Are Fortran control characters (carriage control) still implemented in compilers?

Question

In the book Fortran 95/2003 for Scientists and Engineers, there is much talk given to the importance of recognizing that the first column in a format statement is reserved f

Answer 1

Common printer hardware would do special things based upon the content of column 1. Note that line printers didn't have a print head that moved back and forth--they had a chain or drum and 132 hammers, each associated with a byte in a buffer. When the character in front of the hammer matched the one in the buffer, the hammer would be energized and that byte of the buffer would be blanked. When the entire buffer was blank, the printer would load the next line.

Printers had no concept of carriage-return, line-feed, or form-feed control characters. Instead, they used the first character of the buffer to indicate what if anything the paper should do before printing each line. Certain codes would advance the paper by fixed amounts; other codes would select one of (IIRC) eight columns on a paper tape reader, and advance the printing paper and paper tape together until a hole was spotted on the appropriate column. Traditionally, the paper tape would be a loop the same length as a printed page, and column 1 would have a single hole; the paper would be lined up so the column-1 hold would occur where printing was supposed to start on each page. I've read of one shop which used a double-length type, and had columns 7 and 8 line up with inward- and outward-facing perforations of the fanfold paper. Nice trick--I wonder how common it was.

In any case, carriage-control characters may be a convention strongly associated with the language, but they're a hardware feature rather than a language one. Indeed, there's no particular guarantee a "1" will go to top of page, beyond the fact that most if not all shops happened to set up their carriage-control tape that way.