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Winteracter

Winteracter

See Addtitional Licensing and Pricing Information

Winteracter is a modern GUI toolset for the Fortran 90/95 programming language. It consists of various visual development tools and a substantial subroutine library. Versions are available for most Fortran 9x compilers.

Winteracter offers many advantages:

Create modern GUI based applications using the latest Fortran standard.
GUI features based on native Windows and Motif components.
Avoid complex mixed language programming. Totally Fortran based.
No low level API access required.
Visual tools simplify GUI design.
Meaningful names make for highly readable and easily maintained code.
Mature platform independent graphics and operating system interface.
Numerous graphics hardcopy/export formats supported.
Distribution of Winteracter-based programs is royalty-free.
Free technical support by email.

New V9.3 (March 2013)

Lahey/GNU Fortran: Support for the new Lahey compiler product. Based on gfortran 4.7, Lahey/GNU Fortran provides integration with Visual Studio, support for creation of 32-bit and 64-bit Windows programs, easy installation and a command line front-end which will be familiar to existing Lahey users. Winteracter v9.30 provides both 32-bit and 64-bit support for LGF. Support has also been added to WiDE, including automatic identification of the compiler installation, eliminating reliance on environment variables. Our existing Lahey Winteracter licence for Windows adds 32-bit support for LGF and a new 32/64-bit licence also adds 64-bit support. Customers who hold a Windows Lahey Winteracter licence can upgrade to either licence.
Windows 8: The Windows version has been successfully tested on Windows 8, which is now an officially supported platform. Some minor changes have been made to the installation procedure and documentation. No Windows 8 related changes have been made to the library. Note: Previous versions appear to work with Windows 8, but official support starts as of Winteracter v9.30.
Open64 Fortran: All Linux versions now include support for the open source Open64 Fortran compiler. Both 32-bit and 64-bit applications can be created with this compiler. Open64 support is included with each Linux licence, in addition to g95 support.
g95 0.93: Following the resumption of active development and support of the g95 compiler late in 2012, support has been updated to the newest g95 0.93 "Stable Oct 2012" release on Linux.
File selector: Various improvements have been made to the file selector used on Linux and Mac OS X. New features include a directory creation button, directory sorting options and file properties display. This change benefits all X programs which use our file selector, including all of our visual tools.
SVG: Files generated by the SVG driver are now compatible with modern web browsers, such as IE9/10, Firefox and Chrome.
IOsDirInfo now offers additional file date/time or size sort order options. It can also report file sizes in kilobytes instead of bytes. The Linux/Mac version now accepts multiple space-separated file specs.
Dialogs : Useful minor additions to dialog handling:
- A new WindowDialog routine allows the dialog which appears in a combined window/dialog to be changed without having to close/re-open a window. This includes changing the dialog in a sub-window of a split window. The same routine also supports dialog identifier reassignment, allowing simultaneous copies of the same dialog in multiple combined windows/dialogs.
- Two new routines allow conversion between dialog units and pixels.
- The "flat" field style is now supported in group boxes and push-buttons on X Windows.
- Dialog size can now interrogated in pixels.
The size and position of the Windows taskbar can be interrogated.
WED: Syntax highlighting extended to support Fortran 2003. A duplicate-line option has been added.
WiDE: Various minor improvements:
- Automatic Location of Lahey/Fujitsu compilers on Windows, eliminating reliance on PATH/LIB environment variables.
- Additional window layout option of combined project/console + floating editor.
- Console word wrap option.
- Default compiler/tools switches now set separately from current project switches.
- A new 'Open File' main menu option allows non-project files to be opened.
- More file extensions recognised as Fortran file types (specifically .f03, .f08 and .ftn).
- Supported added for Lahey/GNU Fortran (Windows) and Open64 Fortran (Linux).

Customers who purchased v9.20 on or after 11/Jan/2013 will normally be entitled to receive a free v9.30 update. Qualification for free updates from 9.20 is based on the date of shipment from I.S.S. or a recognised I.S.S. reseller and in any event is at the sole discretion of I.S.S. Ltd. Free updates are normally shipped automatically and do not need to be requested.

New V9.2 (June 12)

32/64-bit Windows: Both installation and licencing of 32/64-bit Windows versions of Winteracter have been reworked. A Winteracter licence now solely determines the type of Windows programs which can be created with that licence. It is no longer also related to the type of Windows platform upon which programs are developed. Specific changes are as follows:

A new dual 32/64-bit licence has been added, which allows creation of both program types on the same computer.
The installed visual tools now match the "bitness" of the operating system, i.e. 32-bit tools are installed on Win32 Windows systems and 64-bit tools are installed on Windows x64.
Any Windows Winteracter licence can be installed on any supported Windows operating system, regardless of the bitness of each.
Multiple Windows Winteracter licences can be installed in any order, regardless of target bitness.
Updates for Windows will now be supplied in a single download, rather than separate 32-bit and 64-bit files as previously.
When separate 32-bit and 64-bit licences are installed together, both can now be updated together and in any order. The new dual 32/64-bit licence can also be updated in a single operation.

GNU gfortran on Windows: All Windows licences now include support for GNU gfortran 4.6, in addition to the target commercial compiler. Both 32-bit and 64-bit GNU gfortran are supported. Every Winteracter licence, on all platforms, therefore now includes support for an open source Fortran compiler.

Sound: WPlaySound has been upgraded:

External process management: Functionality of IOsCommand process execution routine substantially expanded. New routines to check state of and kill processes invoked via IOsCommand.

Date picker: Calendar-style date selection common dialog.

Line style: Line join and cap style now supported by graphics primitives in all types of output. Line width control added on a per-dataset basis to the presentation graphics routines.

Graphics text:

New "natural" aspect ratio option added to graphics text. This allows text to remain at a constant aspect ratio regardless of the physical aspect ratio of the graphics area (avoids excessively squeezed/stretched text).
Better font fallback handling on X to take account of increasingly common omission of "standard" X fonts from default Linux installations. Support for commonly installed URW fonts added on X. Better graphics text font choice on Mac X server.
Longer graphics text strings allowed, when using driver-specific fonts.

Dialogs: More control over behaviour of range-checked numeric fields. Improved double click handling in X version. Selectively disable identifier validation for faster treeview creation.

Editor windows: More keystrokes supported in X versions. Improved font selection and error reporting.

WiDE:

New Library-project option allows creation of static library instead of a program.
Kill project option, to terminate programs which have stopped responding.
Option to open a command window in project directory. Better location of terminal program on Linux and Mac OS X.
Support for GNU gfortran added on Windows. Choice of external debugger (e.g. gdb or Insight).
Improved auto-location of Motif and X libraries on Linux and Mac, to cope with increasing variability of their installation directories.
On Windows, 64-bit programs can now be built on 32-bit platforms.
Lahey/Windows users now have choice of fdb or winfdb debuggers.

WED: Insert Winteracter-routine option now also allows selection from alphabetical list. Better editor font selection. More editing keystrokes supported in X version. Match count in Find All.

Licence Agreement: Winteracter Licence Agreement now allows installation on two computers (a "primary" and a "secondary" computer), so long as only one is being used at any one time. Other minor changes have been made. See the new Licence Agreement.

X GUI font: Better GUI font selection on X, copes with increasingly common absence of Adobe fonts in default Linux installations. Program control over default GUI font size. Improved dialog field size calculation ensures that text will be more likely to fit regardless of font.

Demos: Five new demo programs. Several existing demos updated.

View the full release notes (link to ISS)

Customers who purchased v9.0 on or after 3/May/2012 will normally be entitled to receive a free v9.20 update. Qualification for free updates from 9.0 is based on the date of shipment from I.S.S. or a recognised I.S.S. reseller and in any event is at the sole discretion of I.S.S. Ltd. Free updates are normally shipped automatically and do not need to be requested.

V9.0C (Nov 10)

Winteracter now formally support version 12.0 of Intel Fortran, as of the 9.0c update, on all of Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Winteracter 9.0 was already largely compatible with the 12.0 compilers, but minor changes have been applied to the documentation and the Windows version of WiDE for the sake of full 12.0 support.

Since IVF 12.0 adds support for VS2010, WiDE now also allows this to be used as the tools/libraries provider on Windows platforms, when building applications with either the 32-bit or 64-bit versions of IVF 12.

Existing Winteracter 9.0 licence holders can update to v9.0c in the usual way, via the Updates page on the Winteracter web site.

New V9 (July 10)

New look

Support for latest visual styles on Windows XP/Vista/7. Dialog controls can automatically adapt to native "look" of current platform. No changes required to calling Fortran code to take advantage of new styles. See the updated screen snapshots on the Image Gallery page.
Flat toolbar style on all platforms, including X Windows.
Three new sets of pre-defined 256-colour toolbar button bitmaps, in 16x16, 24x24 and 32x32 resolutions.
New colour scheme on X Windows (see the new screen shots on the X/Winteracter page). Much finer control over X colour scheme. New redistributable colour scheme configuration tool.
All the Winteracter visual tools use the new styles, toolbars, etc.
To see the new look in action, download the latest version of the Winteracter demonstration program.

Transparent images

IGrLoadImageData and IGrSaveImageData now support transparent images in PNG (alpha channel), ICO or CUR formats.
New WBitmapBlendData blends transparent image data into screen or memory bitmap drawables.
Improved visual tool support for transparent image files.
Control over degree of transparency in image data, allowing for semi-opaque images.
New colour conversion functions which allow for transparency.
Convert between transparent and/or non-transparent formats (e.g. ICO to alpha-channel PNG).

Visual Tools

The resource editor has been updated. In particular, the toolbar and image editors have been substantially overhauled:
- The toolbar editor now mimics the newly adopted flat toolbar style. More spare images can be loaded and displayed. The depth of the undo buffer has been increased. Separate options to load the pre-defined 16x16, 24x24 or 32x32 button images. Documentation and screen updating have also been improved.
- The image editor benefits from much improved screen updating and memory management. Undo buffer increased to 12 levels. Improved handling of region selection and cut/copy/paste. New image rotation tools. Improved drawing colour selection. PCX and PNG files can now be edited, when operating in "standalone" mode. Documentation substantially updated.
- The mimic display in the menu editor has been reworked, providing more accurate replication of the menu's runtime appearance, particularly on Windows Vista/7.
- On Windows XP/Vista/7, the dialog editor now uses the current system's visual styles to display dialog controls in both edit and test modes.
WED, the Winteracter text editor, now provides a search string history, new toolbar buttons for Save All and Change Case options, better integration of the Find-All function with the other search/replace functions and an "insert #" function in the X version for Mac users.
The data viewer, WinterView, can now display the contents of ICO/CUR files or transparent ("alpha channel") PNG files. When viewing gridded XYZ data, the raw co-ordinate list can now be viewed in a separate window. The number of recent files on the File menu has been increased.
The Windows version of our development environment, WiDE, now includes a manifest creation option, to enable use of the latest visual styles. Compilation is faster on Linux and Mac, particularly when compiling multiple small files.
SetupEd and the generic installer now allow for external programs to be run during installation (e.g. a license manager or installation configuration tool).
The appearance of the contents/index control in HTML/Javascript help file sets created by the help editor, HelpEd, has been upgraded. See the Winteracter release notes for an example of such a help file set.
PlotConv can now display transparent images in ICO/CUR or PNG (alpha channel) formats.

Database interaction

Interrogate available data sources.
Interrogate table/column names and types.
Put string/number routines.
Undefined value support.
Improved error reporting.
Raw SQL command execution.
New general purpose data source viewer example program.

Common dialogs

Colour selector: Program control over custom colour buttons (these are also a new addition in the X version). Title selectable.
Directory selector : X version now includes "home directory" and "parent directory" buttons, plus better support for long pathnames.
All the common dialogs benefit from the improved look noted above.

Grids

Built in grid-window toolbar upgraded to 256 colours.
Find string and associated options now program selectable.
Improved error reporting.
Multi-cell/multi-column operations now more efficient (e.g. due to elimination of repeated validation checks).
Runtime grid redefinition now allows column width control.
Interrogate number of visible rows, original number of columns and Find option state.

Editor windows

Built in toolbars upgraded to 256 colours.
Find and Replace strings and associated options now program selectable.
Documentation reorganised and expanded.
Interrogate Find/Replace option states.

X/Winteracter resource compiler

All bitmap, icon and cursor image files are now stored in the compiled resource file on Linux/Mac in 24-bit/Zlib compressed format, rather than 12-bit/RLE-compressed as previously. This has several effects:
- 24-bit colour images now display in dialogs with full shading.
- Compiled resources containing multiple images or large images are typically much smaller.
- Resource compilation time with Intel Fortran is significantly reduced.

General

g95 support on Linux and Mac updated to "0.92 stable (July 2009)" release.
Nine new demo programs, several others updated.
2D scatter plots with point-specific colours.
New "find nearest colour" and "count colours" functions.
Various new information items, including an extensive set of system colour reporting options (e.g. menu and dialog colours), Print Manager printer name/port and X server vendor/release.
Status-bar sub-divisions size can be in pixels.
Better error reporting for errors originating from other APIs such as OpenGL, MAPI, Zlib and ODBC.
Direct control over background colour when creating and clearing memory bitmaps.
The vertex limit on shaded polygons has been eliminated.
New "Message Types" section in Programming Reference, detailing each possible message type on a separate page.
Improved clipboard management on X Windows.
Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) now officially supported.

Customers who purchased v8.0 on or after 1/June/2010 will normally be entitled to receive a free v9.0 update. Qualification for free updates from 8.0 is based on the date of shipment from us and in any event is at the sole discretion of I.S.S. Ltd. Free updates are normally shipped automatically and do not need to be requested.

Additional Updates

June 22nd 2010

Various previously inaccessible Winteracter updates for versions 4.0 through 6.0 are now available once again on the Updates page.

Absoft Pro Fortran v11.0

December 11th 2009

Winteracter 8.0 has been successfully tested with the recently released Absoft Pro Fortran 11.0 compilers on Windows, Linux and Mac OS/X. The existing Absoft Pro Fortran 10.x support in Winteracter 8.0 on Linux and Mac is also suitable for use with the 11.0 compiler. Winteracter documentation and WiDE have been suitably amended at the 8.0g update to take account of this additional compatibility. As usual, existing Winteracter 8.0 licence holders can update via the Updates page.

Windows 7

November 5th 2009

The current version of Winteracter (v8.0) has been tested on Windows 7. No issues have been identified, so there appears to be no need for an update to add support for this platform. Both the 32-bit and 64-bit Windows versions of Winteracter 8.0 have been successfully tested on Windows 7. Compatibility testing has including testing of Winteracter based applications built on earlier Windows platforms (e.g. XP). These also appear to execute as expected on Windows 7.

No Windows 7 specific Winteracter update will therefore be issued, though the 8.0g update includes minor cosmetic amendments to the documentation, reflecting the additional compatibility with this platform. In general, existing v8.0 users should simply read any existing Winteracter documentation which refers to Windows Vista as meaning "Windows Vista and Windows 7".

Any users planning to develop Fortran based applications on or for Windows 7 should note that it is advisable to update to a recent version of their preferred compiler. This is not a Winteracter requirement as such, simply a compiler compatibility issue. The compiler versions used in our tests were:

IVF 11.1.051
Absoft Pro Fortran 10.2
Lahey Fortran 7.10.02
FTN95 5.40

Other compiler versions may also be compatible.

Intel Fortran 11.1

June 26th 2009

Support for Intel Fortran 11.1 has been added to Winteracter at the 8.0e update. In particular, the Windows versions of the Winteracter Development Environment (WiDE) have been upgraded to support Intel Visual Fortran 11.1.

Existing Winteracter 8.0 licence holders can update in the usual way, via the Updates page.

Intel Fortran 11.0 and Visual Studio 2008

January 8th 2009

Support for Intel Fortran 11.0 has been added to Winteracter at the 8.0c update. In particular, the Winteracter Development Environment (WiDE) has been upgraded to support Intel Fortran 11.0 on all of Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. On Windows a new IVF configuration mechanism has been added to WiDE, allowing selection between multiple installed compiler and Visual Studio versions. The Windows version of WiDE 8.0c also adds support for Visual Studio 2008 as the provider of tools/libraries for use with IVF 10/11. Additionally, WiDE 8.0c now allows VS2003 to be used as a debugger, as an alternative to idb, when using IVF 10/11.

Existing Winteracter 8.0 licence holders can update in the usual way, via our Updates page.

V8.0 (July 16th 2008)

Winteracter v8.0 is now available. Upgrades are available from any previous release.

Documentation: The Programming Guide has been integrated into the main documentation set. The entire documentation set is now supplied in a single format, under a common contents/index. The documentation set now provides numerous hypertext links to/from the Programming Guide for the first time. Integration of the Programming Guide ensures that all of the supplied documentation can now be searched via a single interface.
Bitmaps: Half-toning is now supported in bitmap stretching operations on most platforms, giving much better quality bitmap rescaling. WBitmapPut, WBitmapResize, WBitmapLoad and IGrLoadImage all beneft from this change. WBitmapPut now also supports bitmap stretching on X Windows. New bitmap file format conversion routine added.
Latest O/S versions: Improved support for recent operating system releases such as Vista, Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and Fedora 9.
X fonts: X Windows font support has been substantially reworked to reflect the fonts which most current Linux and Mac OS X installations actually provide. Changes also take account of font rescaling quality, which can vary depending on platform. Font selection in dialogs/menus, editor and graphics text output all benefit from these changes. Graphics applications should particularly benefit, since X fonts will be used much more often in preference to substituted "software" fonts.
Information functions: Rationalisation of the the various information functions in the IF group has been completed, including various improvements to the graphics reporting functions.
Presentation graphics: Substantially improved grid interpolation algorithm. More hatching options. Better missing data handling in filled contour plots. User scaling limit eliminated.
Help files: WHelpFile (Win32) no longer relies on external DLL to display CHM files in IVF, LF95 5.7/7.x and Absoft 10 versions.
Visual tools: Many new menu accelerator keys added to most of the visual tools.
WiDE: Simplified OpenGL linking. Option to open files in system associated app on Mac OS X. Improvements to Project and Switches dialogs.
Resource editor: Toolbar editor allows selection from more images. Dialog editor alignment grid improved on Vista. Better resource identifier file/module naming conventions. Improved dialog put/get code generation dialog.
WED: Better tab key handling. More edit buffers. HTML symbol insertion. Improved printing option management. Command line "goto string" option. Improved dialog put/get code generation dialog in WiDE version.
HelpEd: Project source format (RTF-to-HTML) conversion option. HTML symbol option insertion options, as for WED. Better topic identifier file/module naming conventions. Additional help options in topic editors.
SetupEd and generic installer: Various improvements including better Vista support, optional licence agreement dialog, support for PNG or PCX bimaps, administrator privilege check, all-user/current-user shortcuts choice and more.
WinterView: The data viewer provides better management, recognition and display of missing values. Displaying large XYZ data sets is much faster thanks to the improved grid interpolation option. Better local decimal point character support on Windows.
Compilers: Updated compiler support. Intel versions now built with v10.1 on all plaforms. g95 support on Linux and Mac updated to latest 2008 "0.91 stable" release. (Note: MS PowerStation is no longer supported as of this release.)
Installation: Various improvements to installation procedure on all of Windows, Linux and Mac. Better Vista support. Improved Windows shortcut creaion. New "Apps" directory generated on Mac allowing easy invocation of tools and documentation via Finder. Prompt for preferred documentation/web browser on Linux.
Pixel co-ordinates: Mouse and keyboard messages now also include raw pixel co-ordinate values. Graphics units to/from pixel conversion routines now include top-left origin option, for consistency with other library routines which use pixel co-ords.

Customers who purchased v7.10 on or after 20/May/2008 will normally be entitled to receive a free v8.0 update. Qualification for free updates from 7.10 is based on the date of shipment from I.S.S. or a recognised I.S.S. reseller and in any event is at the sole discretion of I.S.S. Ltd. Free updates are normally shipped automatically and do not need to be requested.

Additional Licensing and Pricing information

Commercial Licences

A Winteracter commercial licence entitles the purchaser to install a single copy on a single CPU. Linked executable programs developed using Winteracter under a commercial licence may be distributed without further royalty or run-time licence payments to ISS.

Academic Licences

An educational discount is available to qualifying institutions, subject to the following condition : Software developed using Winteracter under an educational licence may only be distributed to other educational and research establishments, on a non-profit making basis. i.e. the only charges should be for media and handling. An Educational licence can be upgraded to a full commercial licence for the difference in cost plus the currently applicable one-off upgrade fee.

Multi-item Discounts

When purchasing multiple licences or upgrades, a discount of 20% is available off all but the most expensive item ordered. Orders must be placed at one time to qualify for this discount. Multi-item discount is not available on split orders.

Hardcopy/Export Drivers

Winteracter includes a full set of graphics hardcopy/export drivers at no extra charge.

Support

ISS operates a free Winteracter technical support email service. Registered Winteracter licence holders may submit bug reports and other Winteracter related enquiries by email to this service. ISS reserves the right to vary the nature, availability and lifetime of this free service at our sole discretion. In general, we aim to respond to technical support enquiries within one working day of receipt.

Compiler Transfers

A Winteracter licence applies to a specific vendor's compiler(s) on a specific platform. e.g. A single Winteracter licence provides versions for all Lahey Windows Fortran 9x compilers (LF90, LF95 and Elf90). Existing Winteracter licence holders who wish to transfer their licence from one vendor's compilers to another, on the same platform, may do so when purchasing a Winteracter version upgrade, subject to the following terms:

The licence holder must agree to cease using the version for the previous vendor's compiler(s) at the time of the upgrade.
Future technical support for that licence will apply only to the version for the alternative vendor's compiler(s). Support will not be available concerning issues which relate to the previous compiler.

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