From: landman@hal.physics.wayne.edu (Joseph Landman)
Subject: Watcom fortran (was Re: MS Fortran 5.1)
Keywords: fortran
Organization: Department of Physics and Astronomy
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 12:39:58 GMT

In article <1992Jul29.094840.7039@cadlab.sublink.org> martelli@cadlab.sublink.org (Alex Martelli) writes:
[much deleted]
>Get the "F77-386 -> F77 Delta Pack" for some trifling amount and you'll
>be able to cleanse your disk of the MStuff...

Well, it depends a bit on the machine you run on.  In my office there is (at 
the moment) a 286 on which I have installed watcom v9.0 delta pack (f77 
compiler).  The compiler produces very nice (fast) code.  The main problem 
with it is, it is a DOS memory hog, and it doesnt use EMS/XMS/Disk paging 
to get more memory.  It required some fiddling about with my config.sys/
autoexec.bat to give it enough memory to run (I have to remove the network 
support from my machine to give it more ram, easy to accomplish using mark 
and release).  The 386 version will not run on my machine, and I will not be 
able to run it until I upgrade my motherboard to a 386 based machine.

The compiler itself is extremely good.  It generates code that runs rapidly 
on a 5 Mhz 8088 based PC with 8087, as well as my 287 equipped box.  I am 
very happy with the product, but I have some criticisms of it.  Mainly, it 
eats up about 20 Meg of disk space.  That is expensive in terms of disk 
real estate, to the average grad student whos office machine has a 40 meg 
disk (80 meg with stacker).  The graphics library has no hooks into 
MSwindows or OS/2 PM  (I do not want to write DOS applications all of my 
life...).  The compiler cannot use XMS/EMS/disk swapping (growl....).  There 
are mistakes in the manuals (graphics libs want single precision variables
within certain ranges, and do no real error checking until they crash, 
giving cryptic (and often incorrect) messages).  The debugger cannot debug 
moderately sized programs.

Many of my problems could be solved by the inclusion of DOS/16M in the 
package.  My office machine has 6.5 meg extended mem and 2 meg expanded, so 
I would like some minimalistic virtual memeory scheme.  Maybe I should find 
a copy od OS/2 v 1.3, and use it instead of dos 5.0....

These comments pertain to the delta pack, I cannot yet test the 386 
compiler.  All in all, I am pleased.  The help lines at watcom are friendly, 
quick, and reachable by email.

I am in no way connected financially or otherwise, to watcom.  I am a 
satisfied customer.

Joe Landman

ps: You cant beat their 250$ price for a fortran compiler (until FSF comes 
out with theirs...)
#,:::::::;,   ::            Joe Landman  Graduate Student (PhD),
#    ::       ::            Computational Solid State Physics.
#;:  ::       ::            Physics Dept., Wayne State Univ.   
#`::::; oe    ;:::; andman  666 Hancock Avenue, Detroit MI 48202 
#Internet: landman@hal.physics.wayne.edu landman@rhic2.physics.wayne.edu
#          kil@pandora.cs.wayne.edu  jland@ss0.eng.wayne.edu
#ATTnet: (313) 577-2720
From: acmeyer@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Alan C. Meyer)
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 21:54:34 GMT
Subject: Re: Re: why are fortran binaries so large?
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA