While we're waiting for someone to synthesize a coherent essay
on the topic above, here's valuable reading to warm us all up
to the topic:

   * [Combining Fortran and Tcl in one program] - [Arjen Markus] promises to make this page!
   * [Critcl]
   * [Expect for Windows]--or maybe just [Expect]
   * [Fortran]
   * [Keep a GUI alive during a long calculation] [[advanced topic]]
   * [Managing Fortran programs]
   * [exec] and related essays

   * [[tutorials]]
   * [[... much more ...]]












[[Sort the order of the stuff above.]]


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Why privilege FORTRAN?  That is, why wouldn't this have been a better
page, titled "... on interacting with applications written in other languages ..." or "... how to write Tcl/Tk applications with 
external programs that request character-based interaction"?

It's a good question.  First, if someone writes such a page, I'm
one contributor who'll happily factor out common elements, and
refer to them there.

For me, FORTRAN does deserve special attention, for several reasons:
   * While the technology of "gluing" together C and Tcl, or FORTRAN and Tcl, is largely identical, C programmers seem to expect its feasibility, while FORTRANners think everything will be hard.  FORTRAN programmers appear to respond disproportionately better to, "this is how to do it in FORTRAN" than, "this is how to do it in C, and translate it in the obvious way for FORTRAN".  Think of this as "outreach".
   * I believe a far larger percentage of all interesting FORTRAN programs are GUIless "console" applications, than is the case with C.  C programmers generally have plenty of opinions about how to connect a GUI.  FORTRAN programmers are singularly grateful for the realization that they, too, can join the GUI game, in particular with Tk's ease.
   * FORTRAN programmers are also different in that so many of them do not characterize themselves as programmers.  They're engineers, scientists, and so on, and they just want results.  They have little patience with the esoterica of syntax arguments.  If stuff works, they're happy.
   * Related to these other differences, FORTRAN programmers appear particularly disposed ''not'' to see their applications as "external programs".  Their stuff is at the center, and we need to explain architectural realities in language they can better explain.
   * ...

For all these reasons, [CL] regards it as advantageous to address
FORTRANners specifically.
----
I don't think it's so much give Fortan a privilege, it's a question
of getting '''Fortran''' in the title, so the page comes up in a search
for ''Fortran''.