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VS2017 updated plugin
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alex21



Joined: 20 Apr 2011
Posts: 75
Location: Australia

PostPosted: Mon Jul 09, 2018 11:47 pm    Post subject: Re: Reply with quote

DanRRight wrote:
This OxyPlot is a joke to even try it. Such projects typically die in few years taking down your code with them because users typically do not pay a single cent for such primitive XY plot utilities alone:

"OxyPlot is primarily focused on two-dimensional coordinate systems, that’s the reason for the ‘xy’ in the name!"... ROTFL

I have seen a dozen such dead projects in 3 decades, most of them were much more sophisticated. Even damn dead Simpleplot was like a PhD student versus this one from kindergarden.

Right now native %PL is in development with FTN95. This essentially brings Fortran in par or even more with the leader of simplicity and usability in scientific and engineering MATLAB which obviously with its huge users base will never be down. You better start using native %PL and join other users to suggest its developers any new features you would like to see. Even now native %PL can make plots way better then many other utilities and it is done very simple way. If there will be bigger demand and a lot of interested users we will convince developers to implement not just XY and Surface plots but also Contour plots and 3D plots and hopefully all professional quality plots will be done in one single line of Fortran code. There are a lot of options for improvement.

The key advantage is that this graphics is part of the compiler library done by the same compiler developers, that means zero chances that some part of your code will stop to be supported.

Here is one my example of plotted quality of native PL (though this was older version), and there are a lot more quality plots posted before using FTN95 OpenGL


The project is already around 4 years old just on github and was on codeplex before that for about 2 years...

If something else better comes along it is very very easy for me to switch as it only took about 4 hours of looking through their documentation and some sleuthing in the source code to produce the same set of reports pictured below, that are still used in the production version of our application to date for about the last two years.

documentation: http://docs.oxyplot.org/en/latest/

documentation for various axis types: http://docs.oxyplot.org/en/latest/models/axes/LinearAxis.html

documentation for various series types: http://docs.oxyplot.org/en/latest/models/series/AreaSeries.html

If your not talented enough to work out how to use something I guess the next best thing is to just get angry and insult the hard work of people who don't get paid?

All the following examples are produced using oxyplot and data passed directly from legacy FTN95 code:





If I wanted different kinds or even animated there are many more libraries in the c-sharp or python ecosystems that I will use before i write any new code in FORTRAN.... The most valuable feature of this compiler is its .NET inter-operability to me for this reason not the crutches it provides to continue developing in language that fewer people alive use everyday.
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alex21



Joined: 20 Apr 2011
Posts: 75
Location: Australia

PostPosted: Mon Jul 09, 2018 11:59 pm    Post subject: Re: Reply with quote

John-Silver wrote:
I see where you're coming from Dan.

I tried looking into OxyPlot (in a global overview sort of way) and fell at the first hurdle ... finding any decent documentation !
I did have a chuckle when I came across this: https://github.com/oxyplot/oxyplot/issues/1214
For obvious reasons Wink

OxyPlot appears to be one of those 'amateur developers babies' - unintelligible to the rest of the universe !
I rest my case in referring you to the associated 'forum' , the 'Issues' section of their github webpage ....
https://github.com/oxyplot/oxyplot/issues?page=2&q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen

Am I alone in thinking that 'github' was conceived for this type of 'project' with one eye on the name of the 'repository' ? (yes I know there are exceptions but I can't agree that this is one of them)
However, who are we to criticise anothers choice if it suits their needs/expertise/prpensity to sufferance ?

%PL is not without reproach as we all know.
I won't hide my surprise at what appears to be the indefinite suspension of (?), not new features or fancy bells and whistles, but bug-fixes, in ironing out the creases in %PL. Still so near and yet so far as far as I'm concerned.

'Robustness is it not for the lacking of ?' (as late great Graham Taylor (1) might say Smile )

Until those well-documented 'issues' are all sorted any 'push' by the rabble for contours/3-D/etc... would be akin to having allusions of taking flying lessons with porcine friends.
After all, who are we, the users, to know best ?

... but we keep following that elusive yellow-brick road.
____________________________________________

Note (1)
American' Alert - * World Series Football Warning* Wink
For those who don't know who Graham Taylor was ...... https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/a7614a3d14cb2c5eecd6073aacd1c8b77f9bd614/0_254_3552_2132/master/3552.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=efdc8421fbb13a215aa96354d624f726

... after all, you can't argue with someone who has a stand named after him.

ALL software developers should watch this as a guide to success, even when 'failing' the general masses Wink
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAke3P4hKZA

now how does that song go, ah yes ...

"Want more and more
contour and 3D plots
want more and more
not only X-Y plots
want more and more ...

%PL's on fi-re,
simpleplot is past it's life .....
%PL's on fi-re,
your .NET is terr-i-fied .....
Da-da da-da da daaaaa da, da-da da da-da, da da da da-daa ..... etc ..."

(I've just realised the significance of %PL !!!

last lines can be replaced at will (griggs) with Smile ....

" Paul Laidler's on Fi-re
his resolve's consoli-fide .....
%PL's on Fi-re
your plot software's terr-i-fied .....
Da-da da-da da daaaaa da, da-da da da-da, da da da daa .....
etc.... etc ...... "

yes that's the one, they were singing it just last week ....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoSTun8Z6g8&pbjreload=10

PS consolifide IS a real word and I challenge anyone to prove otherwise against all logic in the face of some magnificent scanning verse ! Wink


The problem your running into here is these people are not paid to write the software or documentation and simply don't have the time most of the time... But for me personally it is not too much effort to go look at the various code examples on github in order to work out how to use what is a very high quality product with no price tag...

Also OxyPlot does Contour Plots and I have provided an example from my application, heat maps are basically the same thing and I have even been able to easily overlay it on maps as the plots are extremely customizable down to every visual element in the WPF version.
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DanRRight



Joined: 10 Mar 2008
Posts: 2813
Location: South Pole, Antarctica

PostPosted: Fri Jul 13, 2018 1:17 pm    Post subject: Re: Reply with quote

alex21 wrote:
If your not talented enough to work out how to use something ...

I did not know that reading documentation needs special talent. May be i am especially dumb, as with rare exclusion i never read any documentation, including the text books in my speciality. I immediate start with the tasks & exercise section after the paragraphs.

Anyway, after rebuilding in several decades my code graphics at least several times (all suppliers got out of business or out of support) i'd not recommend anyone in their sane mind to touch anything like O-hue-plot (not translatable from russian) with ten foot pole or any third party apps besides well established software. Experience tells that anything i wrote in 4 decades i tried to reuse, and if there was third-party stuff involved then this was partially or completely lost.

Call me back when it reach the quality like this Fortran allows or gets out of life support. The examples below are not just external plotter results, they are part of your running Fortran code, and also part of your Clearwin+. That was being published in the top scientific journals and presented on many top science conferences. All together forms the WOW factor to which rarely any other compiler can compare. All done in one single package, the FTN95, not in 3-5 (which means your code you develop for decades will go out of business same 3-5 times faster, or you have to rebuild many 100s of places of your code to other package). Of course the graphics like that will not go out of business till this Fortran will be available. Only totally naive who only saw their codes running in DOS prompt think that Fortran is dying, and dying fast. If this happen Fortran will be for sure the last one.




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LitusSaxonicum



Joined: 23 Aug 2005
Posts: 2388
Location: Yateley, Hants, UK

PostPosted: Fri Jul 13, 2018 7:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I’m with Dan on this, simply for reasons of practicality.
Fortran has the great strength that source codes from decades ago are still compilable. It saves reinventing the wheel - a wheel that sometimes us oldies invented in the first place!
In order to keep FTN95 operational, Silverfrost need to cater for differences between versions of Windows. Microsoft like to change things, but the huge volume of commercial applications out there mean that MS have to keep much backward compatibility. If you then use Clearwin+, you can be pretty sure that your application will run, or will soon run on any new version of Windows.
Add to that the availability of Simdem, which is on top of Clearwin+, and thus is guaranteed to work with it, given that Clearwin+ and FTN95 are backward compatible, and you have as good a situation as one can hope for.
Using Oxyplot and Visual Studio with FTN95 is an altogether more complicated issue. Silverfrost need to keep their compiler working with VS, which we know from experience can change dramatically from version to version. So too do the originators of Oxyplot. Therefore, at the very least, you are requiring two organisations to keep abreast of changes in the platform, instead of one. Then, you have no guarantee that Oxyplot and FTN95 will continue to get along together – and if they don’t, whose responsibility is it to fix? It’s a risk that I don’t take.
Secondly, of course, there is the documentation issue. Without being rude about it, to understand the Oxyplot documentation you need to understand Visual Studio to even begin. Clearwin+ is understandable to anyone who understands Fortran – well, most people – and that is a prerequisite for using FTN95 in the first instance. So there’s a step you don’t need in one route, and you do in the other. Simdem documentation is also targeted at the Fortran user. (And if you use Clearwin+. You can do OpenGL graphics, if you want to.)
As for ‘I can draw contours’, well I still use most of the code I wrote back in the 1970’s, including contouring. It originally used manufacturer specific pen-plotters, then generic ones (Roland, HP) and now CW+ graphics primitives. You know, computer software solutions with old technology work brilliantly with new. All that needed to change were the graphics primitives.
Finally, as for old-timers, yes, I’m one. I still use codes I wrote nearly a half-century ago as well as things I’ve written since. You would be surprised at how much scientific and engineering software is still written in Fortran, or having been written in Fortran, is used and extended in the language. Whether you fly Airbus, Boeing, Embraer or Bombardier, the probability is that the airframe and engines were analysed with a Fortran program. You can tell how big the user base is by how many different Fortran compilers are on the market, just for the PC. There are 6 vendors on the Polyhedron website, plus several freeware compilers. More to the point, you can’t tell if an application uses Fortran after it has been compiled, and if written with the Clearwin+ interface to Windows, the look and feel is pure Windows. Source codes that I first compiled for Windows 2000 with FTN95’s 32-bit compiler version 3.90 run fine on Windows 10, and compile with FTN95 version 8.30 – and again run fine. If that’s not a great system, then I don’t know what is.
There is a great Fortran compiler system, and it’s FTN95.
PS. I’m not a software developer. It’s only an adjunct to my main skill set. Like being able to draw, write books, and troubleshoot aggravating engineering problems. A great man once said: "Simplicate, and add lightness". Fortran simplicates.
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alex21



Joined: 20 Apr 2011
Posts: 75
Location: Australia

PostPosted: Sat Jul 14, 2018 10:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Anyway my point is there are plenty of plotting solutions in pretty much any eco-system you look at... All I was originally even arguing for was the continued support of the latest .NET language features, otherwise the VS2015 plugin would suffice. But like I stated these newest language features are no longer supported by VS2015 which is the only version currently supported by the plugin.

I personally don't write much FTN95 code and have just written enough to get it talking to my .NET code base which is one of the features that drew me into this compiler to spite difficulty learning how to use it, so I am simply suggesting that the plugin should be kept up to date with a recent version of VS.
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alex21



Joined: 20 Apr 2011
Posts: 75
Location: Australia

PostPosted: Sat Jul 14, 2018 10:54 am    Post subject: Re: Reply with quote

DanRRight wrote:
alex21 wrote:
If your not talented enough to work out how to use something ...

I did not know that reading documentation needs special talent. May be i am especially dumb, as with rare exclusion i never read any documentation, including the text books in my speciality. I immediate start with the tasks & exercise section after the paragraphs.


Look man it does play off as dumb/arrogant when you obviously spent all of 5 minutes looking at the documentation before calling it rubish, its a good product people made for free and has personally generated a great deal of value for me in turn...

If I had a product that needed plots anything like the ones you pictured I would make it, maybe using OxyPlot, maybe using something else, I am not too attached to a single plotting library and don't mind mixing and matching.
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DanRRight



Joined: 10 Mar 2008
Posts: 2813
Location: South Pole, Antarctica

PostPosted: Sat Jul 14, 2018 4:37 pm    Post subject: Re: Reply with quote

alex21 wrote:
its a good product people made for free and has personally generated a great deal of value for me in turn...


How damn hard to explain things sometimes. Did you understand me (and Eddie-LitusS gave more examples) that life teaches that over long time the sign of "generated great deal value" with niche third-party products is very often negative?
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John-Silver



Joined: 30 Jul 2013
Posts: 1520
Location: Aerospace Valley

PostPosted: Mon Jul 16, 2018 8:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Eddie wrote:-
Quote:
Add to that the availability of Simdem, which is on t end op of Clearwin+, and thus is guaranteed to work with it

Simfit (1). The problem is that it produces everything in a dedicated window (2) (with whistles and bells buttons for editing ), so you say goodbyìe to creating 'integrated graphics presenttion'.
If it was so simple to apply in practice Paul I'm sure would have adapted Simfit instead of (partially, to date) developing Native %PL.


Notes
(1) Simdem is just a front end to show some of the examples ,and it works well for that) is a great product in that context.

(2) the same drawback with using any of the available 3rd party programs around
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DanRRight



Joined: 10 Mar 2008
Posts: 2813
Location: South Pole, Antarctica

PostPosted: Sat Jul 21, 2018 2:04 am    Post subject: Re: Reply with quote

alex21 wrote:
The most valuable feature of this compiler is its .NET inter-operability to me for this reason not the crutches it provides to continue developing in language that fewer people alive use everyday.


Smile Smile crutches? fewer people? That fewer people will make almost all other compilers to run and run around the globe for their money.

Here is weekly downloads and total downloads statistics from the CNET and DOWNLOAD dot COM for number C / C++ / C# compilers of different companies versus listed there Fortran compilers including ...take a chair...FTN77 and FTN95 as old as circa a decade ago!

Code:
                               Last week  Total
CCS C Compiler                  -105     27,181
Microsoft Visual C++  (x86)     - 67    230,207
Personal C Sharp                - 44     20,766
C compiler                      - 28      1,275
Intel C++ Compiler Professional - 14     50,412
Pelles C                        - 5      17,095
Small Device C Compiler (Linux) - 3         160
C  with Reference for iPhone    - 3       1,952
Mobile C for iPhone             - 2         274
Small Device C compiler         - 1       6,209
Axiomatic Multi-Platform C      - 1       7,647
Small Device C Compiler, Debian - 1          46
C for iOS                       - 0
Mobile C ( C/C++ Compiler ) for Android - 0

-----------------------------------------------------------------
                                               last week   Total
Silverfrost FTN95 (2012)                         - 48    322,113
Silverfrost FTN77 (2006)                         - 43     90,382

Intel Visual Fortran Compiler Professional 2009  - 28     36,373
Intel Fortran Compiler Professional for Mac      -  0      1,985
Pro Fortran Compiler Suite for Mac               -  0      3,336
Simply Fortran for macOS                         -  0        116


BTW, few years back FTN95 was the most popular on CNET (they were doing this statistics) in the entire section of COMPILERS and tool (all C, C#, VB, VBnet, Pascals and long bunch of others. I wrote here about this several years back). Silverfrost has to consider to place newer version there
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silverfrost
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Joined: 29 Nov 2006
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 11, 2018 11:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have uploaded the latest version of FTN95 to download.com/cnet. It isn't showing yet but presumably it will. We used to use download.com as a way of distributing the personal edition. It cost $100 a year or so and they did the hosting. However, all they were really interested in was advertising and getting us to advertise on cnet. At some point they decided they would take our installer and wrap it in another that also offered other products like virus scanners and disk cleaners. We stopped using them immediately!
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John-Silver



Joined: 30 Jul 2013
Posts: 1520
Location: Aerospace Valley

PostPosted: Wed Aug 15, 2018 10:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm surprised that after having had 'the crap-ware experience' that Silverfrost have decided to trust that site with yout hard-toiled goods !
I know exactly what you mean about that rubbish hey started to stick onto the files. It was suicide.
There are a lot of other much better freeware sites out there.
2 that spring to mind are tucows (where FTN95 5.3 is still circulating ! and majorgeeks.
Just 2 examples, but I'm surprised sites klike these, and others, are not preferred to spread the word.

P.S.
it's been intriguing me for a long time now ... who are you 'Silverfrost (site admin)' ? is it you Paul ? or do you hail one from the loftier echelons of the SF HQ ?
_________________
''Computers (HAL and MARVIN excepted) are incredibly rigid. They question nothing. Especially input data.Human beings are incredibly trusting of computers and don't check input data. Together cocking up even the simplest calculation ... Smile "


Last edited by John-Silver on Sat Sep 01, 2018 7:39 pm; edited 1 time in total
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John-Silver



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PostPosted: Wed Aug 15, 2018 10:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

... meanwhile, Alex and Klaus (top 2 comments of this thread) are still probably awaiting a simple reply to their original enquiry which seems to have got lost the last 3 months or so (amongst the lively debate about .NET and it's usefulness or otherwise)
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DanRRight



Joined: 10 Mar 2008
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 15, 2018 11:30 am    Post subject: Re: Reply with quote

John-Silver wrote:
... meanwhile, Alex and Klaus (top 2 comments of this thread) are still probably awaiting a simple reply to their original enquiry which seems to have got lost the last 3 months or so (amongst the lively debate about .NET and it's usefulness or otherwise)


Wasn't it clear why no respond, John? If my vague wordswordswords and plots were not clear let's try to express the same but different way -- using language of numbers. There are around 1/1000 of all programmers who use Fortran. Out of those small fraction there are 1/1000 who are interested in NET = total 1 per million

And out of those left the 1/1000 are interested in using O-hu-plot graphics. Total = one per billion.

Meantime almost 1 out of 1 people who use programming are interested in the embedded in each and every programming language high quality, easy and intuitive graphics. Matlab demonstrated how Fortran77-like language (!!!) can overcome all other languages combined with the number of purchases among scientific and engineering masses just by integrating professional graphics callable in one click

Silverfrost would be crazy to serve 1 per billion versus - if not everyone then - at least 1 per 1000 (unless it costs them nothing in efforts and time)


Last edited by DanRRight on Thu Aug 16, 2018 10:52 pm; edited 2 times in total
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LitusSaxonicum



Joined: 23 Aug 2005
Posts: 2388
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 16, 2018 12:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

My take on anything is that if a product is advertised as doing X or supporting Y, it should work and should be kept up to date. Hence my opinion is that when SF have the opportunity, they should interface to the latest Visual Studio. I speak as one who has no interest in Visul Studio, .NET, nor things of that ilk. However, it is observable that SF have a lot of things on their plate at the moment, for example, a rash of bug fixes for 64-bit FTN95, a smaller rash of bugs in obscure areas of 32-bit FTN95, enhancements to Clearwin+ ... especially 'native' %pl. Hence one can only expect VS 2017 compatibility in the fullness of time. VS is itself a moving target, which makes things more complicated.

VS itself was going to allow us to have code that worked on all operating systems. It never delivered. Not only that, but the different versions don't seem to offer backwards or forwards compatibility, and are even picky about which version of Windows they run on.

Eddie
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John-Silver



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PostPosted: Fri Aug 17, 2018 4:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Wasn't it clear why no respond, John?


No the original question (being 'are there plans to update the plugin to be VS2017 compatible) wasn't clear Dan because the thread got diverted onto a .NET slant right from the off before the question had even been answered.

Your position on .NEt was perfectly clear, and justified, but VS integration isn't only for .NET, it's to capture the VS audience who might hopefully switch from other compilers.

Eddie's resumé is probably correct and it is identical to My Way Of Thinking of the situation but it's for SF to confirm that or otherwise.
A simple question it was, requiring a simple answer (I'm already beginning to regret writing that) along the lines of
"No plans immediately but we've put it on our rolling list of tasks to be adressed" without necessarily going too much into the detail of why that's the case.
... although the answer could just be "No", from which a hopefully constructive dialogue with those asking would ensue.

I just bumped it up because the question had got losted.
I'm sure that the SF guys will be on it once they get back from their holidays Sitting in the Salford Sun, while Sitting on the Salford Quays. Smile
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