Reaching Nirvana or How to find the Fortran Manual

[JohnNichols]

C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Intel\\ComposerXE-2011\\Documentation\\en_US\\compiler_f\\cl\\index.htm

I love my Fortran manuals, only slightly less than my wife and 4 daughters.

I still use the Microsfot Fortran manual from 1991.

When I try and find help in VS Studio 2010 using the Fortran help, I end up in the middle of no-where very fast.

I used to use the Fortran.chm files, but these have gone away. But after two hours of searching I found the link to the manual that opens up only the Fortran manual and does not deep six me (nautical term) in Visual Studio garbage.

I even put a link to it on my desktop and changed the icon to a big red symbol.

The link is above, for anyone like me, maybe I am a dinosaur, but I am not happy.

Regards

JMN

[JohnNichols]

The link is above, for anyone like me, maybe I am a dinosaur, but I am not happy.

Apologies, I am meant to say "I am now happy" Sorry for the typo. perhaps you could fix it Steve.

JMN

[Steven_L_Intel1]

I actually like the way the help works in VS2010 - it opens in the web browser. However, there is a step one needs to take when installing the product that some people skip over. If it is the first time you've installed documentation for VS2010, the Help Library Manager needs to be configured. You get prompted to do this during the install but some people close out of it without doing the configure. The release notes have more detail.

So what happens when you do Help > Intel Visual Fortran Help > Intel Visual Fortran Help?

[nvaneck]

I prefer the direct link. The VS2010 takes too many clicks to get where I want.

[anthonyrichards]

When I open the Intel Visual Fortran Composer XE 2011 Help, the Contents appears in the right hand pane and the 'Start here' page is displayed in the left -hand pane.

What frequentlyannoys me is that there is no 'Next' button that lets you click on through to the next topic, and no 'Back' button to go back one topic/page at a time. There is a Browser Back button and the browser Forward button is grayed-out until some other page is selected from the contents, but they just permit switching between recently-accessed help topics, which may be randomly selected. What I want is buttons that let you move up and down around a selected topic once you have got there, exactly like what was available with the old HTML WinHelp.

[nvaneck]

I prefer the direct link. The VS2010 takes too many clicks to get where I want.

[JohnNichols]

I have spent the last 5 days trying to get a dialog window added to a Fortran program in pure WIN32. It has been very frustrating as there are no complete examples that give a complete dialog box that actually does something at the same time as you have the About box. One gets simple samples of how to show a bit map, but putting it all together is not pleasant for the first time.

I know I have tried this before and given up in frustration. I had Penzold, Lawrence's book, the Powerstation manual and the help files with Intel 12. No where could I find an example that I could add a new dialog box to and it would work.

Ispent the afternoon with the dialog set up example in Intel Help, followed it exactly and was completely lost with being told to add

case (WM_CREATE)

lret = DlgModeless(dlg, SW_SHOWNA, hWnd)

MainWndProc = 0

return

But when I added all the other stuff it just did nothing.

JMN

[IanH]

Describe in a bit more detail what you are trying to do (you want to use a dialog as your program's main window?) plus post whatever code you have now and we might be able to help out a bit.

[JohnNichols]

Ian:

Thanks for the offer, I finally set aside my anger at WIN32 coding and decided to get methodical about it.

I downloaded the excellent program EXAMDIFF Pro. I set up a sample Intel Fortran WIN32 file based on the SDI template and with a sample program, WIN32MENU,that did what I wanted it to do, but lacked some functional aspects of the standard SDI.

I compared the files from the top down, starting with the Header, then resources and the F90 filesby comparing the files line by line.

It took 5 hours, but finally I got it to work.

But in doing a line by line comparison one notices that Intel has changed the basic templates, not a great deal but enough to be freaking annoying, when there are no comments to explain the changes.
For example:

I would think that you standardize on one maybe two ret names, but they have four, that appear to be randomly interchanged, so in the same lines in the same files from the older samples to the new templates one may get:
ret
bret
iret
lret

The same thing with the function calls, someone has refined the latest templates

to:
use user32
use kernel32
use CX1Reader4Globals

implicit none

integer(SINT) :: WinMain
integer(HANDLE) hInstance
integer(HANDLE) hPrevInstance
integer(LPWSTR) lpszCmdLine
integer(SINT) nCmdShow

include 'CX1Reader4.fi'

I found a definition for handle:

handle

(Input; output) INTEGER(4) on IA-32 architecture; INTEGER(8) on Intel 64 architecture and IA-64 architecture.

from

use user32
use kernel32
implicit none

integer*4 hInstance
integer*4 hPrevInstance
integer*4 lpszCmdLine
integer*4 nCmdShow

include 'Win32Menu.fi'

handlehandle

(Input; output) INTEGER(4) on IA-32 architecture; INTEGER(8) on Intel 64 architecture and IA-64 architecture.

which is a problem if you are trying to learn this method from several manuals, including Petzold.

So now I have a window program that lets me popup a dialog box to take control input for a Fast Fourier Transform analysis that analyses acceleration files. Now to get the dialog controls to work.

Hwever, I am lucky that a complier exists that will still compile code from 1966 without many hassles.

But,I have a lot of code left over from the late 1980's when I was a consultant that is based on MS DOS and it is pain to change all the menus that used MSDOS control characters.

I was talking to one of my old friends in Australia, who manages an office for SMEC, who says that he now has programs that match the original ones I gave them in the late 1980's. He exaggerates, but I understand what he means.

JMN

[Steven_L_Intel1]

We changed the template so that it would work on 64-bit and 32-bit systems. The old template would not work on 64-bit systems. Also the new code is closer to what the Microsoft documentation shows. Use of named constants for KIND helps understanding what the code does.

The different "ret" variables are of different types, for functions that return the different types. In most cases it would be wrong to share the same variable (in particular treating Win32 BOOL returns as LOGICAL.)

[JohnNichols]

Dear Steve:

I was unduly harsh in my criticism of Intel and I apologize, but can I suggest that a Template that included a dialog working inside a SDI window would make it a lot easier to learn the WIN32 programming style, because the examples are scattered all over the place in the HTML files. A few more comments would help in explaining the changes in the templates.

Regards

John