This mail is a proposal for MPI 2.1, ballot 4. NOTE: This mail is a slight re-formatting of http://www.mpi-forum.org/mail_archive/mpi-21/2008/01/msg00119.html to be in ballot proposal format. In MPI 2.0, page 9, lines 17-18 state: "MPI provides certain predefined opaque objects and predefined, static handles to these objects. The user must not free such objects. In C+ +, this is enforced by declaring the handles to these predefined objects to be {\tt static const}." The "static" in the last sentence should be deleted. Rationale: When using namespaces, all the MPI symbols are in the namespace and objects do not need to be static in a singleton object for the MPI class. Specifically: they are static *only* if you are using the singleton object for the MPI class. The context for the statement is talking about the constant quality; the "static" is superfluous -- describing whether "static" is necessary or not would be too much for this section. -- Jeff Squyres Cisco Systems