Photran is an integrated development environment and refactoring tool for Fortran 77, 90, 95, and 2003.

It includes an editor with "smart" syntax highlighting, a GUI debugger, CVS support, Makefile-based compilation, error message recognition for many common Fortran compilers, Fortran language-based search and code navigation, content assist, a Fortran declaration view, and many refactorings, including popular refactorings such as Rename and Extract Procedure as well as Fortran-specific refactorings like Introduce Implicit None. Photran is based on Eclipse, and some of its components are reused from the Eclipse C/C++ Development Tools (CDT). Throughout this documentation, you will see references to relevant parts of the Eclipse and CDT documentation, which can be accessed by clicking on the Help menu (inside Photran/Eclipse) and clicking Help Contents.

If you have never used Eclipse before, please work through the Eclipse Workbench tutorial before attempting to use Photran. Click on Help > Help Contents in Eclipse, and navigate to Workbench User Guide > Getting started > Basic tutorial. This will introduce you to Eclipse concepts such as perspectives and views; such terminology will be used throughout this manual.