Strange(?) editor behavior with fixed format Fortran

Hi,

I've tried to find info on this topic in the forums to see if the problems I'm having are something that is the result of my setup or if they are bugs, but had no luck - I apologize if this has been discussed previously. For a newcomer like me it would be helpful if the titles on many of the posts gave some idea regarding what they were about.

I also apologize if this belongs in the 'Support' forum - I had trouble deciding where to put it

The following aren't major problems and I can work around them, but I thought pointing them out might be useful to somebody

System info: Vista Business 64 (unfortunately) Plato 4.3.0 FTN95 V5.50 (I think, I don't know how to check version number, but I just got a commercial license and downloaded it a few days ago)

Quirks:

1. If I highlight and delete a line the cursor disappears. I can get it to reappear at the beginning of the line if I hit the right arrow multiple (usually 3) times, or if I click on the beginning of that line. This is pretty repeatable
2. If I click on a certain column, occasionally the cursor ends up in another column - this is not repeatable but has happened enough I'm sure it's not my poor hand-eye coordination
3. Another occasional problem is that if I delete the first space in a line, the whole line disappears. When I try to undo the operation I get either a Chinese character or nothing back - the code has disappeared forever. To be honest, I'm not positive this problem has shown up since I got the commercial license, but I think it has
4. The final quirk is probably a new feature rather than a quirk. If I try to enter a letter or symbol (with the exception of C and ! in column 1) the cursor immediately jumps to column 7. This is generally OK, but I was working on some old Fortran and I can't follow the original convention in the code of using letters as continuation characters in column 6. The scheme being used was not just being pretty, it was part of a method to make upgrading the code more foolproof, so this isn't completely trivial

As I said, none of these are overly important, just minor annoyances

Regards, Kent

Oops, forgot one: 5) If the cursor is in the middle of a line and I hit 'enter', the remaining line drops to beginning of the next line (sort of as expected), but the first several characters become invisible. This seems inconsistent with (4) above in that the editor seems perfectly happy to put anything in the 1st 6 columns using this method, and it is also odd that the characters become invisible, but they seem to be there because if I hit the space bar several times they appear. This is quite repeatable

Kent

I will have a look at some of these details when I can but just to let you know that some of the behaviour is intended.

With a fixed format file you can only have ! or C (or * perhaps) in column 1 and a numeric label in columns 1 to 5 etc. As a result the editor will jump to column 7 in some cases.

Thank you, Paul

I guessed the 4th item was by intent, and in general it seems very helpful - just in the odd case I had it was counter helpful. I certainly wouldn't suggest removing it.

Best wishes, Kent

I still use SIDE, now in a Windows-7-environment together with the actual FTN95 version. It is a very good and stable editor and I don't know why this software was buried. It's like Jonnie Walker: Still going strong.

Wilfried

Thanks for the encouraging words Wilfried. As the author of both SIDE and Plato3/4 it is nice to know that these are useful.

The main problem with SIDE was that the syntax colouring was slow. You will see this if you try to open a very large file. Plato uses a better colouring approach and now also has many more features than SIDE.

Yes, I know the colouring problem with larger files. But it is no problem at all: After loading the file, an error message appears ('out of memory, try again'). Click onto OK, then View > Fonts & colours, then again OK, and everything is running in colour.

If I have a bit more time than in the moment I'll try the actual Plato to see the new features.

Best regards, Wilfried

Paul, I used our short discussion as a motivation to start with Plato, actual version, and to learn about projects.

Now I have a question. In some parts I use modules. Up to now, I simply copied the MOD files into that subdirectories where FOR files are located which use the modules. Then I linked all together with simple batch jobs.

Within Plato and projects it seems that I have to put the FOR files generating the modules into the source files section of the project explorer. Is there a possibility to use MOD files without having their source codes (like OBJ files)? Background is that I have a set of MOD files from a friend but I have not the source code.

Thanks in advance and best regards, Wilfried

Sorry Paul, I just found the solution, setting the environment variable for the path to the modules... everything is running now.

Regards, Wilfried

Kent

I have not been able to reproduce any of your Plato problems. I have tested on a 64 bit machine but only using a 32 operating system. If anyone else has similar problems I will test using a 64 bit OS.

I found a little funny thing in Plato which is not a bug but different from the behaviour in SIDE and I just want to report it. I still use fixed format fortran (like FTN77), so I often have lines to be continuated like here:

      j = winio@('%ca[16 --> 8 Bit]%sy[3d_thin]%fn[MS SANS SERIF]%ts'
     *    //'%ac[Esc]%12.4ls%`rb[Minimum frequency]%5rf%%%ffInput image'
     *    //' (DTM)%ff%40rs%ib%ff%nl%cn%`7bt[OK]%^7bt[Cancel]',
     *    .9D0,zz,mtext,4L,wahl,i,minh,xfile(1),'pkt',4,'+','SET',x_nr,
     *    1,such_f,zz)

Now for instance I set the cursor at the end of the second line and hit the return key. A new line is added, the cursor is positioned at column 6 (OK). Then I start to key in new text, beginning with an asterisk (continuation mark). Immediately the cursor jumps to position 7 and the asterisk is placed there (not OK). So, I have to write my text beginning at column 8, then going to the first position of the line and delete one blank to have the correct syntax.

Regards, Wilfried

I think this will be easy to fix. It looks like I assumed the continuation character would be a digit.