The ZIPPED version of the PDF which is being sent to ISO for an FCD (Final Committee Draft) is available at:
http://www.cobolstandard.info/wg4-owg1/files/29-0117.zip

In addition, you can get/see
OWG-1 29-0119 Project Editor Change Proposal #15 (CD 1.2 -> FCD 1.0)
and
OWG-1 29-0118 Combined Change Proposal #14 (CD 1.2 -> FCD 1.0)

from
http://www.cobolstandard.info/wg4-owg1/document.html[/url]

Also the document, "OWG-1 29-0092 WG4 Responses to 20xx CD Ballot Comments" at
http://www.cobolstandard.info/wg4-owg1/files/29-0092.doc

provides responses to the comments received during the last ISO (CD) review period.

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If you have the time, effort, AND DESIRE, to review these documents, I suggest that you do so soon. You should then contact your national Standard's body to find out how to submit comments on this document. As I understand such things (and I could be mistaken) this is the "last" time that (major?) technical changes can be made.

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NOTE: If your national body does not plan on participating in this review cycle, you can also contact the PL22.4 (formerly J4) Chair and suggest that the US submit any comments that you have.

I have 2 points.

1) Table 13 - Procedural statements should have "UNTIL" in the Conditional phrase column for the PERFORM statement.

2) I like the old Ryan McFarland Display line 20 column 20 with ... dialect. (Were they the ones that invented it?) I like the with options on the Accept / Display statements themselves. I would do away with the screen section. Also, there is no SIZE option. Under RM one could do this to erase 30 characters from the screen at line 10 col 10.



This comes in handy when you're making pop up boxes that need to be displayed and then erased. (I was using RM on a TI990 to do character based pop up boxes before Windows was invented.)

Most (all?) of what is in the draft revision for screen handling (enhanced Accept/Display) was in the '02 Standard and was developed during the 1990's.

As far as the non-Screen Section variations, they were considered and rejected. (That was over 10 years ago, so I don't recall why).

RM COBOL actually had LESS robust screen handling than AcuCOBOL developed. However, the ANSI/ISO Standard was adopted from the X/Open version which was a "subset" of what RM, AcuCOBOL, and MF (and some Japanese) compilers had.

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PERFORM UNTIL is NOT a "conditional" statement in the COBOL sense of this term. You are allowed, for example, to code



You canNOT use a conditional satement where that PERFORM is coded, for example



(Of course, if you add an "END-WRITE" that would turn the conditional WRITE to an imperative.