I have been using Fortran on a PC since the early 1980s – a period of 40 years – and although I had my ‘favourite’ compiler at various times, I tried many compilers, a number of which are no longer available. In every case, the supplied documentation <u>never</u> contained a tutorial on using Fortran, but expected the user to have received that training elsewhere. It was the same with the mainframe compilers I used before that.
Fortran is not a computer language that has always been the same, but it has evolved. There have certainly been standardisations which have led to Fortran-66, -77, -90, -95, -2003, -2008 and quite possibly others.
For my own modest purposes, I am content to use FTN95’s 32-bit mode, and I write code that very largely conforms to the Fortran-77 standard. If I was looking for a book from which I could learn that, I would probably select the book by Delores Etter (Structured Fortran 77 for Engineers and Scientists), which I could find secondhand rather cheaply. If your needs are modest, you could easily follow this path. The limitations of 32-bit Fortran are primarily concerned with the size of data structures, and FTN95 can now operate in 64-bit mode in which all the memory in a modern PC is available to a single application, while still operating in a Fortran-77 compliant way.
Many users want or need to use the additional or alternate facilities introduced with later versions of Fortran. FTN95 supports everything in Fortran 90 and 95, plus many features of later standards. The tutorials for those facilities require a more modern book than Etter – although she did update her book to cover Fortran-90. I’m afraid that the more modern books cost a great deal more than a secondhand copy of Etter, and are less likely to be found ‘used’. I suggest looking in a library to begin with, then buying your own copy of the book you like best.
Fortran has never had an integrated graphics system, nor facilities for preparing a modern graphical user interface. FTN95 does – it’s called ClearWin+. The reference I gave you provides a tutorial for using the system that only requires a minimal knowledge of Fortran itself. Unlike books that teach Fortran (any version), the ClearWIn+ tutorial book Is absolutely free to anyone who wants it.
I suspect that you will never find a completely free tutorial on using Fortran – unless you do what so many of my past students did, which is to borrow a book from someone, and never return it!
Eddie