FORTRAN coding form - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: graybeard
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 30, 2021, 06:26:01 am
content: I found a folder full of theseFORTRAN coding formsin a collection of graph paper that belonged to my father. These were for hand coding programs for entry on to IBM punch cards on a keypunch machine.Chris

author: DrG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 30, 2021, 02:44:02 pm
content: Quote from: graybeard on December 30, 2021, 06:26:01 amLove it!I don't have any that old, but do still have one of these pads for BASIC, from the Shack......and on the other side, they gave you a screen template.

author: granzeier
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 30, 2021, 07:54:05 pm
content: Quote from: graybeard on December 30, 2021, 06:26:01 amQuote from: DrG on December 30, 2021, 02:44:02 pmBoth of these forms were great, I used to have a bunch of both of them. The back side was great for screen design. I also had some for my Sinclair ZX-81; I laminated it, and used a grease pencil for designing screens.Does anyone remember the cards which you filled out with a pencil to enter programs? The ones that I used were for our HP-2000, but I don't think that they were specific to the Time Share BASIC system.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 30, 2021, 08:01:27 pm
content: One interesting aspect of the original FORTRAN language is that your code had to be in columns 7 to 72. If you accidentally spilled over into column 73 those characters would be ignored. If you were lucky you would get a compiler error, but if you were unlucky the contents of columns 7 to 72 would still be valid and your program would silently do the wrong thing.That's why these forms were useful, because it made clear the different significance of columns 1-5 (labels), column 6 (continuation), and columns 7 to 72 (code). Getting the columns right was a bit harder to do in an interactive text editor.

author: graybeard
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 31, 2021, 11:56:01 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on December 30, 2021, 08:01:27 pmWhen these forms were made in the 1950s or early 1960s I/O was an electric typewriter, paper tape, and punch cards. There really was no such thing as an interactive text editor as we know them today.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 01, 2022, 09:05:08 pm
content: True, but technology evolves and languages had to follow. After all, the first interactive time sharing systems were introduced around 1963 or so, and then people might want to enter FORTRAN programs from the terminal. I experienced the range from the ASR-33 Teletype through various "glass teletypes" to the VT-100 and beyond.One innovation driven by these terminals was that "free format FORTAN" became a thing in various guises. For example, you could use a <tab> character to begin a line of code in column 7, and enter a label by making it the first thing on the line before the tab. Continuation might be done by putting an & character as the first thing on the line followed by the tab.Given the need to do command line editing, there were various wonderful text editors like TECO that didn't rely on having a 2D screen to view your text.

author: Phil_G
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 03, 2022, 12:12:07 pm
content: I've some similar coding forms for the National SC/MP and Z80, I think the Z80 ones were printed by Microdigital in Liverpool. All assembler of course. Thats how it was before you could afford enough memory to run an actual editor/assembler like ZEAP! Here in the UK we were a bit behind the US in some aspects of early home computing, in 1979 for example a Nascom 32k RAM board and buffer cost £250 which was beyond the reach of most of us. Hand-coding on our small systems was made much easier and neater by using these coding forms

author: TomS_
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2022, 04:59:51 pm
content: Interesting that the capital O has a / through it, whereas the zero is just 0.The only other place Ive seen this is in an old video about the 5ESS switch, where some shots towards the end of the film show printouts, and the letter O's have a / through them.Kind of expect the opposite these days. When did it flip around, or have I been doing it wrong all along?

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2022, 07:01:05 pm
content: I've always seen and used the convention that letter O is plain, and numeral 0 has a slash through it.

author: granzeier
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2022, 01:11:53 pm
content: I remember that my first computer (HP-2000) used ASR-33 TeleTypes for I/O, and they had the letter O with the slash. After school, I joined the Air Force, and my first computer shop used the slash through the zero. I thought it was strange then, but quickly adapted. I still don't know when, or why, the change.

author: DrG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2022, 04:37:16 pm
content: I always thought the slashed 0  was to clearly differentiate it from O and was completely unaware of the slashed O before reading in this thread (at least as far as I remember).But, yep...Quote(fromhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashed_zero)The OP's sheets have a Form number, which I looked up but could not find. Could they have been from IBM [which from the first post is exactly what it sounds like]? Even if not, it seems like this feature dates them which is cool.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2022, 05:58:19 pm
content: Folks, I have a new project!It would be nice to have pristine copies of the Fortran Programming Form. How about I use my LaserJet 'plotter' on my fPGA IBM1130 and a bunch of FORTRAN code to recreate a master. Plotting on the 1130 was always a low level chore and this will be no exception.ETA:It would be a lot easier in Excel...

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 16, 2022, 12:35:18 am
content: To design a user interface that got implemented in a 128 x 64 graphic LCD I created a spreadsheet that looks pretty much like that screen-design form!