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g77 should offer VXT-Fortran-style suppression of virtual spaces at the end of a source line if an appropriate command-line option is specified.
This affects cases where a character constant is continued onto the next line in a fixed-form source file, as in the following example:
10 PRINT *,'HOW MANY
1 SPACES?'
g77, and many other compilers, virtually extend the continued line through column 72 with spaces that become part of the character constant, but Digital Fortran normally didn't, leaving only one space between `MANY' and `SPACES?' in the output of the above statement.
Fairly recently, at least one version of Digital Fortran was enhanced to provide the other behavior when a command-line option is specified, apparently due to demand from readers of the USENET group comp.lang.fortran to offer conformance to this widespread practice in the industry. g77 should return the favor by offering conformance to Digital's approach to handling the above example.