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From: G.ZEEP%DEEP-THOUGHT@eddie.mit.edu (Wang Zeep)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: VAX Fortran/Ultrix
Message-ID: <1850@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 17-Mar-86 20:23:03 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.1850
Posted: Mon Mar 17 20:23:03 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Mar-86 05:24:52 EST
Sender: news@brl-smoke.ARPA
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I have a feeling one reason the VAX FORTRAN/ULTRIX is not out yet is that 
Ultrix 1.2 is not out.  I was told (2nd-hand) it requires 1.2 to work, and will
not work under 4.2/4.3.  Now, this could be wrong, but as it was told to 
somebody who could not switch to 1.2, it resulted in a total loss of sale.

Prices I was originally told would be identical to the license for VMS FORTRAN
for the same sized VAX under VMS.  The only literature I have was snarfed, nth
generation copy from December 1985.  I did see a glossy brochure in February,
but I lost it. [dumb]  Performance increases were claimed to be 150-500%, with
compilation speed increases of 200%.  It mentioned C and f77 routines could be
included with a "jacket-building" system to fix up calling conventions.

It sounds to me like it is a very direct port of the VMS FORTRAN, with only the
I/O details changed.  It did say it could be used under one of the symbolic
debuggers, but I can't remember which (adb or dbx).  If it is just VMS FORTRAN,
I'll still want it.  Most of FORTRAN programs are simple number-crunchers
which do not need to be 100% UNIX compatible.  As long as they can dump 
numbers to a text file, they'll be just fine.


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