Integrated Development Environments

I'm just curious on how people develope their fortran code. When I first started the only tool available was a text editor, having worked on at least half a dozen platforms there really was no other way most of the time. On a PC I have continued to work from a DOS window command line, using the PFE32 editor and compile and link using simple batch files. It all works fine, I achieve what I require, I think I understand what I'm doing and I feel I am in control (not vice versa!).

My question is 'Am I missing something?' , would Plato, Studio or any other IDE bring me any real benefits?

Different environments bring different things to different projects (and people!). Personally I like to use Visual Studio for development in most langauges (Java being the exception where I use Eclipse). The main reason for that is that I use many different languages and this gives me one place to use them all, including Fortran. If writing projects with multiple compilers/languages, it really can be handy.

Saying that, for many years in the past I have used just a plain text editor and command line, and many (I am assuming) will rave about the speed and flexibility of this. Over time though, I have found that pretty much any environment, once used to, is about as productive and enjoyable to use as any other.

While we are the subject of IDEs, just time for a shameless plug about a new IDE from Silverfrost... FTN95 Express is out now, which is a build of FTN95 integrated alone with the Visual Studio shell, giving yet another choice of which IDE to use with FTN95!

http://www.silverfrost.com/52/ftn95_express.aspx

John,

Like you I use PFE, as FTN95 does seem to be designed around a command line interface, and it is very easy to get to that from PFE. When I used Plato, I found that not being able to bring up a command line / DOS box meant that if I couldn't find what I wanted quickly in the nested menus (i.e. something I already knew what to do via the command line), I gave up on Plato and reverted to PFE ... and after a couple of times, I never went back. I had the same experience when using Microsoft and Absoft compilers. Yes, I use batch files too - normally with single letter names (l for link, f plus a number to compile a file).

There is probably another aspect that comes from one's expectations of what menus and mouse clicks do based on other software (principally MS Office, but also in my case CorelDRAW), and when an IDE operates to (however subtly) a different paradigm, one doesn't feel comfortable with it. PFE is sufficiently close to what I expect that I 'get on with it' (I still can't jump to the right end of a line as I used to be able to do so easily with WordStar).

PFE is also good at opening data files and results files (in the case of the latter, warning you if an already open file has been changed, say by a later run of your program), and this suits me as I expect it suits you.

I might add that a text editor is the height of luxury compared to TECO or EDLIN, and before that, one had to retype cards and insert them manually, or do arcane things with paper tapes (including correcting the hole patterns by hand!).

I think what we are both missing is probably that the IDE 'knows' where errors occurred and can take you there to correct them rather more simply than when using a generic editor. Colour coding keywords seems to me to be a great idea, but as I come from the generation where rapid reading and good spelling were taught with the aid of corporal punishment, I seem to be able to spot typing errors almost instantly, even though it is getting on for a half-century since I last felt the cut of the cane across my hand (or elsewhere)!

Eddie

Eddie,

I still can't jump to the right end of a line as I used to be able to do so easily with WordStar

Not sure what you mean here, as the 'Home' and 'End' keys moves the cursor to the start and end of a line respectively, press the control key as well and you get to the start and end of the file. PFE32 I find very simple and easy to use. My only criticism would be that you cannot select by columns.

Forgot , my experiences on ICL1900 with George3 as the OS and Hollerith card decks!

John

I too have a similar but different history. For the last 13 years I have been using ED for windows ver 3.8 (www.getsoft.com), which Lahey adopted for a while. It is a screen editor with great keyword colouring etc, and I am very use to it. We all have our own favourite. ED ver 4 ( an enhanced 32-bit version) came out a long time ago, but I've never been able to convert from the familiar feel of verison 3.8, which is a 16 bit program which runs using wow in win32 ! There is now a lot of emphasis on visual studio and I am thinking I should try to learn this new environment, but I expect I will always revert to teh editor I know. If I go to win64, I wonder if there will be wow32 in wow64, so that I can still run my 16-bit editor. I doubt if I will ever learn a new editor. Also I call my batch files make.bat for compiling and linking, as I never got the hang of make either. They do what I want !

I did find Andrew's comment about productivity reassuring.

John

Home and End? Why didn't I think of that? They aren't all that easy to find in the Help file, unless you know where to look (when everything becomes easy).

ED looked a bit 'busy' to me.

Plato always irks me a bit as it has movable toolbars and I can't work out how to do them with Clearwin from Fortran!

Eddie

movable toolbars and I can't work out how to do them with Clearwin from Fortran

Now that would be interesting!

John,

Not at all embarassed by not knowing about Home and End - I do now!

The bits of a movable toolbar I can't get the hang of are embedded in what follows:

1.When the main window opens, the toolbars are all stacked neatly above the %bx line - I can do that, as it is the default behaviour. 2.At the left end of a movable toolbar is a thin vertical icon. This behaves almost like a caption bar, in that if you click on it, hold down the mouse button and move the pointer round the screen, then the toolbar follows it - well, actually, the toolbar stays where it is, and an outline is dragged round the screen. - I can't work out how to do that, as I don't know how to get a draggable outline, but I can do the icon using %tb. 3.When you release the mouse button in the client area, the toolbar stays where you dropped it. Now it has a caption bar, albeit a small one. I suppose I could do that - as it is more or less a standard window, although I don't know how to get a thin caption bar. 4. If the movable toolbar is dropped 'above the %bx line', the other toolbars make way for it, or it is added on to them appropriately. I can't work out a way of doing that except to redraw the master window in its entirety. I wonder if that is the answer? 5.Wherever you drop the toolbar, the original needs to be 'undrawn'. This also seems to me to require a main window redraw. 6.PFE's toolbar is similar, but different. You 'pick it up' with its background bar, and you move a four-headed arrow icon, not the outline. That's easier than moving an outline, but less obvious to the user what is going on. If you drop it in the client area, the toolbar gains a caption bar (easy again) - but you have to 'undraw' it from the original position, and that again looks to me like you need to redraw the main window. At left or right of the client area, it redraws to a full-height vertical toolbar: at the top of the client area, it gets to look like the ordinary 'above the %bx line' toolbar. Once again - looks like a full main window redraw to get the desired effect. (There's only one toolbar, so no re-shuffling is required).

I did at one stage imagine it could all be done with child windows, but I can't see how.

From time to time, I get insight into how things are done by making a PC run extremely slowly and watching. By so doing I have realised that Office 2007's new look is done by creating a standard Window and drawing stuff over the top of it!

On the other hand (and this is wishful thinking!) there might just be an undocumented format code ....

Eddie