@Everybody: For your information, Arjen and I have started a private topic collaboration to upgrade the Fortran bindings. So far (based on the limited experience of an initial commit by Arjen and subsequent commit by me on our respective private topic branches) the recommended git collaboration procedure (see README.developers) for that case (i.e., using "git format-patch" and "git am") appears to be working well.
Our initial goal for this upgrade was to do all the type conversions within the fortran interface so that fortran users no longer have to be specific about types that will work with PLplot. For example with this new design, regardless of whether PLplot was built as a single or double precision version, fortran users could use single or double precision arguments, and the interface would take care of the required conversions. So this change should be a huge convenience to our fortran users. An additional possible goal we have been discussing is whether or not to replace the traditional #define <function_name> c_<function_name> + bindings/f95/plstubs.h method with the fortran-iso-c-binding BIND method of dealing with Fortran name mangling. The large advantage of this change is it would allow us to get rid of those confusing #defines in our primary header file and also get rid of many more name complications/obfuscations in bindings/f95/plstubs.h. The disadvantage is BIND was only introduced as part of the Fortran 2003 standard so the question Arjen is contemplating right now is how wide is the support for BIND amongst Fortran compilers. Between us we have tested MSVC and a large number of different flavours of gfortran (for Linux, Cygwin, and MinGW/MSYS), and so far so good. @Arjen: I have just discovered <http://stackoverflow.com/tags/fortran-iso-c-binding/info> where it is claimed that fortran-iso-c-binding and therefore BIND "is widely available in Fortran 95 compilers". That conclusion makes a lot of sense to me now since I think only moribund Fortran compilers with no development since 2003 would fail to implement these useful capabilities. So the question I am asking myself is should PLplot still support such moribund Fortran compilers in general, and I now think the answer should be no, i.e., we should move forward with BIND. If you agree, I look forward to your use of BIND in your next commit on our mutual private topic branch. @Everybody: Once Arjen has finalized the above two changes for a small subset of our Fortran API and proved those changes work without issues, then the rest of this fairly intrusive change is largely only a matter of editing to change each function in our Fortran API from the old style to the new one. So with my editing help I think it is still possible we can get everything done by late January which leaves us a week or so for everybody here with an interest in Fortran to test these extensive Fortran changes before we release PLplot-5.11.0 near the start of February. Note, of course, that this planned timing is still quite uncertain since it depends on how much time Arjen can take to finalize the change for a small subset of the Fortran functions in the next critical week to pave the way for both of us to do the subsequent editing that will be required for the rest of the functions. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download BIRT iHub F-Type - The Free Enterprise-Grade BIRT Server from Actuate! Instantly Supercharge Your Business Reports and Dashboards with Interactivity, Sharing, Native Excel Exports, App Integration & more Get technology previously reserved for billion-dollar corporations, FREE http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=164703151&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
