mkh6317@venus.tamu.edu (HOWARD, MATTHEW KENDALL) (06/26/90)
Greetings; In the most recent edition of MacTutor Magazine there was an advertisment for Absoft's new FORTRAN compiler "MacFortran II". Several things about the advertisment caught my eye. It appears that this is not an upgrade to their MPW Fortran V1.1 . Although not explicitly stated, other text in the ad clearly indicates that MF-II runs under MPW. But the name "MacFortran II" is an obvious decendant of their earlier MacFortran and MacFortran/020 compilers. The tacit implications are that MF-II is a replacement for the non-MPW based compilers. Perhaps Apple didn't like them using MPW in their product name. Anyway, I wouldn't expect any future upgrades to MacFortran or MacFortran/020, each currently at V2.4. RIP (They were pretty useless anyway.) High on the list of touted features are VAX/VMS, IBM/VM, and FORTRAN 90 extensions, "Mainframe class optimizer" and the usual quadruppal precision, mil-spec stuff. Taking up 20-30% of the page is a single precision Whetstone bargraph showing a 2.6X speed increase over Language Systems FORTRAN Version 2.0 (did they get LSF 1.X and 2.0 mixed up?). I don't know if MacFortran-II is vaporware or if it is actually shipping but perhaps one of you has been beta testing it. Can anyone express an opinion based on first hand experience? Oh, yeah. List is $595 but upgrades from "ANY" other compiler are $195 until October 1st. Disclaimer: Don't work for em, don't even like them very much. Matt Howard Dept of Oceanography Texas A&M University Internet: howie@triton.tamu.edu BITnet: howie@tamvxocn