gtk-fortran: a GTK+ binding to build Graphical User Interfaces in Fortran
Vincent Magnin, James Tappin, Jens Hunger, Jerry De Lisle · The Journal of Open Source Software · 2019
Fortran is still much used in research because it is suited by design to scientific computing and there is a lot of legacy code written in this language.But contrary to more recent languages like Python, it offers no native solution for graphical visualization or graphical user interfaces (GUI).However, the visualization of scientific data is essential for researchers to interpret and explore their results.Real-time visualization of modelling can save a lot of time when the computing time is long: the user can interrupt the execution if an error is detected or if he wants to tweak some parameters to explore other solutions.And a GUI can bring interactivity to the model, allowing the scientist to modify the value of a parameter and see its effects in real-time (J.Hunger, Böhm, Böhlig, & Hunger, 2008), which can even bring new possibilities to legacy code (Tincher, Bilbao y León, & Miller, 2017).It can also ease the use of the research software by colleagues inside or outside the laboratory.