A Window Based Graphical User Interface for a Supersonic Combustion Fortran Code

Abstract

Fortran has been used widely in number crunching applications. In recent years, as the size of application programs increases significantly, users begin to demand interactive capability so that they can interface with the applications in real time in a more flexible and convenient manner. In spite of the wide acceptance by engineers in various fields in the seventies and eighties, Fortran currently does not offer these features. INPUT/OUTPUT are structured rigidly by the order of the READ and WRITE statements in the application programs. The situation would get even worse when the program requires a large number of inputs from the user. A user can use a large input file in which the data must be in a fixed format and no comment statements are allowed. An alternative is to write a real time input interface with requests for inputs displayed on the screen. This leads to a long list of questions and answers scrolling up the screen. When a mistake is made in answering any one of the questions, the input sequence has to be restarted at the beginning of the program again.