Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!umix!umich!mibte!gamma!ulysses!thumper!faline!bellcore!tness7!tness1!sugar!ssd
From: ssd@sugar.UUCP (Scott Denham)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: FORTRAN horrors (character init
Message-ID: <1890@sugar.UUCP>
Date: 26 Apr 88 05:20:58 GMT
References: <574@a.UUCP> <44400019@hcx2> <1405@microsoft.UUCP>
Organization: Sugar Land UNIX - Houston, TX
Lines: 25
Summary: PC FORTRAN ?? You bet!!

In article <1405@microsoft.UUCP>, bobal@microsoft.UUCP (Bob Allison) writes:
 < text deleted >
> So I am really worried that Fortran 8X is going to come out and all the
> sudden everyone is going to be very surprised at the results, which is
> one of the reasons I've gone through this long (boring) discussion.  If this
> is really what people want, that is fine with me: I just don't want to be
> given grief about it later when this is what you get.
> 
> So anyway, does anyone on the net do any FORTRAN programming on a PC? 
> 
> Bob Allison


Unquestionably YES, and lots of it!!  Though I am in general favorably
disposed towards many of the things in 8X, I too have difficulty seeing
how these sorts of features can be "reasonably" implemented on a PC-class
machine. We run applications on both IBM 3090 vector mainframes AND PC-
based workstations ; not usually the SAME applications, but many, many
of the support subroutines are common to both environments, and we are
trying hard to make that even more the case. That leads to the proverbial
rock & hard place dilemma - we want language features that help us to 
easily exploit the mainframe environment (E.G. vector syntax) but want
to maintain PC portability. Our "standard" PC has become the 386-20 with
2 meg or so, so maybe technology will dig us out of this one before 8x
digs us in any deeper!!