Talk:Fortran

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[edit] Wikibooks:Naming policy

You might want to consider the WB:NP. You current naming convention is depreciated and has several disadvantages - like it has no navigational links. Also you worthy effort is neiter considered a book nor a section inside a book. See wikistats which implements an exstensive book and section detector.

--Krischik ^T 07:15, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Fortran 90/95 vs. Fortran 77

I'll be helping developing this wikibook, as I'm currently doing a project in Fortran. However, I will concentrate on Fortran 90/95, and not Fortran 77. Right now they are intertwined with each other, so I will segregate the tutorials for Fortran 77 into a separate section, if there are no objections. --Arthurv 11:49, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Why would a 2006 Fortran book begin by discussing problems with Fortran 77? Just delete all the 77 stuff - its 30 years old. And its already online if anyone wants it -- see

• Page, Clive G. (January 1988). The Professional Programmer's Guide to FORTRAN 77, 1st ed., Hyperion Books. ISBN 0273028561. Out of print and now online.

I've never looked at a Wiki book before, so there is a lot (everything?) that I don't know about them. Unless all Wiki books have the same purpose, it would help if this book began with what its purpose is, what it will and will not do. If readers don't know the purpose of the book, makes it hard to comment on (that's an argument for knowing the purpose, not for concealing it!).

Rwwww 23:20, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Fortran 77 is still alive and well. --Swift 07:25, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Despite its age F77 is still very commonly used in scientific computing. However, it would be very good idea to make separate wikibook for F77 and F90/95 standards. Even thought they are not very far different, they are different enought to do so. Now this is like making a same textbook for german and dutch... 130.232.104.44 12:22, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I would hardly compare German and Dutch. Perhaps Dutch and Flemish would be more apt. F90/95 is, moreover, (mostly?) backwards compatible with F77. The Compaq Fortran Language Reference Manual designates extensions to the F95 standard with a different colour text. A pretty neat solution in my mind. --Swift 20:32, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

F77 is forward compatible with f90 and not the other way around. 128.220.23.214 01:04, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Fortran 77 should definitely neither be deleted from, nor ignored by this book. Right now I have to learn Fortran 77 to find my way round a (scientific) program, that was written in the late 80's and is to be extended by me. And I'm very thankful for those tutorials that still exist in the web. I suggest not to make seperate books, but different chapters of the different versions. Compare de.wikibooks.org/wiki/Fortran for inspiration. (You'll get the idea, even if you don't understand any German.) -- Macumba (talk) 13:41, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fortran vs. FORTRAN

The current spelling of Fortran does not use all capital letters, so I have changed "FORTRAN" to "Fortran", except when FORTRAN 77 or an earlier version of the language is being referenced.