highres. graphical environment

[davinci]

I migrated from VAX/alpha to CVF V6.6 Prof, where I also need the use of a highres (least 768*1024) graphical environment with Window facilitities.
See for instance
http://www.tradestation2000i.com
http://ww.keyword.nl/charts/

Array Viewer may not be sufficient for the whole job (?). Several environments are eligible, like the Quickwin samples in the Programmer's Guide, or OpenGL (better?), but more graphical libraries can be found.
I need some advice how to choose between highres. graphical libraries.
who has experience ? Clemens de Leeuw (davinci)

ancient? statement:
www.pbm.com/~lindahl/real.programmers.html

[davinci]

OK, while my cry for help (july 16) isn't replied by any of you, I'll answer myself.

I disagree with Galip H. Guvelioglu's negative review on Amazon of Norman Lawrence: Compaq Visual Fortran, a guide to creating Windows Application.

As we all know, Fortran is a very elegant developing language with a regular update (but still waiting for ANSI 2000) and you don't need a whole library to grasp its possibilities. For CVF the accompanying Programmers and Reference Guides are sufficient. I recommend also Etzel & Dickinson: Digital Visual Fortran Programmer's Guide for the Developer Studio use and its options.

But the use of Windows and graphics are underexposed in these manuals, whereas there exist several solutions to choose from (openGL, GLUT, f90GL and many more). This is where Norman Lawrence comes in. I bought the latest print (C)2002. Written to the point with clear print and screen images, covering the necessary subjects, and with a nice Fortran programming style even a Guy Like Me could not improve all too much (!!!). All sources available on the companion Web sites. A thingummy book.

And now I am in my book-reference mood anyway, need a lot of character-string programming in Fortran ? Look for Jones & Crabtree: Fortran Tools 1988 ISBN 0-471-61976-0. For many years I used this programming style for compiler and code generator development, reversed engineering tools, hash tables, lexical analysis etcetera. The authors use a C-like function structure, but all written nicely in Fortran and with sound ideas how to approach these matters. With your help a candidate for a reprint, I already bought about 10 pieces as giveaways to Real Programmers. I didn't check if the software is still available, but I bought it too and I suppose we might arrange something within this community for a download. DaVinci.

[myron_r]

A couple years ago I was looking for a way to do custom graphics with Fortran. At the time we had both unix and windows environments. I visited some places that were selling Virtual Reality software and also places doing research in Virtual Reality for a project I was working on. At the time OpenGL seemed to be a popular choice running on unix workstations. I decided since OpenGL would run on different platforms it would be a good choice. The problem I found was that just about everyone programming with OpenGL does so with C or C++. Books about OpenGL like the OpenGL Superbible are excellent references but you will have to convert their programs to Fortran. I found a good place on the web with tutorials,
NeHe Productions http://www.gamedev.net/hosted/nehe/ They have a link to a guy that did all of the tutorials in Fortran http://perso.wanadoo.fr/perois/opengl_tutorial.html. I found his help in fortran implementation of OpenGL to be invaluable. He modified some opengl mod files that allow for more functions than what are available from CVF. It took me several months to get to the point that I could make usable graphics. I have a program that is about 12000 lines that does 2D and 3D graphics with some animation. I write roller and ball bearing analysis software. The graphics are plots of roller load distributions (2D), contact stress (3D), 3D drawings of bearings and geartrains, etc. The geartrain plots shows the gears rotating with the actual relative speeds. The problem I had was that the engineers using the software had computers ranging from very slow and limited memory to workstations that are used for CADD. In some cases it took minutes for my OpenGL program to open up the first graph window. Some of the graphics cards are terrible, especially laptop computers. The guys that are happy with the software are the ones with a fast computer (600 MHz or faster) and at least 256 meg of RAM. I have many large arrays which are input via a namelist file. I have run into a roadblock for sending the bitmap files to a printer. I found a program written in C in the OpenGL superbible. It works fine with Windows 95, 98 and NT. It chokes on Windows 2000. I hope that someone from this forum can help me with a subroutine written in fortran to send a bitmap to a printer. I hope this helps.

Myron

[durisinm]

For sending a bitmap to a file you might find the thread How do you plot a bitmap? useful. You can also search this forum for references to bitmaps.

Mike

Message Edited by intel.software.network.support on 12-09-2005 10:43 AM

[durisinm]

I visited the link to the Fortran tutorials and found that the Web page is in French(?). I have no idea how to navigate to the tutorials. Can anyone give some directions in English?

Mike

[myron_r]

I went to the nehe sight and it looks like you can still download the fortran projects. I would guess that the guy that did the fortran conversions changed his homepage. I'll see if I can find his new site if he has one. Thanks for your suggestion on bitmaps.

Myron

[edmund_dunlop]

The correct URL is http://perso.wanadoo.fr/perois/OpenGL_Tutorial.html (specifically not http://perso.wanadoo.fr/perois/opengl_tutorial.html - note the upper case letters in the corrected address)

The tutorials are English language and are very good.

Edmund.