🚀 go-pugleaf

    Date: 28 Nov 88 11:25:37 GMT
    From: axion!ukc!warwick!expya!admin%cs.exeter.ac.uk@uunet.uu.net
         (Khalid Sattar)
    Subject: questions on fortran mode
    To: info-gnu-emacs@prep.ai.mit.edu
    
       Firstly, I would like to know how to set the character to be treated
    as a comment line marker in fortran. i.e is it possible to customize EMACS
    so that it recognises say 'c...' as a comment 'character' and set the TAB
    key to correctly indent the line.

Yes, it is possible.  See the variables comment-line-start and
comment-line-start-skip.  (Not to be confused with comment-start and
comment-start-skip for same-line comments.)  In your case, all you
need to do is to set comment-line-start to "c..." to make TAB and
ESC LFD work correctly.
    
       Secondly, is it possible to prevent long lines of fortran code being
    indented out of the 72 column window when indenting an old unindented
    program using 'indent-region'. It would be useful if any code that would
    otherwise go beyond 72 columns could be automatically continued on a
    continuation line i.e with '$' prefix on a new line ......without splitting
    fortran commands.

There is no automatic line splitting, but try typing C-c C-r
(fortran-column-ruler) or C-c C-w (fortran-window-create) for some
visual aids.

 < Stephen