What's the standard way of referring to gfortran in the manual?

Brooks Moses bmoses@stanford.edu
Sat Sep 30 22:52:00 GMT 2006


In looking through the manual and making some corrections, I've noticed 
that we're quite inconsistent in how we refer to gfortran.  At times 
it's "GNU Fortran", at times "GNU Fortran 95", at times "gfortran", at 
times "Gfortran", and at times "@code{gfortran}", without much of a real 
pattern.  Even in the chapter headings, we have both "GFORTRAN" and "GNU 
Fortran 95"!

Is there an official GNU or gfortran standard for this that we should be 
following?

If there isn't, I would propose the following:

(1) @code{gfortran} should be used for references to the program name as 
entered on the command line, and only for those references.

(2) Only one of the following names should be used consistently 
throughout the documentation to refer to the compiler.  I've listed them 
in my order of preference:

   (2a) "GNU Fortran"

   (2b) "GFortran"

   (2c) "Gfortran"

   (2d) "gfortran" (but capitalized as "Gfortran" at the beginning of
        sentences)

Comments?  In note that the GCC manual uses "GCC" and "G++" (note 
capitalization!), and that the Intel manual uses "Intel Visual Fortran", 
in this context.

(There is also the occasional distinction between the GNU Fortran 
compiler and the GNU Fortran language.  The GCC manual distinguishes 
these as "GNU C++" and "G++", and the Intel manual similarly 
distinguishes "the Intel Fortran langauge" and "the Intel Visual Fortran 
compiler".  In describing language extensions, I believe we should 
follow suit and refer to "GNU Fortran" regardless of what we call the 
compiler.)

- Brooks



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