Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!decwrl!ucbvax!DMZRZU71.BITNET!Ritzert
From: Ritzert@DMZRZU71.BITNET
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Again: AC-Fortran and Erlgraph
Message-ID: <891203201104.964118@DMZRZU71-UNI-MAINZ--GERMANY>
Date: 3 Dec 89 20:11:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 51

JOHNBARNES@ENH.NIST.GOV writes:

   A collegue of mine has persuaded me to try Prospero Fortran because
   it supports libraries from mixed languages.  Prospero C and Prospero...

It is not too difficult to do mixed language programming with Absoft
Fortran. Since both the dynamic and the static linker can use files in
ST executable format You only have to run the foreign object files
through the corresponding linker to transfer their format to that of an
ST executable. Then You can use it with the Absoft linker or link it
dynamically. I've don this with some routines written for the Turbo (C)
Assembler which produces objects in DRI format. I am not quite sure but
I remember having succeeded also with GNU objects. My question toward
mixed language programming aimed more toward using someting else
together with GNU C.

   I don't know whether you have invesigated Prospero Fortran or not. If
   anyone has had contrary experience I would hope that they would speak
   up.

I've heared that Prospero also has difficulties with that huge amount of
routines. Anyway, the job is possible with both compilers. I've seen
ports of early versions of the package for both.

   Could you please describe Erlgraph?  I am keenly interested in a good
   FORTRAN graphics package and I might be willing to help with
   development and/or testing.

Erlgraph is a set of graphics routines written in Fortran. It is
intended for people writing their own graphical applications on batch
oriented mainframes. It has been developed at the University of
Erlangen, West Germany, on a Cyber running NOS. It is quite comfortable
to use but there are more powerful (and more expensive) products on the
market. It is distributed as a commercial product. Should be not cheap.
As a consequence, I can't give away the thing although I really would
like to do so. Sorry.
We have got a sublicence of our computer center's licence free of
charge and port it to our machines since the computer center has only
the VAX, Multics, and PC versions. A version for the ST is available,
written for Prospero (side question: is Absoft still alive? Even the
german distributor has no information). But we don't want to buy a
second Fortran compiler for the ST especially since the Absoft produces
better code and the 68881 library of Prospero is completely overpriced
--- 200,- DM for a few simple routines doing mainly cpu/coprocessor
communication. I have written my own library for Absoft.

Michael Ritzert
mjr@dmzrzu71.bitnet

Leute, die behaupten, ihre Programme seien fehlerfrei, l"ugen auch bei
anderen Gelegenheiten.