#AC/Fortran 2.3 info?
3 messages in this thread
I understand that AC/Fortran has an upgrade available, from version 2.2f to
2.3. Since it's not free ($50 to be exact), I'd like to find out more about
it, before I pop for it. The letter from Absoft was TOTALLY devoid of any
useful information about what it offered (they were too busy crowing about
various versions of MAC Fortran they were polishing). Amazing Computing
mentioned it in the latest issue, but again, no specifics about what it might
offer me. Bug fixes? New features? Better documentation? World peace? Or
what? If anybody has any knowledge of what's in the upgrade, I'd appreciate
the information. I'm pretty pleased with v. 2.2; if it's a significant
upgrade, I have no problem with the cost. Thanks.
… Brian
Brian, I too was quite pleased with v2.2. I am only aware of one minor bug
which had to do with the run-time switch for delete/no-delete spool files.
This switch would also delete/no-delete the run-time batch source file as
well. Not nice if you did not have a backup copy of your batch data file.
I was so pleased with the features of AC/Fortran that I felt the upgrade was
worth the $50.00.
Ted
I have had a copy of V2.3 of Absoft's fortran for quite some time now. My
memory is bit fuzzy about what's new, but I'll try.
The completely redid a lot of the dynamic loading features. Most of this is
transparent to the user, but there is one feature, a 'load' statement, that
allows you to cause a module to be dynamically loaded on demand, and an
'unload' (I think) statement that undoes that. So if A calls B, B calls C, and
in fact lots of other things call C as well, you might choose to force C to
remain loaded while other routines (like B) are broughh into memory as
required. [A They added a new compiler option '*' (a star) that forces all
temporary files into ram. That can really speed up compilation if you are
disk-based.
There are new demo programs that show how to access lots of the Amiga specific
kinds of things, like opening windows, etc. There have been several fixes to
bugs in the interface routines (i.e., in the include files).
I don't know much about any bug fixes to the straight Fortran stuff — I really
never found too many of those kinds of bugs. (but when I did, I sure let them
know about it). I know they changed the equivalence processor, and eliminated
some bugs there.
I won't presume to judge whether these changes warrant the $50 upgrade fee. I
am quite happy with the product, and would personally buy it just to keep
Absoft interested in the Amiga.