On Sep 18, 2008, at 5:02 PM, Aleksandar Donev wrote:

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I also vote #1, but I'm probably the least informed on this thread as to what real Fortran programmers want. Perhaps this straw vote should use preference-based ranking. I am not opposed to #1. I don't see the difference between 1 and 2. I dislike 3--- generic overloading should be reserved for meaningful uses (such as changing argument lists), not this kind of silliness, IMO.

Fair enough. I agree; #1 and #2 are pretty much the same. I prefer the MPI_* prefix on the name, but only because we have a precedent for that already. I like the fact that implementations would have a mechanism to increase the size in future versions, probably without harming user codes (this is part of the problem with increasing the count size in the C bindings). #3 is also icky, but it would prevent providers having to ship 2 libraries. I dislike #4 (i.e., the current state of today) because it effectively introduces an ambiguity in the interface (because compilers can adjust the default size of INTEGER). Sure, we providers *can* ship multiple libraries, but it's pretty weird that we would have to do so. Fixing the width to some value -- any value -- would remove this ambiguity and create firm interface contracts that don't change with specific compiler options. It seems like this comes back down to the whole "multiple language interoperability" set of issues again. :-) Just my $0.00000000001. -- Jeff Squyres Cisco Systems