Customer Reviews

Compaq Visual Fortran: A Guide to Creating Windows Applications

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

You'll be confused by page 15. The author makes no attempt to teach windows programming for Fortran in a way anyone can understand. He seems to be highly impressed with his own sophisticated knowledge and wants all of us to know how smart he is. Unfortunately that doesn't do any good for us Fortran programmers who want to learn how to build Windows applications. The author will show us examples that combine dozens of different subject he (briefly) touched on in the text rather than an example that shows one or just a few concepts. It's confusing as hell. Unfortunately, this is probably the only book we'll ever get on building Fortran programs for Windows since so few people are interested in doing such a thing. Consequently the author will continue to make money of this miserable work. CAN ANY OF YOU OUT THERE WRITE A BETTER BOOK? PLEASE!

To really understand the book (Compaq Visual Fortran) one must use the Fortran programming examples with the book (Companion Site )! I think the author did a very good job is making one dig out the meat of the text. I would also get the Digital Visual Fortran Programmers Guide (Michael Etzel and Karen Dickinson) if you are serious about the above subject matter.

As a chemical engineer most of our programs are in Fortran. I am an expert level Visual C++ developer and I am currently working on a project to develop an Excel GUI for a simulation in Fortran DLL's. I bought this book to widen my Visual Fortran knowledge, it does not offer anything, nothing new and everything is outdated. The print quality is poor resolution of the screen shots are very low; you cannot read anything in figures. I am not rating this book low by being an expert Visual C++ developer, I am rating this book low as a Visual Fortran User.
I bought this book yesterday and I am going to sell this book right now. Anyone interested?

I started learning Fortran about a month ago and it was impossible to find documentation on how to build GUIs. Reading the MSN Library helped with background info, but didn't explain how to use anything with Fortran. This is the ONLY resource I could find that has complete explanations for making GUIs as nice as you want, depending on the time you put in. It is certainly not for someone without some background knowledge of windows and GUI elements and controls, but this book will teach you everything you need if you can follow it and work with the examples.

Fortran is a very elegant mathematical developing language with periodical updates (Fortran 55, 66, 77, 88 but labeled 90/95, and now still waiting for ANSI 99 which will probably be labeled 2002). You don't need a whole library to grasp its possibilities and functions, while the mathematical and statistical libraries are incomparable. But in most manuals the use of Windows and graphics are underexposed, whereas many Fortran solutions for graphics and some for Windows exist to choose from.

This is where Norman Lawrence comes in. I bought the latest print (C)2002. Not a general Fortran tutorial, but covering the necessary subjects to start immediately with Compaq Visual Fortran graphics and Windows, and with a nice Fortran programming style even a Guy-Like-Me could not improve too much (!!!). All sources available on the companion Web sites (Publisher, please pack these 90 separate files together).

A rare must in the Fortran collection, as was the earlier Jones & Crabtree: Fortran Tools 1988 ISBN 0471619760 for string manipulation, file-i/o, lexical analysis in Fortran, a candidate for a reprint.

For those die-hard Fortran programmers with no prior Windows programming experience, such as myself, this book is the perfect accompaniment to the CVF on-line programmers' guide and answers many of the lingering questions you may have after working through the CVF sample code. The great thing about this book is that all the examples discussed have the code freely available from the publisher's website, so that you can work through the concepts step-by-step in the book and then examine the nitty-gritty from the downloaded resources. Along-side Metcalf and Reid's "Fortran 90/95 explained", Norman Lawrence's "Compaq Visual Fortran: A Guide to Creating Windows Applications" is definintely one of my most valuable reference texts. Get the most out of your Visual Fortran software and stick this book in a prominent position on your shelf!