Manage updates with the Download AppSilverfrost FTN95 User Reviews
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"222"
Version: Silverfrost FTN95 5.10
Pros
333
Cons
444
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"Good, but with some bugs; help file must be updated"
Version: Silverfrost FTN95 4.9
Pros
A good Fortran compiler. It took without complains all my code written for g77.
You can write GUI programs with FTN95 invoking ClearWin+ library. Programming is much easely than with pure Win32 API functions, but it has it own troubles.
Cons
Plato IDE supplied with FTN95 is definitely buggy. It seams that you couldn't really debug your program otherwise than incorporating FTN95 into MS Visual Studio. Plato very often freezes during debugging.
Help file must be updated. Some examples taken from this file were regarded as erroneous during compilation; all these examples were on GUI programming with ClearWin+. Compiler often overlooks errors in code invoking ClearWin+, and it results in runtime errors.
ClearWin+ functions has very strange syntax of short meaningless words like %ta, %tb, %tc, %th, %ti, %tl, %ts, %tt, %tv, %tx. And a lot of such a stuff starting on any other letter! Yes, it is more easy than Win API, some times VERY EASY, but... definitely MAD! Even the compiler couldn't understand all ClearWin+ syntax and couldn't catch all errors.
Description of ClearWin+ functions in help file is some times too brief to be intelligible. For example, I was completely unable to understand the usage of radiobuttons in ClearWin+, especially the usage of ganged ones. Unfortunately, there are no examples on radiobattons within the program sources supplied with FTN95.
Nevertheless, I'd recommend to download and try this stuff!
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"FORTRAN if you MUST"
Version: Silverfrost FTN95 4.9
Pros
FORTRAN is an antique language- indeed it is one of the very first high level languages. Generations of engineers and scientist have written FORTRAN code that is still useful today.
If you absolutely MUST use FORTRAN, then the SilverFrost compiler is one of the very few FORTRAN compilers available for win32 and the only one that I know of that is free.
Of the several FORTRAN programs that I have, they all compiled and ran without too much bother. The only corrections I had to make were to open statements.
I was pleasantly surprised by the speed of these programs. The programs are calculation intensive and used to take quite some time to run but on todays multi giga-hertz processors, they perform very well.
The only reason to use FORTRAN that I can think of is legacy code. SilverFrost FTN is FORTRAN95 so you may have to tweak older code to make it run. In general well formed FORTRAN77 seems to do OK. A quick compile will highlight trouble spots.
This FORTRAN rates an extra star simply because it is available.
Cons
It's FORTRAN.
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