Using Fortran Windowing Application Projects

Fortran Windowing applications (.EXE) are main programs that you create when you choose the Fortran Windowing Application project type. This type of project lets you call the Windows* APIs directly from Intel® Fortran. This provides full access to the Windows* APIs, giving you a larger (and different) set of functions to work with than QuickWin.

Although you can call some of the Windows* APIs from the other project types, Fortran Windowing applications allow you to use the full set of API routines and use certain system features not available for the other project types.

The IFWIN module contains interfaces to the most common Windows APIs. If you include the USE IFWIN statement in your program, the most common Windows* API Routines are available to you. The IFWIN module gives you access to a full range of routines including window management, graphic device interface, system services, multimedia, and remote procedure calls.

Window management routines give your application the means to create and manage a user interface. You can create windows to display output or prompt for input. Graphics Device Interface (GDI) functions provide ways for you to generate graphical output for displays, printers, and other devices. Windows* system functions allow you to manage and monitor resources such as memory, access to files, directories, and I/O devices. System service functions provide features that your application can use to handle special conditions such as errors, event logging, and exception handling.

Using multimedia functions, your application can create documents and presentations that incorporate music, sound effects, and video clips as well as text and graphics. Multimedia functions provide services for audio, video, file I/O, media control, joystick, and timers.

Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) gives you the means to carry out distributed computing, letting applications tap the resources of computers on a network. A distributed application runs as a process in one address space and makes procedure calls that execute in an address space on another computer. You can create distributed applications using RPC, each consisting of a client that presents information to the user and a server that stores, retrieves, and manipulates data as well as handling computing tasks. Shared databases and remote file servers are examples of distributed applications.