Summary

This software package, INFANTS, takes in FORTRAN source code files and generates hypertext copies for browsing. Large software teams, or new members, can easily navigate complex projects and rapidly gain a deeper understanding of the software's structure and philosophy than otherwise possible, even when formal documentation exists.

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INFANTS Mini-Users' Guide

INFANTS generates hypertext copies of selected FORTRAN source code files including an index page that categorizes all identified programs, modules, subroutines, functions, and interfaces. The hypertext versions contain links from any usage of the declarations to their definitions. Thus, you can use a standard HTML web browser to navigate your source code following any desired execution path by simply clicking on the calling links. In addition, uses of user defined types and operators (allowed in FORTRAN90/95) are linked to their definitions. Together, this combination of links allows new project members to grasp the structure and philosophy of a collection of source files quickly. Large software teams can also benefit by frequent review of this representation of structure and philosophy and use the html files as a significant augmentation to any formal documentation that may exist.

When multiple definitions are identically named (ignoring case) multiple links are provided. Since INFANTS doesn't pretend to be a compiler it can't determine scope. Therefore, links to each of the multiple definitions are included for the user to decide upon. The index.html file makes these multiple definitions quite obvious and can be used to identify and eliminate them if they are not desired. One possible source for such multiplicity is duplicate source files in different directories. As a safety against this, unique file names are generated for each output html file.

The INFANTS user interface allows interactive selection of FORTRAN source files and the output directory. Alternatively, you can collect them at startup with command line options: use '-r' to have INFANTS recurse through the directories; use '-e <ext>' for every extension you want to gather. For example, 'infants -r -e f -e f90' would collect all the *.f and *.f90 files in the current directory and below.

The interface also allows easy control of levels and styles for syntax highlighting from the corresponding panel. The bottom strip provides progress feedback while generating html files. Each of these features is discussed in greater detail below. The screen shot at right serves as reference -- clicking on a portion of it will take you to its brief discussion.

The "Generate HTML" button is prominently positioned, just waiting to be pressed after you've made all your selections. The first selection to be made is the output directory, which must already exist. You can type it in directly or select it using a file browser accessed through the "Browse..." button. The directory will contain all of the html files including the index index.html; no subdirectories will be created. The trailing slash is not necessary, but will be present when using the browser results.

Syntax highlighting refers to formatting special FORTRAN key words in bold and/or italic styles. There are several levels (1,2,3) that increasingly format more key words. Selecting "none" in the level menu will bypass all such formatting. The levels are:

When INFANTS starts the list of selected files is empty. Files are selected from the mini-file selector on the right and added to the selected files on the left by clicking on the "<<<" button between the panels. They are removed by clicking the ">>>" button. To pick files in either panel use the standard mouse click alone to pick a single entry; shift-click to extend a selection to adjacent members; and control-click to extend selections to non-adjacent files. The mini-file selector uses a bold font for directory names. Clicking on one will open that directory. The current and parent directories are represented with a single and double dot, respectively. The current directory can be refreshed by clicking the single dot. You can move up to the parent directory by clicking the double dot. You can also move up any number of directories by using the directory menu at the top of the mini-file selector.

The very bottom section provides a progress meter in the left hand box. During generation of the html files the meter will move incrementally as each file is processed. At 50%, the first pass (collecting descriptors) will be complete; the second half measures progress of writing the html files. In addition to the meter, the long, right hand box will display the current file name being processed. For modest collections of source files, or several hundred kilobytes of source code, the meter and current file name will stream by too quickly to read. Its purpose is to show activity more informative than an hour glass cursor for large projects.