Hi, the latest standalone compiler appears to integrated with VS
properly, but I don't find any help function (under HELP). Is it hidden
somewhere or just not supported?

On 1/22/2024 4:29 PM, Gary Scott wrote:
> Hi, the latest standalone compiler appears to integrated with VS
> properly, but I don't find any help function (under HELP).  Is it hidden
> somewhere or just not supported?

I cannot get Intellisense or function lookup to work either using the
community version of VS2019.

Lynn

On 1/23/2024 3:31 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
> On 1/22/2024 4:29 PM, Gary Scott wrote:
>> Hi, the latest standalone compiler appears to integrated with VS
>> properly, but I don't find any help function (under HELP).  Is it
>> hidden somewhere or just not supported?
>
> I cannot get Intellisense or function lookup to work either using the
> community version of VS2019.
>
> Lynn
>
I'm presently researching. It appears you have to manually download zip
files and manually target to an obscure directory and extract the zip
files to that directory...sheesh...used to be so much better/turn key.

On 1/23/2024 3:48 PM, Gary Scott wrote:
> On 1/23/2024 3:31 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>> On 1/22/2024 4:29 PM, Gary Scott wrote:
>>> Hi, the latest standalone compiler appears to integrated with VS
>>> properly, but I don't find any help function (under HELP).  Is it
>>> hidden somewhere or just not supported?
>>
>> I cannot get Intellisense or function lookup to work either using the
>> community version of VS2019.
>>
>> Lynn
>>
> I'm presently researching.  It appears you have to manually download zip
> files and manually target to an obscure directory and extract the zip
> files to that directory...sheesh...used to be so much better/turn key.
OK, I've successfully set a bookmark to extracted folder in chrome.
How, 1998 of them...:(

On 1/23/2024 3:48 PM, Gary Scott wrote:
> On 1/23/2024 3:31 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>> On 1/22/2024 4:29 PM, Gary Scott wrote:
>>> Hi, the latest standalone compiler appears to integrated with VS
>>> properly, but I don't find any help function (under HELP).  Is it
>>> hidden somewhere or just not supported?
>>
>> I cannot get Intellisense or function lookup to work either using the
>> community version of VS2019.
>>
>> Lynn
>>
> I'm presently researching.  It appears you have to manually download zip
> files and manually target to an obscure directory and extract the zip
> files to that directory...sheesh...used to be so much better/turn key.

I would really, really, really like to open a file that I am calling in
a subroutine (open file is greyed out on the right mouse menu) and have
intellisense tell me something when I hover over the call. Such as:

CALL DSDBSE (2,ISET,NDXPH,NDXP,NDXT,NDXCOM,
* NDXZ,NDXFSS,NDXPHI, NDXVOL)

The integration is not complete. I have 3,000 subroutines in one DLL
and 5,000 subroutines in another DLL. Having to look up a called
subroutine manually is a pain. But, if the compiler notes that a
subroutine has a problem, you can double click on the message and get
the subroutine to open. Weird.

Thanks,
Lynn

On 1/23/2024 5:59 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
> On 1/23/2024 3:48 PM, Gary Scott wrote:
>> On 1/23/2024 3:31 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>>> On 1/22/2024 4:29 PM, Gary Scott wrote:
>>>> Hi, the latest standalone compiler appears to integrated with VS
>>>> properly, but I don't find any help function (under HELP).  Is it
>>>> hidden somewhere or just not supported?
>>>
>>> I cannot get Intellisense or function lookup to work either using the
>>> community version of VS2019.
>>>
>>> Lynn
>>>
>> I'm presently researching.  It appears you have to manually download
>> zip files and manually target to an obscure directory and extract the
>> zip files to that directory...sheesh...used to be so much better/turn
>> key.
>
> I would really, really, really like to open a file that I am calling in
> a subroutine (open file is greyed out on the right mouse menu) and have
> intellisense tell me something when I hover over the call.  Such as:
>
>             CALL DSDBSE (2,ISET,NDXPH,NDXP,NDXT,NDXCOM,
>      *                   NDXZ,NDXFSS,NDXPHI, NDXVOL)
>
> The integration is not complete.  I have 3,000 subroutines in one DLL
> and 5,000 subroutines in another DLL.  Having to look up a called
> subroutine manually is a pain.  But, if the compiler notes that a
> subroutine has a problem, you can double click on the message and get
> the subroutine to open.  Weird.
>
> Thanks,
> Lynn
>
I'm pretty sure they don't understand the meaning of "IDE integration"
any more.

On 1/23/2024 6:30 PM, Gary Scott wrote:
> On 1/23/2024 5:59 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>> On 1/23/2024 3:48 PM, Gary Scott wrote:
>>> On 1/23/2024 3:31 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>>>> On 1/22/2024 4:29 PM, Gary Scott wrote:
>>>>> Hi, the latest standalone compiler appears to integrated with VS
>>>>> properly, but I don't find any help function (under HELP).  Is it
>>>>> hidden somewhere or just not supported?
>>>>
>>>> I cannot get Intellisense or function lookup to work either using
>>>> the community version of VS2019.
>>>>
>>>> Lynn
>>>>
>>> I'm presently researching.  It appears you have to manually download
>>> zip files and manually target to an obscure directory and extract the
>>> zip files to that directory...sheesh...used to be so much better/turn
>>> key.
>>
>> I would really, really, really like to open a file that I am calling
>> in a subroutine (open file is greyed out on the right mouse menu) and
>> have intellisense tell me something when I hover over the call.  Such as:
>>
>>              CALL DSDBSE (2,ISET,NDXPH,NDXP,NDXT,NDXCOM,
>>       *                   NDXZ,NDXFSS,NDXPHI, NDXVOL)
>>
>> The integration is not complete.  I have 3,000 subroutines in one DLL
>> and 5,000 subroutines in another DLL.  Having to look up a called
>> subroutine manually is a pain.  But, if the compiler notes that a
>> subroutine has a problem, you can double click on the message and get
>> the subroutine to open.  Weird.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Lynn
>>
> I'm pretty sure they don't understand the meaning of "IDE integration"
> any more.
Of course, MS doesn't make it so easy :(

On Tue, 23 Jan 2024 17:59:59 -0600, Lynn McGuire wrote:

> CALL DSDBSE (2,ISET,NDXPH,NDXP,NDXT,NDXCOM,
> * NDXZ,NDXFSS,NDXPHI, NDXVOL)

Are people still stuck with 6-letter names? I thought we left that behind
with FORTRAN 66 ...

On Tue, 23 Jan 2024 18:30:12 -0600, Gary Scott wrote:

> I'm pretty sure they don't understand the meaning of "IDE integration"
> any more.

Is that integration with your IDE development environment?

On 1/24/2024 6:20 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Jan 2024 18:30:12 -0600, Gary Scott wrote:
>
>> I'm pretty sure they don't understand the meaning of "IDE integration"
>> any more.
>
> Is that integration with your IDE development environment?
Visual Studio

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> schrieb:
> On Tue, 23 Jan 2024 17:59:59 -0600, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>
>> CALL DSDBSE (2,ISET,NDXPH,NDXP,NDXT,NDXCOM,
>> * NDXZ,NDXFSS,NDXPHI, NDXVOL)
>
> Are people still stuck with 6-letter names? I thought we left that behind
> with FORTRAN 66 ...

Fortran 90 relaxed that requirement, although many compilers allowed it before.

On 1/24/2024 6:20 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Jan 2024 17:59:59 -0600, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>
>> CALL DSDBSE (2,ISET,NDXPH,NDXP,NDXT,NDXCOM,
>> * NDXZ,NDXFSS,NDXPHI, NDXVOL)
>
> Are people still stuck with 6-letter names? I thought we left that behind
> with FORTRAN 66 ...

Much Fortran code was written under the F66 rules until the late 1980s
if you supported multiple platforms (we supported ten platforms in the
1980s). You can update it to longer names at your own peril.

Lynn

On Thu, 25 Jan 2024 15:31:51 -0600, Lynn McGuire wrote:

> Much Fortran code was written under the F66 rules until the late 1980s
> if you supported multiple platforms (we supported ten platforms in the
> 1980s).

Why did it take vendors so long to catch up to FORTRAN 77?

By the way, I thought the limit on identifier length had been lifted in
FORTRAN 77, but I was wrong: it took until Fortran 90 to raise the limit
to 31.

> You can update it to longer names at your own peril.

Why is that still the case? Longer names have been allowed for going back
about a third of a century now.

In <uovrpj$2okd6$2@dont-email.me> Lawrence D'Oliveiro:

[Snip...]

> Why is that still the case?
> Longer names have been allowed for going back
> about a third of a century now.

Suppose you're in charge of CERN, and responsibile for integrating
2 bazillion lines of particle physics code in libraries resembling
the Tower of Babel.

Chances are very good you have this tattooed on your forehead:

IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT.

--
Regards, Weird (Harold Stevens) * IMPORTANT EMAIL INFO FOLLOWS *
Pardon any bogus email addresses (wookie) in place for spambots.
Really, it's (wyrd) at att, dotted with net. * DO NOT SPAM IT. *
I toss GoogleGroup (http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/).

On 1/26/2024 3:50 AM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> Why did it take vendors so long to catch up to FORTRAN 77?

What makes you think that? VAX-11 FORTRAN V2 (1980) fully supported
FORTRAN 77 (published 1978); I was responsible for adding the few
remaining run-time features. I know there were other vendors with full
F77 compilers in about the same time.
--
Steve Lionel
ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 (Fortran) Convenor
Retired Intel Fortran developer/support
Email: firstname at firstnamelastname dot com
Twitter: @DoctorFortran
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevelionel
Blog: https://stevelionel.com/drfortran
WG5: https://wg5-fortran.org

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> schrieb:
> On Thu, 25 Jan 2024 15:31:51 -0600, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>
>> Much Fortran code was written under the F66 rules until the late 1980s
>> if you supported multiple platforms (we supported ten platforms in the
>> 1980s).
>
> Why did it take vendors so long to catch up to FORTRAN 77?

Bell Labs Fortran f77 appeared in August 1978, can't get much
faster than that.

At bitsavers, I find a manuals for VS Fortran which mention a
first release in February 1981.

A Cray manual from 1984 (SR-0009J_CFT_Reference_Dec84.pdf) mentiones
Fortran 77 compliance for August 1981.

Steve Lionel already reported about VAX Fortran in 1980.

> By the way, I thought the limit on identifier length had been lifted in
> FORTRAN 77, but I was wrong: it took until Fortran 90 to raise the limit
> to 31.

It was just a very commen extension, and would bite you if you
used, for example, a Fujitsu compiler, which still enforced it,
after doing development on VS Fortran...

Where Fortran really lost out was in the decade+ between the FORTRAN
77 and Fortran 90. C was gaining traction, and scientists and
engineers learned about the benefits of dynamic memory allocation
and structs.

Fortran 90 where it went wrong - standard was very late, the
implementations came late (with the exception of NAG, which was
very fast), and g77 (which was part of the gcc suite) was F77.

On 1/26/2024 2:50 AM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Thu, 25 Jan 2024 15:31:51 -0600, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>
>> Much Fortran code was written under the F66 rules until the late 1980s
>> if you supported multiple platforms (we supported ten platforms in the
>> 1980s).
>
> Why did it take vendors so long to catch up to FORTRAN 77?
>
> By the way, I thought the limit on identifier length had been lifted in
> FORTRAN 77, but I was wrong: it took until Fortran 90 to raise the limit
> to 31.
>
>> You can update it to longer names at your own peril.
>
> Why is that still the case? Longer names have been allowed for going back
> about a third of a century now.
Harris VOS Fortran (~1980) had a lot of extensions beyond F77 that
eventually went into F90 (long procedure/variable names (63 chars), free
form source, full complement of end statements, async IO (although a
different form), "Purdue" bit intrinsics (1753), and many others). They
were way ahead of the standard, but there's always risk in adding
extensions. These were however essential to make the systems usable for
real-time programming (in addition to program priority control, process
initiation/termination, hardware interrupt handling/processing, shared
memory access and control, etc.)

Harold Stevens <wookie@aspen.localdomain> schrieb:
> In <uovrpj$2okd6$2@dont-email.me> Lawrence D'Oliveiro:
>
> [Snip...]
>
>> Why is that still the case?
>> Longer names have been allowed for going back
>> about a third of a century now.
>
> Suppose you're in charge of CERN, and responsibile for integrating
> 2 bazillion lines of particle physics code in libraries resembling
> the Tower of Babel.

Then you have about the chance of a snowball in a Supernova of
avoiding name conflicts in your subroutines and COMMON blocks
if you stick to six-letter identifiers.

> Chances are very good you have this tattooed on your forehead:
>
> IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT.

And if you don't understand what it does, would you trust it
enough to publish a paper with? :-)

On 1/26/2024 1:25 PM, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> Harold Stevens <wookie@aspen.localdomain> schrieb:
>> In <uovrpj$2okd6$2@dont-email.me> Lawrence D'Oliveiro:
>>
>> [Snip...]
>>
>>> Why is that still the case?
>>> Longer names have been allowed for going back
>>> about a third of a century now.
>>
>> Suppose you're in charge of CERN, and responsibile for integrating
>> 2 bazillion lines of particle physics code in libraries resembling
>> the Tower of Babel.
>
> Then you have about the chance of a snowball in a Supernova of
> avoiding name conflicts in your subroutines and COMMON blocks
> if you stick to six-letter identifiers.
>
I hear this a lot here, but we had a very strong and unique, consistent
naming convention for procedures and variables (many millions of lines
of code). I'm sure it happened, but I never came across an issue with
naming conflicts specifically. Misunderstanding what a particular
procedure actually was for, yes, but that happens even with verbosely
named procedures, especially if the documentation/help system is
substandard.

On 1/26/2024 2:50 AM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Thu, 25 Jan 2024 15:31:51 -0600, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>
>> Much Fortran code was written under the F66 rules until the late 1980s
>> if you supported multiple platforms (we supported ten platforms in the
>> 1980s).
>
> Why did it take vendors so long to catch up to FORTRAN 77?
>
> By the way, I thought the limit on identifier length had been lifted in
> FORTRAN 77, but I was wrong: it took until Fortran 90 to raise the limit
> to 31.
>
>> You can update it to longer names at your own peril.
>
> Why is that still the case? Longer names have been allowed for going back
> about a third of a century now.

I have 780,000 lines of F77 code intermixed with 60,000 lines of C and
C++ code. We have been updating the code to move from our Open Watcom
F77, C, and C++ compilers to the Visual C++ / Intel Fortran combo. We
are making enough broad changes at the moment, thank you. I will pass
on automating variable name changes just to make them longer.

Lynn

On Fri, 26 Jan 2024 03:51:06 -0600, Harold Stevens wrote:

> Suppose you're in charge of CERN, and responsibile for integrating 2
> bazillion lines of particle physics code in libraries resembling the
> Tower of Babel.

Nonsense. It’s only 1.5 bazillion lines of code.

Besides, high-energy physics uses a lot of C++ code. I know, because I
have had to set up some of it for physicist clients.

On Fri, 26 Jan 2024 19:25:05 -0000 (UTC), Thomas Koenig wrote:

> And if you don't understand what it does, would you trust it enough to
> publish a paper with? :-)

I assume physicists are smarter than, say, economists, who publish papers
from calculations done in (shudder) Microsoft Excel.

Unfortunately, some geneticists have done the same.

On Fri, 26 Jan 2024 18:42:16 -0000 (UTC), Thomas Koenig wrote:

> Fortran 90 where it went wrong - standard was very late, the
> implementations came late (with the exception of NAG, which was very
> fast), and g77 (which was part of the gcc suite) was F77.

Still, I had a look at the spec, and Fortran 90 was quite a breathtaking
advance.

On Fri, 26 Jan 2024 13:15:15 -0600, Gary Scott wrote:

> Harris VOS Fortran (~1980) had a lot of extensions beyond F77 that
> eventually went into F90 (long procedure/variable names (63 chars), free
> form source, full complement of end statements, async IO (although a
> different form), "Purdue" bit intrinsics (1753), and many others). They
> were way ahead of the standard, but there's always risk in adding
> extensions. These were however essential to make the systems usable for
> real-time programming (in addition to program priority control, process
> initiation/termination, hardware interrupt handling/processing, shared
> memory access and control, etc.)

Strange, isn’t it. PL/I was supposed to be the language with all of that--
I gather it was even going to be called “FORTRAN VI” at one point.

That never caught on much (outside of IBM). Yet Fortran has ended up
reinventing a lot of it.

On 1/26/2024 10:43 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Fri, 26 Jan 2024 13:15:15 -0600, Gary Scott wrote:
>
>> Harris VOS Fortran (~1980) had a lot of extensions beyond F77 that
>> eventually went into F90 (long procedure/variable names (63 chars), free
>> form source, full complement of end statements, async IO (although a
>> different form), "Purdue" bit intrinsics (1753), and many others). They
>> were way ahead of the standard, but there's always risk in adding
>> extensions. These were however essential to make the systems usable for
>> real-time programming (in addition to program priority control, process
>> initiation/termination, hardware interrupt handling/processing, shared
>> memory access and control, etc.)
>
> Strange, isn’t it. PL/I was supposed to be the language with all of that--
> I gather it was even going to be called “FORTRAN VI” at one point.
>
> That never caught on much (outside of IBM). Yet Fortran has ended up
> reinventing a lot of it.

Prime computer used PL/1 to rewrite the Primos Operating System in from
Fortran (66, I think).

Lynn