Use lowercase for Fortran code in the standard and in proposals

[certik]

Currently it seems to be the habit to use upper case for Fortran source code in the standard as well as any formal proposal submitted to the committee.

I propose we switch to lowercase. It seems more familiar that way. The uppercase style looks ancient.

This is just cosmetic, as Fortran is case insensitive, but the way things look is important.

[everythingfunctional]

Also, uppercase is harder to read at a glance. There is simply not enough visual distinction between characters.

As a side note, what's the community consensus on mixed case? I've been working for the past few years under the assumption that it was ok to use mixed case as an aid to the reader, even if the compiler didn't care.

[certik]

@everythingfunctional if it is ok, let's discuss mixedCase in a separate issue #168 that I just created for it, so that we do not hijack the discussion here.

[HaoZeke]

The uppercase style also seems to reinforce unwelcome beliefs that Fortran is actually still FORTRAN.

[FortranFan]

@certik wrote Oct. 27, 2019, 6:22 PM EDT:

..
I propose we switch to lowercase. It seems more familiar that way. The uppercase style looks ancient. ..

I agree with this proposal strongly and brought this up at the J3/WG5 meeting #224 (June 30, 2021) 5:05 PM EDT. The current Editor is opposed to this and stated as such. No further action expected with the standard.

[jacobwilliams]

I also support this strongly. It's unfortunate and embarrassing that there is opposition to this. This one and #54 are no-brainers.

Fortunately it's highly unlikely that any new user will ever actually see the standard. We just need to make sure that Fortran code looks modern in places where people are most likely to see them (e.g. fortran-lang.org, etc.)

[milancurcic]

I also support this. It's important to make the Standard more approachable to as many users as we can. The language (wording) also has great room for improvement.

To be fair, this was brought up in the meeting during a discussion unrelated to the document style. There needs to be a dedicated paper to propose improving readability of the standard, so we can clearly lay out pros and cons of the change in style. Then try to convince other members through discussion, and have it voted on.

F202Y may be a good milestone to try and implement this change (lowercase + syntax highlighting). F202X is already being dragged out as it is. I understand the Editor's decision to ignore this at this time.

[certik]

As we eventually maintain the standard at GitHub (#48), we can experiment with syntax highlighting and suggest improvements to the wording. Then we can submit such changes as proposals to J3/WG5.