Fortran or FORTRAN

[JohnNichols]

The uppercase "TARDIS" convention was popularised by the Target novelisations of the 1970s. However, the use of "Tardis" is equally correct (it was used in the Dr. Who [sic] films) and is consistent with current British press style, in which acronyms that form pronounceable words are spelled with only the first letters capitalised (for example, Bafta), while acronyms requiring each letter to be read out (also known as "initialisms") are capitalised in their entirety (for example, BBC).

Found this little note this morning, might explain some of the reasons behind the CHANGE. 

I was looking because of this photo on the Lakeland CAM website.

[FortranFan]

@JohnNichols ,

You can refer to the Wikipedia page on Fortran with the section on Naming, I personally find it accurate as well as a succinct characterization:

The first manual for FORTRAN describes it as a Formula Translating System and printed the name with small caps, FORTRAN
.^{[9]: p.2 [10]} Other sources suggest the name stands for Formula Translator,^[11] or Formula Translation.^[12] Early IBM computers did not support lower case letters and the names of versions of the language through FORTRAN 77 were usually spelled in all-uppercase^[13] (FORTRAN 77 was the last version in which the Fortran character set included only uppercase letters^[14]). The official language standards for Fortran have referred to the language as "Fortran" with initial caps since Fortran 90.

---

It will be cool if you can now always refer to the language as Fortran and not with all uppercase letters, the latter can perhaps only be applied in certain contexts say, "FORTRAN 77 and earlier dialects including their nonstandard extensions".

[JohnNichols]

The real point was the change in STYLE from the 1980s to the 1990s and so on.  Style manuals are terrible things but absolutely necessary.  The note on TARDIS made me think of the long running discussion between Fortran and FORTRAN. It is perfectly acceptable to use FORTRAN here as the context was clearly meant for the change over.   At the end of 8 hours of coding on a weekend, it is relaxing to read this site and look at the Lakeland Cam, sometimes they intersect.  This is at least human interaction, a NUC running IFORT is not human.  

I will of course usually type Fortran except when I forget as when I call my fourth daughter Charlotte when her real name is Rebecca, and she replies with a terse, LOSER, out loud so I used all caps. 

Why do we always type IFORT?  

Stay warm and well. 

JoHn

(I fear she is not alone in applying that epitaph, such is life.)

[Steve_Lionel]

I did manage to convince the Firefox/Thunderbird maintainers to add "Fortran" to the spellcheck dictionary so that it would not mark it as an error. I tried to get them to take out "FORTRAN" but they declined.

[JohnNichols]

Correct,  I thought I was pushing my luck with the picture, so I did not give the place.  

It comes from the excellent site Lakeland Cam where a retired Postman, not named Pat, puts up new pictures of the Lake District everyday.  It made me think of the "old" men on this site.  

FORmula TRANslation does not fit the BBC style manual as it is a word, whereas C is just C, so they should have listened to Steve.  

[andrew_4619]

I wrestled with my memory banks for the place and after a while came Grasmere!

[JohnNichols]

We will add one to your integer score.  P = 2

It is when I use the cell modem in Washington that one remembers the old days of the '90s, this is after 14 hours.  I cannot do anything else, if I do not finish by about 5 am, I will run into the day traffic on the cell network will have to wait for the overnight.  PS This is fast, it will go down to 13 to 25. 

[jimdempseyatthecove]

FWIW when I typed out Fortran on my ASR33 it showed as FORTRAN

Sorry for not having a snapshot with FORTRAN

Jim Dempsey

[AlHill]

Chad or chadless paper tape?

Doc (not an Intel employee or contractor)
[Maybe Windows 12 will be better]