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From: William M. Klein on 7 Jan 2008 12:03
For those interested, the latest (WD 1.9) working draft of the COBOL revision
(2011??) is now available for download. Go to:
http://www.cobolstandard.info/j4/index.htm

and find
20xx- Base Document for 20xx standard December 2007 (Nelson)

--
Bill Klein
wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com


From: tim Josling on 7 Jan 2008 13:22
On Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:03:26 +0000, William M. Klein wrote:

> For those interested, the latest (WD 1.9) working draft of the COBOL revision
> (2011??) is now available for download. Go to:
> http://www.cobolstandard.info/j4/index.htm
>
> and find
> 20xx- Base Document for 20xx standard December 2007 (Nelson)
>

Bill,

What is this? Is this a first cut of another new edition of COBOL?

Regards,
Tim Josling
From: William M. Klein on 7 Jan 2008 15:18
Hi Tim, (I have also seen your posts on the OpenCobol list),
Welcome back to the wonderful world of everychanging, never-used" COBOL
Standards.

Since the 2002 ISO Standard was approved, even though no one has (and probably
no one ever will) implement it, there has been and continues to the "usual work"
on doing the NEXT revision. What you can get from that download is working
draft 1.9 of that work. At a J4 teleconference scheduled for Jan 17, J4 will
decide if the revision is ready to forward to WG4 (ISO-ish group) for
publication as a "CD" (Committee Draft) within ISO.

See:
http://www.cobolstandard.info/j4/files/07-0183.doc

for the revision schedule (and notice that they are already at a 1 month - and
probably more - delay) ending up with a new Standard in 2011, September - just a
little over 3 years before Pete predicts the end of "COBOL vendors as we know
them <G>"


--
Bill Klein
wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com
"tim Josling" <tejgcc_nospam(a)westnet.com.au> wrote in message
news:13o4rea9cepfk91(a)corp.supernews.com...
> On Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:03:26 +0000, William M. Klein wrote:
>
>> For those interested, the latest (WD 1.9) working draft of the COBOL revision
>> (2011??) is now available for download. Go to:
>> http://www.cobolstandard.info/j4/index.htm
>>
>> and find
>> 20xx- Base Document for 20xx standard December 2007 (Nelson)
>>
>
> Bill,
>
> What is this? Is this a first cut of another new edition of COBOL?
>
> Regards,
> Tim Josling


From: tim Josling on 7 Jan 2008 20:26
On Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:18:10 +0000, William M. Klein wrote:

> Hi Tim, (I have also seen your posts on the OpenCobol list),
> Welcome back to the wonderful world of everychanging, never-used" COBOL
> Standards.
>
> Since the 2002 ISO Standard was approved, even though no one has (and probably
> no one ever will) implement it, there has been and continues to the "usual work"
> on doing the NEXT revision. What you can get from that download is working
> draft 1.9 of that work. At a J4 teleconference scheduled for Jan 17, J4 will
> decide if the revision is ready to forward to WG4 (ISO-ish group) for
> publication as a "CD" (Committee Draft) within ISO.
>
> See:
> http://www.cobolstandard.info/j4/files/07-0183.doc
>
> for the revision schedule (and notice that they are already at a 1 month - and
> probably more - delay) ending up with a new Standard in 2011, September - just a
> little over 3 years before Pete predicts the end of "COBOL vendors as we know
> them <G>"
>
>

Thanks Bill,

Any idea what they are planning to add? Or is that all up for grabs?

Tim Josling
From: William M. Klein on 7 Jan 2008 20:45

"tim Josling" <tejgcc_nospam(a)westnet.com.au> wrote in message
news:13o5ka6kskuhqf4(a)corp.supernews.com...
> On Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:18:10 +0000, William M. Klein wrote:
>
<snip>
>
> Any idea what they are planning to add? Or is that all up for grabs?
>
> Tim Josling

The (almost funny) most interesting thing that the next revision will have is a
"return" of OPTIONAL features. This means, that for example, VALIDATE and
REPORT WRITER will be OPTIONAL in the 20xx COBOL standard.

Some of the major "enhancements" are:
- IEEE 754r defined floating point (decimal and binary) (includes some new
ROUNDED options)
- ANY LENGTH elementary items (optional)
- dynamic tables (optional)
- intrinsic functions for formatting and de-formatting date/time
- structured constants

Originally, it was going to include the 3 TR (Technical Reports) that have
"passed" - but now it looks as if it won't these are;were:

- (OO) Finalizer (I think this is now dead)
- Native XML (similar to MF's current implementation, not IBM's - future up for
grabs)
- OO collection classes (too much, too late, I don't think this will go
anywhere now)

--
Bill Klein
wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com


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