Re: [Plplot-devel] The possibility of a new fortran interface based on cfortran.h

[Alan W. I. <ir...@be...>]

On 2004-09-06 08:38+0100 Andrew Ross wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 06, 2004 at 08:59:26AM +0200, Arjen Markus wrote:
>>
>> If we are going to revise the Fortran interface, then would it not be a
>> good
>> moment to include explicit support for Fortran 90/95, by defining a
>> module with
>> interfaces for PLplot? (I have done some groundwork but not tested it to
>> any
>> decent extent ...) Furthermore _I_ need to look into the Fortran
>> bindings for
>> Windows.
>
> I agree with Arjen that we should seriously look into a f90/95 module.
> This is currently one of the major bindings lacking. I know you can use
> the f77 support, but proper f90 support would be useful. I've thought
> about this myself, but not got to the point of implementing anything. If
> you have ideas though Arjen I'm happy to help.

I have a lot of fortran-77 programming experience, but little fortran 90
experience.  Nevertheless, my understanding is that f90 is a pure extension
to f77 so wouldn't the present interface (or one based on cfortran.h) just
work with f90?  (In fact, I am positive some of our users have used absoft
f90 to build our fortran interface and fortran examples.)

That said, I can see where one of the f90/f95 extensions might be useful to
our interface.  For example, from the F95_Reference.pdf manual from absoft,
there appears to be something called assumed shape arguments which would
allow us to drop array dimension information from our fortran interface API
(similar to what we do now in python and java), and I would be keen to see
an additional fortran interface with that simplification.  However,
assumed-shape arguments apparently also require something called interface
blocks, and I don't know how difficult those are to work with when building
a fortran interface to our PLplot library.

Arjen, does cfortran.h allow the use of assumed shape arguments or would
that be a lot of work to implement?  Also, is there any other f90 extension
that would be useful for simplifying our fortran interface API?

Whether or not we decide to add an f90 interface using the f90 extensions to
simplify our argument lists or stick with our current fortran API, a version
of our fortran examples written taking advantage of all f90 extensions would
be most welcome.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin
email: ir...@be...
phone: 250-727-2902

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org), the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net), the
Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net), and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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