morning after the abrupt departure of its chief executive and the announcement of a $14 billion writedown.
Tom Albanese, who had been at the company for three decades, including nearly six years in the top job, will have to forfeit share options worth 10.7 million pounds ($17 million) after exiting the company. However, he will continue to be paid until the middle of July.
His successor Sam Walsh, head of the company's iron ore business, was given a cautious welcome by the market. Rio's share price was down by around 3 percent in early London trading, with substantially less wiped off the market capitalization than the writedown, as some traders saw its weakness as a buying opportunity.
Analysts at Barclays said the change would be "likely taken well," although the writedowns are "clearly not great" – and added that cash returns could still be possible at the company. Jefferies maintained its "buy" rating on the stock.
Walsh is "well-regarded by shareholders," according to Rupert Nathan, head of fund management at Fat Prophets.


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We've seen our fair share of leaks on Motorola's always on natural language processing, Active Touch and Quick Camera gestures, but this is the real deal, people.
DroidLife has just posted a video of some Motorola reps showing off what the new Droid Ultra has to offer, detailing a handful of the smart features included in the entire new Droid Ultra family… and coming soon to the Moto X.
As you will see in the video below, everything looks to be working really smoothly. If real world performance is going to be anything like the demo provided, Motorola has really hit the nail on the head with this one. As cool as the pulsing screen with Active Touch notifications and Quick Camera gestures are, I think the "OK Google Now, call my Droid" demo takes the cake for most impressive feature. Plus, it's something cool we haven't seen before.
Let us know what you think of Motorola's new voice command features, gestures and Active Touch in the comments below.


text:
Boron Nitride Nanotube Structure
Published on
We have used high-resolution transmission electron microscopy to resolve the basal plane structure and chirality relationships in boron nitride nanotubes.
Co-authors: J. Cumings, A. Zettl, R. O. Ritchie
TEM was
performed at the National Center for Electron Microscopy at
the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Sponsored by
This research
was supported in part by the Director of the Office of Energy
Research, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences
Division of the United States Department of Energy,
Contract No. DEAC03-76SF00098 and Grant Nos. DMR 98-01738 and DMR 95-01156 from the National Science Foundation
Cite this work
Researchers should cite this work as follows:


text: >2.2.15 had a much-revised eepro100 driver. > >I am hopeful that using, say, 2.2.18 will cure your problem. FWIW, and I don't really have anything but anecdotal evidence to support this, as the web page at sco.com seems to have disappeared, but replacing eepro100's seems to be the only fix. Take a look at the 2.2.x changelogs. eepro100 drivers have had fatal bugs found in the chipsets multiple times, just in 2.2.x. Our NT, SCO, linux, and even Novell servers almost always have a new eepro driver in whatever upgrade they get. We've finally switched to 3com's in servers due to frustration with Intel at building a quality chipset. Sco used to have a good page detailing the problem. Basically, something on the PCI card that controlled input and output overflowed its onboard 8k ram chip or whatever sort of memory it had, which then killed its internal stack. Power-cycling was the only way to flush it. The bug has been squashed multiple times, only to rear its head in some new form later. If you keep going with eepro's, good luck. I heartily recommend 3c905-b's or -c's. Rob Nelson ronelson at vt.edu


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text:
Bruce Wrobel, the CEO of Herakles Farms, has long claimed that his is a company that represents a positive presence in Africa.
Indeed it seems impossible at present to pick up a newspaper in the Cameroonian capital Yaoundé without reading about one minor miracle or another taking place in the south west of the country, that can only be attributed to the company and their benevolence. Minor miracles that the company is paying for themselves to advertise.
But flying over the same southwest region and the real effect of Herakles Farms' presence in the country becomes all too evident. Like ugly pockmarks, craters of forest clearings, to make way for what could eventually be a palm oil plantation ten times the size of Manhattan, are visible for miles around in what is otherwise a sea of trees.
The 73,000 hectare concession is still in the early stages of development, yet forest clearing continues despite the fact SGSOC, the subsidiary of Herakles Farms in Cameroon, is operating without a land lease required by national law.
If not stopped the plantation, which is in area bordered by 5 protected areas and home to vital biodiversity, would cause significant environmental damage. Worse the livelihoods of thousands of people currently living off the land would be severely affected.
A majority of these people are openly opposed to the project. They claim they have had little or no consultation on what is to be done with their land, land that in a lot of cases has been worked by their families for generations. Bruce Wrobel, on the other hand, says he is addressing a "dire humanitarian need". There is evidently a difference of opinion.
Nasako Besingi can testify to feeling the presence of Herakles in Cameroon. The director of local NGO Struggle to Economise Future Environment (SEFE), his persistent and peaceful opposition to the palm oil project has often seen him harassed, both physically and emotionally.
This culminated on November 14th, when he and several of his colleagues were unceremoniously dragged away by local authorities in the town of Mundemba and held for two days with no charge before being released. Their only crime was preparing a peaceful demonstration to point out what is increasingly visibly obvious - that the Herakles Farms plantation is the wrong project in the wrong place.
Information received by Greenpeace International shows that this is a prevalent viewpoint in the area, even by some people employed by SGSOC and Herakles Farms, who complain of poor working conditions and not being paid.
As pointed out recently by Greenpeace International's executive director Kumi Naidoo, any claims of a company improving the lives of people can only be taken seriously if they seek the approval of the people whose land they are developing and whose lives they claim they are improving.
Herakles Farms and Bruce Wrobel may think that a sustained PR offensive will eventually quell any dissent to their project. But their twin claims, that the project will not cause any environmental damage and that it will bring only development, are increasingly being shown up for the hollow statements they are. The project must be stopped immediately.
New aerial evidence from Greenpeace International shows how trees in the largely forested concession area have been cleared by SGSOC, a subsidiary of New-York based Herakles Farms, near the village of Talangaye.
The American-owned company continues to clear areas of natural forest in the South-West of Cameroon to establish a large-scale palm oil plantation despite growing local and international opposition and a heightened risk of social conflict over the project
(Unregistered) africansky
After reading Bruce Wrobel's open letter to the Oakland Institute's accusations, on Herakles website, I have some serious doubts as to the ver...
After reading Bruce Wrobel's open letter to the Oakland Institute's accusations, on Herakles website, I have some serious doubts as to the veracity of the claims made here. I would much more appreciate Greenpeace address those, with truth & honesty, issue-by-issue, as Wrobel has take the trouble to address. This would help donors avoid embarrassment or removing their support of future Greenpeace requests.
26 November, 2012 at 6:09
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(Unregistered) Me1
I am touched by this explanations and i agree with you that any claim by whosoever about a people can only be approved by the concern. It is indeed a ...
I am touched by this explanations and i agree with you that any claim by whosoever about a people can only be approved by the concern. It is indeed a sad that the project is located in a biodiversity hot spot. If possible please i would like to know the animal species, plants found in this area that are endemic, endangered etc......
1 December, 2012 at 21:04
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(Unregistered) David
Only one thing to say about Bruce Wrobel's open letter - "Weasel Words". These words are used to humanize inhumane actions. Ask yourselv...
Only one thing to say about Bruce Wrobel's open letter - "Weasel Words". These words are used to humanize inhumane actions. Ask yourselves questions like
Why has the Presidential Decree yet to be signed?
Why are they flouting laws especially clearing land without permits?
What are they doing with all of the Wood that is being felled?
Why did they withdraw from RSPO?
Why can this project not be located elsewhere?
How much experience do they have in Oil Palm?
Why are only Cameroonians listed on their Website while there exists an Army of foreign consultants who are running the show?
There are many more questions that can be asked BUT answers to these will highlight that all they want is get their way AT ANY COST!
These are not investors they have a different agenda...eventually it will cost the nation a lot!
27 December, 2012 at 5:58
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Introducing Netherlands
Friesland, Netherlands © Gouwenaar
Netherlands Travel Guide
The Netherlands is widely considered to be a fail-safe tourist destination: a vibrant, friendly country full of fascinating cultural sights and beautiful natural scenery, it seems impossible to have a bad time in the Netherlands. From the fun-loving capital of Amsterdam and the historically rich towns of Delft and Groningen, to the tulip and windmill-strewn countryside, a holiday in the Netherlands is guaranteed to delight all comers.
Most travel first to Amsterdam, which offers great tourist activities and interesting things to see. It is almost obligatory to take a tour of the city's famous canals, squeezing through tight waterways, passing under 17th-century bridges, and admiring the picturesque riverside houses. Amsterdam is also awash with world-famous art galleries, museums and concert halls. Amsterdam's famous Red Light District has been a mainstay of the global sex tourism industry for many years. The city is also renowned as a drug tourism destination, as its famously lenient attitude toward cannabis has seen the proliferation of 'coffeeshops'; however, laws introduced in early 2012 ban foreigners from these establishments throughout the Netherlands, and Amsterdam is now the only city which is still fighting to keep its 'coffeeshops' open to foreigners.
Tourists who venture outside of Amsterdam will also be richly rewarded. The 750-year-old city of Delft, famous for its distinctive blue and white pottery, boasts an interesting mix of youthful energy and historic sites; while Rotterdam is a gleaming city of high-rise buildings and truly innovative architecture including the famously distinctive cube houses.
Best time to visit the Netherlands
The Netherlands' climate is quite similar to that of teh United Kingdom, featuring temperate and changeable conditions all year round, with lots of rainfall. The best time to visit is either in spring (April and May), when the tulips are in bloom, or in summer (July and August), when, despite the hordes of tourists, the lovely long days allow you to pack more sightseeing and adventuring into your holiday. Read more on the Netherlands' Climate and Weather.
What to see in the Netherlands
- Admire the paintings of the Dutch Masters in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum.
- Visit the Anne Frank Museum for a poignant and humanising reminder of the tragedy of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in the 1940s.
- See the small town of Kinderdijk's historic windmills: an iconic sight, sure to be one of your abiding memories of the Netherlands.
- The Van Gogh Museum houses more than 200 paintings and 500 drawings, and provides a fascinating insight into the troubled mind of the famous Dutch artist. Read more about Netherlands Attractions.
What to do in the Netherlands
- Take a tour through Amsterdam's famous canals for the perfect introduction to this historic city.
- Dress up nicely, and head to Amsterdam's Red Light District (De Wallen) for an unforgettable night on the town.
- Head to the Heineken Experience, and get a close-up look at how the Netherlands' favourite beer is brewed.
- Take a trip to fun, historic Delft, and go shopping at the Royal Delftware Factory for the iconic blue and white porcelain.
Getting to the Netherlands
There are plenty of direct cheap flights to the Netherlands available from a wide range of British and American destinations. Several European low-cost carriers offer cheap flights to Amsterdam's Schipol Airport. Get more information on Netherlands Airports.
The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank, The Girl with the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier, Tulip Fever by Debroah Moggach, and The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas.
Golden Earring, Shocking Blue, BZN, and Frans Bauer.
The Girl with the Pearl Earring (2003), Simon (2004), Turks Fruit/Turkish Delight (1973), and De Tweeling/Twin Sisters (2002).
'White beer' (witbier) is popular, and is basically lager flavoured with a spice called gruit; while Dutch gin (jenever) is sweeter than English gin.
Bitterballen (breaded and deep-fried ragout served with mustard), pannenkoeken (pancakes, either sweet or savoury), and erwtensoep (a hearty green pea and smoked sausage soup).
What to buy
Blue and white ceramics from the Delft region, miniature windmills, and clogs (wooden shoes, known locally as klompen).
What to pack
When packing for the Netherlands, bear in mind that the weather is very changeable and subject to a lot of rainfall all year round. Make sure you pack a good variety of clothing to deal with varying temperatures, and that you have a good rain slicker to carry around with you in your day pack.
What's on in the Netherlands
The Holland Festival (June) is a month-long cultural celebration that encompasses all art forms, from pop music to high-minded drama, and features many international artists. The Cannabis Cup (November) is the marijuana world's equivalent of the World Cup, where judges and curious tourists from all over the world congregate to judge the world's best weed. More information on Netherlands Events.
Did you know?
- More than half of the surface area of the Netherlands is less than one metre above sea-level.
- Dutch people are the tallest in the world, with men averaging six feet (184cm) and women five feet six inches (170cm).
- The Netherlands has frequently topped lists as the world's greatest country for children to grow up in.
A final word
A famously progressive and liberal society, uniquely blessed with cultural sights and attractions, whether you're seeking high culture or just plain hedonistic fun, the Netherlands is a fantastic choice for an unforgettable European holiday.
Our Travel Expert
Kaleigh is from Denver, Colorado and has a degree in Art History. She is currently working as an au pair in the Netherlands and uses all her free time to explore, immersing herself as much as possible in Dutch culture. She is learning the language and enjoys writing about her experiences sampling local food and admiring Dutch art and architecture.
>Read Kaleigh's tips on Netherlands
>Ask Kaleigh a question
Become our Netherlands Travel Expert
We are looking for contributors for our Netherlands travel guide. If you are a local, a regular traveller to Netherlands or a travel professional with time to contribute and answer occasional forum questions, please contact us.


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Republicans are continuing to attack the Federal Reserve after the central bank announced a new round of monetary stimulus intended to spur growth in the anemic economy.
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This WWW version was prepared by the author from the text submitted for publication, and appears by permission of the copyright holder. Copyright © 1990 by the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. Please click here for full ACM copyright notice.
There is a Romanian translation of this article courtesy of Science Spaces.
Chief sections after the introduction:
Time of hope (1978-83)
The acceptance world (1978-83)
The conscience of the rich (1984)
The sleep of reason (1985-86)
The valley of bones (1986)
Books do furnish a room (1986-87)
The new men (1987-88)
Temporary kings (1988)
Corridors of power (1988-89)
Hearing secret harmonies (1990)
Last things (acknowledgements)
Week by week we read about corporate battles for shares in a market, be it hardware, software or services, about takeover manoeuvrings and buyouts, about rival consortia seeking to dominate areas like Unix or networking. Yet these ongoing stories, hard though they may sometimes be to follow, have the complexity of a Ladybird book, compared with the long-running saga of the Fortran 8X standard.
The story began immediately after the finalisation of the Fortran 77 standard, hence predating the Thatcher era - and it could still outlive it. No longer is it the "8X" story, of course; the US Fortran Standards Committee is now calling it "Fortran 90", but considering it started as "82" and for a period of false dawn was "88", no-one who has survived the whole saga to date would put serious money on that being the final designation. (However, those who remember a novel called "Limbo 90" may regard it as not inappropriate.)
One day someone perhaps will record the history of Fortran 82/8X/88/90/..., but it needs an Escher to depict it or a Borges to describe it. Indeed, Borges, Borgias and Byzantium all come to mind when one looks at the complex, multi-layered interplay of forces which have contributed. The best that can be done here is to indicate the various forces and their interconnections, and briefly describe the issues and forces involved in the main battles that have occurred.
The main groups of forces are the standards committees, corporate bodies, professional institutions, and individuals. These themselves have subgroupings and classifications.
Standards Committees The standards committees, as well as being "forces", in the sense that they have power and hence are players in the game, also provide the battlefields, at least for the set-piece battles. Other battles are fought in public meetings like the Fortran Forums which have been held from time to time, mostly in the US and the UK, to present and discuss issues and developments; in published media like Computer Weekly, technical journals, and the newsletter also called Fortran Forum (see below); and in recent years through the electronic mail networks and bulletin boards.
Most of the set-piece battles have been fought in, and sometimes between, the US Fortran Standards Committee X3J3, and the international Fortran standards working group, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 ("WG5" for short) or its predecessors. The international committee structure has undergone substantial changes during the life of the saga but not in ways directly relevant; I shall use the current designations, and "WG5" or "WG5-to-be" for the Fortran group.
X3J3 does the technical work of producing the standard (both as a US national and an international standard); WG5 coordinates international comment on the work X3J3 is doing and gives general advice on the direction in which the development of the standard should be heading.
WG5 reports to SC22, the ISO subcommittee responsible for programming languages as a whole. SC22 in turn reports to JTC1, the Joint Technical Committee of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) responsible for information technology standards generally.
The organisational structure within the USA is rather different, and X3J3 reports to X3, an Accredited Standards Committee of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) which is the US member body of ISO rather as the British Standards Institution (BSI) is the UK member body. For the purposes of explaining the Fortran saga, X3 is roughly at the same level as JTC1 though not completely equivalent. Hence there is no intermediate level in the USA equivalent to SC22, though there is an SC22 TAG (Technical Advisory Group) whose purpose is to advise X3 on liaison with the ISO body.
The US delegation to WG5 is appointed by (and drawn from) X3J3. Some non-US members of WG5 are also members of X3J3, including some from the UK.
Corporate Bodies Corporate bodies can be divided into suppliers (vendors) and users; in this case it is sufficient to restrict "suppliers" to those who supply Fortran compilers. Corporate users can for some purposes be divided into public sector and private sector, or even commercial, industrial, academic, and government. Both on the supplier and on the user side these corporate bodies vary greatly in size and in attitude.
Professional Institutions
The two professional institutions that have played a supporting role in the saga have been the British Computer Society (BCS) and its US counterpart the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Except at one point the ACM's role has been mainly the passive one of distributing information through publishing the newsletter Fortran Forum. The BCS, through its Fortran Specialist Group (FSG) has been more active, receiving reports of X3J3's progress at its meetings, sponsoring public meetings (Fortran Forums) in the UK, and making available, at lower cost than would otherwise have been the case, copies of drafts of the standards for review and comment. Most UK members of WG5 are members of the BCS FSG.
At one level, individual people are the least important of the groupings. They are not major economic forces as suppliers or users, they cannot nominate representatives as the other groups can. Nevertheless, the corporate, institutional and standards bodies are composed of individuals, it is individuals that recommend policy, write position papers, argue, discuss, and cast votes. As with most human activities, personalities play an important part.
Even leaving aside affiliations, duties and loyalties, the taxonomy of the various individuals concerned with Fortran standardisation almost deserves a small dissertation of its own. Two classifications need to be noted at the outset. One is between traditionalists and revisionists (otherwise conservatives and radicals, sensibles and irresponsibles, backwoodsmen and progressives, depending on attitude). Most (not all) can be firmly placed on one side or the other of this divide. The other classification is between featurists and generalists - those whose primary interest is in particular features, and those concerned with the language as a whole. The featurists of course have to be subdivided into different interest groups - vector processing, process control and so on. This can include support for specific vendor extensions to Fortran 77.
The point is that the battle lines are redrawn and the groupings rearrange, depending on what issue arises, the way it comes up, and the current context. For example, a featurist who is also a traditionalist may generally support moves to "reduce the size of the language" (a recurrent rallying call throughout the saga) but will change sides if the proposal is to remove a wished-for facility. A featurist who is also a revisionist may, however, be reluctant to support a proposal for a wished-for facility if done in a way which runs counter to general moves to modernise the language.
It is hardly surprising, with such a shifting mix of interests, that it is hard to reach consensus on anything. The gradual shifts in individual membership of committees and organisations over so long a period of time, plus the continual changes in the technology and the marketplace, means that any consensus needs continual refreshment and reaffirmation.
Anyone who has been on any standards committee knows the weary feeling when a recently recruited member brings up an issue or an argument which was debated at length and dealt with years before. Yet people wonder why standards take so long to agree. The wonder is, rather, that they ever get agreed at all. It is a measure of the crucial importance of standards (even if not adequately recognised by everyone) that people nevertheless continue to soldier on.
Let us now turn to some of the highlights of the saga. I am grateful to C.P. Snow and Anthony Powell for providing me, unknowingly, with the titles of the sections and (with John Galsworthy) of the piece as a whole.
Time of hope
In this saga of the light and the dark, in the beginning there was light. Fortran 77, let it not be forgotten (though often it is), was rather a spatchcock affair, agreed because people agreed that they had to produce something even if they could not agree on what it should be. The idea for "Fortran 82" was, OK that's out of the way now let's do it right. The starting point was to be a "core plus modules" architecture able to accommodate featurists and generalists, traditionalists and revisionists.
For a time, things went well. The first ever formal meeting, in London in 1978, of what was to become WG5 (there had been an ad hoc group discussion the previous year at the ISO programming language committee meeting at The Hague) discussed constructively the nature of "core plus modules" and what the modules should be. At the end of 1979 Walt Brainerd of X3J3 (then and still) described the project in this way:
"There has been a significant shift in attitudes concerning the objectives of Fortran standardisation. One reason for this has been the realisation that the language is becoming too large by adding new features and almost never removing any old ones....The beauty of core-plus-modules was that it could contain the battles in very small areas. Its weakness was that it crucially depended on achieving consensus on two issues; what should be in the core, and what should be in what became known as the "obsolete features" module - the parts of Fortran 77 not in the core. This developed into a battle between revisionists/generalists, and traditionalists allied to revisionist/featurists who, while not objecting to core-plus- modules or to the concept of obsolescence, could not accept that cherished features should be excluded from the core - or, worse, deemed "obsolete". After a protracted engagement, almost exclusively within X3J3, core-plus-modules was dropped, thus opening up the whole battlefield to anyone. Fortran "82" had by this time become Fortran "8X".
"X3J3 has responded to these challenges by proposing a language architecture consisting of a 'core' language plus 'modules'. The core is to be a complete general purpose programming language, but will not contain features that are redundant or obsolete just because they are in Fortran 77....
"One of these modules will contain all of the features in Fortran 77 that are not in the core. This is important in order to support the huge investment in Fortran programs written using these features." [1]
In an update on his earlier discussion, in February 1983, Walt Brainerd was writing:
"The committee seemed to have rejected the idea of a small elegant core. It appears to be the old problem that a committee simply cannot design something small and elegant; one person's frill is another's essential feature, and for some reason a committee almost always seems to vote to include things in this category rather than exclude them. After everything else is done, it still may be possible to identify a small 'core'." [2]He was to be disappointed.
The acceptance world
During this period the international group had observed, commented, occasionally expressed concern, but generally acquiesced in what was happening in X3J3. Both Fortran 77 and its predecessor, by now known as Fortran 66, had been ANSI standards endorsed by ISO. The only groups organised enough to provide substantial international comment on the Fortran 77 draft had been the BCS FSG and a group in The Netherlands. Even the change of status in 1983 to a formal ISO working group seemed at first to make little change.
The conscience of the rich
However, at the Geneva meeting of WG5-to-be in the spring of 1984, an issue came up which with the benefit of hindsight can be seen as showing straws in the wind. Having now been at work for more than six years, but still with no draft standard in sight, X3J3 felt that public feedback on what had been done so far would be useful, and proposed the publication by X3 of a "Fortran Information Bulletin". This proposal was discussed also at the ISO WG and it was agreed that a FIB ("an unfortunate acronym", I wrote in Computer Weekly at the time) be published internationally as well, with identical text.
When this came to X3 for approval, however, the vote was 40 in favour and 2 against - but the two were DEC and IBM. DEC objected unless changes were made which (I wrote at the time) "would ... have undermined all the work that has been done on Fortran 8X". IBM did not mind publication, but only if its objections and those of others were published in the FIB as part of the document.
The first major set-piece battle had begun; battlefield X3, two major vendors against the majority of X3J3.
X3 asked X3J3 if it would accept such conditions. Since the purpose of the FIB was simply to present the current state of development on 8X, both X3J3 and WG5-to-be said that this was unacceptable as a matter of principle. The FIB was a factual document, not propaganda, and those who read it should be free to make up their own minds.
These views were reported back to X3, who decided (despite the large majority) not to approve publication. All standards committees have a duty to try to reach consensus. If agreement cannot be reached, however, a vote of the size of 40 to 2 is usually reckoned enough. Clearly, on X3 some votes were more equal than others.
However, the battle was not quite over. For the first and so far only time in the saga, ACM played an active role, though as a natural extension of its usual role of making information available. A special joint issue of Fortec Forum (now Fortran Forum) and SIGNUM Newsletter (SIGNUM is the ACM Special Interest Group in Numerical Mathematics) published a technical report - which happened to contain all of the same words as the FIB (apart from the front cover) but not including the DEC changes or the IBM objections. Association of Computing Marines to the rescue?
The "straws in the wind"? The light was beginning to give way to the dark; two major vendors had shown that they were willing to go to considerable lengths to block progress in the direction the majority wanted to go; and by backing up X3J3, the ISO working group dimly began to see that it had a bit more power of its own than merely power to comment - if it chose to use it.
The sleep of reason
The ACM report appeared, comments came in, X3J3 continued its work. By the Bonn meeting of WG5-to-be in the summer of 1985, it was clear that the time was at last approaching when a draft standard could be produced, and the meeting passed a resolution commending X3J3's work as "broadly meeting the needs of the Fortran community worldwide".
However, if the shape and size of the emerging 8X was becoming clear, it was also apparent that moves were afoot to mobilise forces to oppose the general trend. The main, overlapping groups were of vendors, led by IBM and DEC but now joined by others (though by no means all); and traditionalists, both user companies and individuals. The vendor group mainly objected to the size of the language, the traditionalist grouping to some new features and also to the concept of "deprecated" features (by now the weakened term for "obsolete").
After some internal skirmishing (since all the various factions were represented), the Bonn meeting added to the general endorsement of the current 8X a statement to the effect that any major "downward revision" would be "detrimental to the interests of Fortran users". This was by way of a warning shot, across the bows of the vendor group in particular. It was also, though in itself no more than reinforcement of approval of what X3J3 had done, by far the strongest statement made by any ISO group up to that time of the direction in which it would like the work to proceed in future.
For some months, progress continued, until a draft was produced, which went for internal ballot to the members of the US and ISO groups for approval for publication as a draft for public review. In both groups, there were people who felt that too many minor deficiencies remained to make it publishable at that stage, but the ISO vote was fairly favourable. In the US, however, there was a powerful group of US objectors, complaining that the language was too large and should be cut down, and brought more into line with "existing practice" (which, being translated, meant what the vendors already supplied).
It was at this point that the event occurred which escalated the disputes over Fortran 8X into a "shooting war", and crucially altered the relationship between X3J3 and WG5. The first consequence was clear at the time; this is not hindsight. The second took longer to become evident, but may eventually be seen of longer term importance.
The normal response to failing to achieve an adequate level of support in such circumstances is to review the objections and seek to resolve them if possible in ways which will not alienate support among those in favour of the present proposals. However, the X3J3 response was (as more than one observer said at the time) "to go into panic mode". Despite the ISO group resolution at Bonn, wholesale cuts were made, and the result was dubbed "the compromise plan". Large sections of the draft standard were transferred to an appendix of "suggested extensions" or deleted altogether. The structure that had been so painstakingly built over the last few years had, virtually overnight, shrunk to something much more limited in scope, and now lacking facilities into which many had invested long hours in designing and promoting, and in convincing others of their technical merit. Many inconsistencies were revealed when the consequences of this surgery (or butchery, as some would have it) were examined.
In retrospect, it is hard to understand why the architects of the compromise could not see that the inevitable consequence would be not to speed agreement on the eventual standard, but to delay it.
The valley of bones
Outside X3J3 (and one gathers to some extent within it) the initial reaction to the "compromise plan" was of stunned disbelief, followed in many cases by outrage. Revisionists, of course, who on the whole did not support the view that 8X was getting too large, were horrified at the scale of the cuts. Featurists whose own pet facilities had fallen under the axe were also annoyed. However, it became clear that the main source of objections with any organisational structure for expressing it was WG5 (which the ISO group now finally was).
The source of the resentment was not just the cuts themselves, though probably a majority on WG5 were of revisionist tendency. In addition, many of those who could have accepted some or even most of the cuts resented the way that it had been done, without consultation with the international community. Even without the Bonn resolutions of the previous year, this would have been the case. The Bonn statement warning against substantial downward revision now assumed major importance, being not just a readymade stick, but one given extra weight because X3J3 had chosen to ignore it.
During the summer of 1986, the architects of the "compromise plan" continued to clean up the draft 8X in the reduced form; but it became clear that too many regarded the plan as a capitulation rather than a compromise, for it ever to achieve consensus, the only worthwhile aim of compromise. Wherever compromise lay, if it lay anywhere, it was not here.
At the Halifax (Nova Scotia) meeting of WG5 in the late summer of 1986, one or two of the US delegation attempted to argue that the "compromise" was not really a substantial downward revision; but most X3J3 members seemed ready to admit both that it was, and that WG5 should have been consulted.
The revisionists - their ranks enhanced by aggrieved featurists, assured of substantial support from an international community increasingly assertive of its rights - licked their wounds, regrouped, and started the long haul back. Month by month, lost ground was gradually regained - not all, but enough perhaps to achieve the elusive consensus.
Books do furnish a room
The Halifax meeting of WG5 had passed, by an adequate but not overwhelming majority, that reductions on the scale proposed were tolerable only if this served to expedite the appearance of the standard. Even then, it was fairly clear that this was a forlorn hope. The "compromise" had reduced consensus, not increased it. However, there was much more agreement that things could not go on like this, and that the best hope of progress would be to get a document out for public comment, hoping that the resulting feedback would resolve at least some of the issues.
Even that was hard enough to achieve. Through the rest of 1986 and 1987 successive versions of the draft were produced, and X3J3 members and observers got used, every few weeks, to another bulky package arriving to add to the ever-growing pile. Features were reviewed, some reinstated, some modified to look more like "existing practice" (i.e. what vendors already supplied) in an attempt to achieve genuine compromise. By the Liverpool WG5 meeting in August 1987 the document had reached the stage of being submitted to X3 and SC22 for distribution as a draft proposed standard.
By this time, enough remedial and reconstruction work had been done on the erstwhile "compromise" plan that this again in X3 attracted negative votes from vendor interests. However, WG5 still had a short shopping list of required features. One related to data handling at the bit level, a typical minority featurist requirement which had fallen victim to the "compromise", and believe it or not had similarly failed to gain acceptance over a decade earlier for Fortran 77. Another was free form source code, another casualty but by now almost the touchstone of revisionism.
The new men
While the revisionists had been hard at work retrieving lost ground, the traditionalists had not been idle. Electronic mail and meeting reports carry evidence of attempts to drum up opposition to 8X, in the wake of the failure of the "compromise plan" to achieve the desired effect. Scare stories circulated about 8X not being compatible with Fortran 77, despite that being an explicit design aim.
One prime source of scare stories, for example, was the concept of "deprecating" storage association. Another tale going round was that free source form would invalidate "millions of lines" of existing code. That these scares had no foundation did not matter: as the great Dr Goebbels taught us, such stories do gain credence among people who do not bother to check the facts. If one believes that the end justifies the means, the traditionalists responsible for spreading them were able at the end of 1989 to find their justification.
Though hard evidence is much more difficult to come by, there is also reason to suspect that people alarmed by these stories were encouraged to join X3J3 to defend their interests. (X3 rules make it relatively easy to do this and soon obtain full voting rights, provided the company is prepared to pay a small annual fee, currently $250). But for whatever reason, during the latter part of the 1980s X3J3 grew significantly in size, and most of the new members were of the traditionalist tendency - a factor of importance given X3's requirement of a two thirds majority - and also mostly representing vendors. These new members, as well as not so much on top of technical issues as those who had been working on 8X for a decade or more - understandable and excusable in itself - were also generally unaware of or indifferent to the international dimension, also a factor to prove of importance. X3J3 had always consisted both of members (of all camps, it must be said) who were internationally-minded and who generally attended WG5, and of members who were not. The new men affected both the revisionist/traditionalist balance and the internationalist/nationalist balance.
The international result of the review of the first public draft was that there were several negative votes from member countries of SC22, mostly because of deficiencies, some of which had already been identified by WG5. Individual comments ran into many hundreds, both in USA and outside. The majority of these were negative, on a simple "vote" count, a fact immediately seized on by some of the traditionalist camp as showing that "X3J3 had got it wrong". In fact the negative "votes" consisted of featurist ones ("my pet feature has been left out"), revisionist ones ("the opportunity has been missed to fix this deficiency") and technical ones ("this proposal won't work because ..."), as well as traditionalist ones ("the language is too large/ too revolutionary/ not existing practice/ ..."). Of the traditionalist replies, many were of the blanket form "language too large" or the like, without supporting arguments, and some were virtually or actually exact copies of suggested letters of protest distributed by some of the traditionalists.
Things did not improve when X3J3 got down to considering the public review comments and how to respond to them. Divisions seemed to be deepening, and positions becoming entrenched. At one point, votes were held on five major issues, which between them would have resolved most of the international negative votes. Each one separately won the necessary majority, but when the package as a whole was put forward, it was voted down.
Students of voting methods will not be surprised at this - different coalitions were involved each time. It is an instance of the Condorcet "paradox of voting", which in its simplest form allows, in straight fights, A to beat B, B to beat C, and C to beat A. The consequence, however, was dismay and disarray, and individuals and groups went away to try to come up with complete package proposals.
As the summer of 1988 wore on, numerous plans were advanced and considered, until four remained. Two were traditionalist, and one mildly revisionist. The fourth, produced by five of the most experienced members of X3J3, was the one that came closest to meeting the international comment. However, at its last meeting before WG5 in Paris in September 1988, X3J3 voted down that plan too. At this point, X3J3 itself was close to reaching an internal solution, in the sense of an adequate majority though by no means a consensus. The price of such a solution was failure to address many of the international concerns. While it is possible that many members of X3J3 had overlooked that aspect in the manoeuvrings to build a majority, at the end of that meeting it was clear that this was a conscious decision of the committee. It even explicitly voted that the fourth plan referred to above was not to be submitted to WG5 for consideration, despite protests that X3J3 did not have the right to set WG5's agenda.
Temporary kings
So WG5 met in Paris in September 1988, presented with three alternative plans to meet the comments from the first public review of 8X, none of which came close to meeting the points of concern in the international negative votes. Members of WG5 had previously complained on occasion that X3J3 paid no more attention to the considered national position of an SC22 member body (often, as in the UK, after extensive public consultation) than to a letter from Harvey P. Digweed from Backwater, Iowa. It rapidly became plain that WG5 was not in the mood to play that game any more.
First, WG5 decided to consider the fourth plan which X3J3 had voted should not be submitted to WG5; then it had presentations of all four, after which it decided to waste no more time on two (the two "traditionalist" plans). The architects of the remaining two plans were asked to get together to produce a combined plan to resolve the international negative votes.
While WG5 had in the past expressed views on technical issues, it had never before embarked on specifically technical work, previously regarded as X3J3's prerogative. However, the mood seemed to be, "if X3J3 can't resolve the negative votes, it is up to us to do it".
By the end of an intense week, WG5 had produced the framework of a new 8X standard that was likely to achieve the support of all member countries (except possibly USA); had laid down a timetable for future progress to a second public review; and had declared that the revised Fortran 8X would be called "Fortran 88". This last was mainly a symbolic assertion that "enough is enough", though the sequence of Fortran 66, 77, 88 was appealing in itself.
More than two years had passed since the 1986 "compromise plan", and this time it was the turn of the traditionalists to retire from the battlefield shell-shocked. Recovery was not helped by SC22 broadly endorsing what WG5 had done, and X3 issuing a directive to X3J3 (there was only one dissenting vote) that it should work towards a single national and international standard - "that is, one document". This last phrase was to take on an added significance a year later.
The Boston meeting of X3J3 in November 1988 was a virtually complete capitulation to these pressures, and work towards a second public draft proceeded mainly if not wholly on the lines laid down by WG5. The mood was apparently more one of anti-traditionalism than of positive internationalism, though the effect was the same. On the other hand, some explicit anti-internationalist sentiments had started being openly expressed by a small minority of X3J3 members. The high tide of WG5 pre-eminence can now be seen as the change of sides of IBM, who early in 1989 announced that it was prepared to drop its opposition to Fortran 8X in the interests of achieving general agreement. The WG5 timetable slipped, but that is so familiar a phenomenon in standards making, controversial or not, that it was hardly remarked. The July meeting of WG5 in northern Italy was a low-key affair with the resolution most critical of X3J3 merely urging them to get on and finish the job.
Corridors of power
It was the lull before the next storm, as the Fortran saga took yet another twist. The first hint of what was to come appeared the week after the WG5 meeting. It must have been known the previous week, and some thought it significant that it had not been mentioned to WG5.
X3 rules allow occasional meetings of its committees outside the US mainland, and more than once X3J3 had held such meetings immediately following WG5. This time it was Vienna, and there it was learned that a vendor representative on X3J3, who was also a member of X3, had put forward a proposal to X3's Standards Policy and Requirements Committee (SPARC) that the USA change the terms of reference of the domestic ANSI 8X project from being a revision of Fortran 77 to a collateral standard - "extended" Fortran - while retaining Fortran 77.
Now since 1977 the international policy, reaffirmed and strengthened in 1985, has been that the aim of programming language standardisation should be a single worldwide standard for each language. This move was widely seen - by many in X3J3 as well as WG5 - to run counter to at least the spirit of that international agreement, to which the USA had subscribed, and possibly even to the letter of it. Whether it was the letter as well as the spirit, depended as so often on interpretation. If ISO had one standard but the USA two, was this a breach of the agreement in SC22 to seek "a single worldwide standard" - or, as X3 had put it the previous year, "one document"? Before the standard was finally agreed, there would be a difference in status of the 8X project - a revised standard in ISO, a collateral standard in ANSI. Would that constitute a breach of the agreement?
All this at least suggested that SPARC should recommend consultation with SC22 and WG5 over the proposed change of status - which in ISO would also need the approval of JTC1 were it put forward there.
However, SPARC chose not to see it that way. With only one dissentient, the committee voted to recommend the change of status, which was therefore forwarded to X3 for endorsement. Though SPARC is technically only an advisory committee, it is very much X3's "inner cabinet" and its recommendations are rarely overturned. Apparently convinced by the argument that a substantial body of US users (and some outside) did not want Fortran 8X, X3 endorsed the proposal - coincidentally, the ballot closing just before the Berlin meeting of SC22 in September 1989.
It was undoubtedly true that there was a body of users who simply wanted to preserve their existing investment in Fortran code, but saw their future needs elsewhere - C, Ada or whatever. The traditionalist/vendor group had been assiduous in finding such users and stimulating them to object to 8X - if only by copying a "form letter". During the second public review, one went so far as to urge people "you don't have to buy a copy of the draft standard to object, you don't even have to read it ..." This prompted a scathing response on the electronic network from an X3J3 member - a vendor representative, incidentally - remarking on the standards of professionalism and codes of conduct which should be observed in the standards world.
However, none of these needs meant that Fortran 77 had to be retained as a standard - the long continuance of support for Cobol 74 and even Cobol 68 after the appearance of Cobol 85 was proof of that. While the requirement remained, vendors continuing to support Fortran 77 would find a market. Nor was retention of Fortran 77 the only option. The possibility of specifying within the standard a subset of Fortran 8X of more limited power had been raised from time to time earlier, and though the general view in X3J3 and WG5 was that subsets were undesirable (a long road had been travelled since core-plus-modules), nevertheless WG5 at Paris 1988 had agreed that they could be considered if all else failed to achieve consensus.
There are strong grounds for believing that the true motivation for the move - which, though purporting to be on behalf of users, had been promoted by a group of vendors - was that US Federal procurements are normally based on conformance to standards, where standards exist. The clear implication was that vendors would aim to get procurements to specify "Fortran", but leaving them with the choice of which of the two Fortrans to supply. The conformance rules of Fortran 77 are so weak that the vendors could then supply Fortran 77 implementations with vendor-specific extensions which were incompatible with Fortran 8X. The net result would be to wreck all post-Fortran 77 standardisation.
At Berlin, SC22 called on those concerned to work to try to reconcile the conflicting positions on the status of 8X and the retention of Fortran 77. The US delegation, however, stuck to the "party line" that this was a purely domestic US matter, and that if 8X was the same in ISO and ANSI (though differently named and of different status) then the US standards body had fulfilled its international obligations. In strict legal terms, the retention of Fortran 77 was indeed a domestic matter; USA or any other country had the right so to do. In the real world of international interdependence, the continuing existence of Fortran 77 as a US standard had more than domestic US implications.
These manoeuvrings aroused more resentment even than the ill-fated "compromise plan" of 1986. One factor was that this should happen when final agreement had seemed at last in sight. Another was that the 1985 "compromise" had at least been devised inside the Fortran community, and dealt with there - whereas now, a member of the community, unable to persuade his colleagues on X3J3 and WG5, had sought to get them overruled by higher (and less well-informed) authority, and regardless of the international consequences.
After SC22 in Berlin there was still some hope that X3 might revise its views - there had been enough dissent to the retention of Fortran 77 to require a "reconsideration" vote, and in view of expressed international concerns it was hoped that there would be second thoughts, at least to give time for negotiations.
It was not to be. When X3 met to reconsider, the attitude to consulting X3J3 seemed to be a mixture of "we know what X3J3 thinks" and "we're in charge". The international dimension was dismissed by repeating that it was a purely domestic matter, disregarding clear evidence of international concern and alarm. When asked who believed that Fortran 77 was a subset of Fortran 8X, only four hands went up. One of the four, a long-standing X3J3 member, tried to explain, but someone else said "everything else we've heard suggests that Fortran 77 is not a proper subset of Fortran 8X" and that was the end of the discussion. X3 reaffirmed its decision.
Ironically, a third X3J3 and X3 member who was present later concluded a lengthy reply to the torrent of electronic complaints with "all X3 did was say that Fortran 77 would remain a proper subset of Fortran 8X and in the US only" (my italics). Whatever one makes of this inconsistency, what it was that X3 thought it was doing is beside the point. What matters is that, while Fortran 77 is a subset of Fortran 8X, vendor implementations of Fortran 77 are in general very much not subset implementations of Fortran 8X, nor is there much evidence that they have any intention of making them so.
Annoyance with X3, and the X3J3 members who had engineered this coup, was considerable in the Fortran community, even among X3J3 members outside the revisionist camp. The complete reversal of attitude by X3 from the previous year, amounting virtually to a 180-degree U-turn, has not as yet been satisfactorily explained.
Hearing secret harmonies
The atmosphere of the special additional meeting of WG5 held in London in March 1990 to review the situation was one of determination rather than recrimination. As at Paris eighteen months earlier, it rolled up its collective sleeves and went to work on the draft, which was now dubbed "Fortran 90". Rather than just reviewing it and asking X3J3 to make changes, it made changes - in effect saying to X3J3 "here's what the ISO Fortran 90 standard will be, please check it for accuracy" leaving X3J3 to bring the ANSI Extended Fortran standard into line. To be sure, it was not put quite as starkly as that, and some issues left unresolved at the end of the week were referred to X3J3 to deal with. However, it was quite clear that WG5 (which, remember, contains a good many X3J3 members, who at this meeting took the lead in the technical work) would take a very dim view if X3J3 did not basically accept what had been done.
As this is being written (June 1990) X3J3 has indeed completed a final draft and this is in the last stages of being prepared for publication from ISO headquarters in Geneva as a Draft International Standard (DIS) - after which the technical content is effectively frozen with changes limited to correction of typographical and other errors. Fortran 90 does look to be on its way - though long term survivors of this saga will still be crossing their fingers.
So, are the problems over? Hardly; there are too many unresolved issues:
However, there is little evidence of any will to do that, and good grounds for fearing that any hint of revising Fortran 77 will be seized upon by some interests to undermine rather than support Fortran 90. While this unhappy state of affairs continues, if there are any harmonies to be heard, they are indeed secret ones.
Last things This account of the Fortran saga has been written from the point of view of a UK member of WG5 and of an unreconstructed and unashamed revisionist. That no doubt has been evident! Since the author is no Borges, the saga is much simplified but it is hoped that the main events have been covered even if not everyone will agree with the interpretations and views expressed - which are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the UK at WG5 and SC22 level. David Muxworthy, Lawrie Schonfelder and Loren Meissner provided valuable comments and corrections of factual errors on earlier versions, which are gratefully acknowledged, but they should in no way be held responsible for the views expressed nor for any further errors, which are the author's own. An article based on material drawn from an earlier version appeared in Computer Weekly on 3 May 1990.
[1] W.S Brainerd, in chapter 2 (Fortran) of Programming language standardisation, ed. I.D. Hill and B.L. Meek, Ellis Horwood 1980, p. 34
[2] W.S Brainerd, The programming language standards scene II: Fortran, Computers and Standards Vol 2 Nos 2-3, 1983, p. 76
Copyright © 1990 by the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. Please click here for full ACM copyright notice.
Note added in 1995: despite the pessimism shown in the Hearing secret harmonies passage, Fortran 90 was indeed published in 1991 as ISO/IEC 1539:1991, the US standard is the same, and moves are in progress to withdraw the parallel US standard for Fortran 77.
WWW page prepared by Brian Meek, 31 July 1995, updated 22 October 1996