[1] Language features included implicit parallelism, Unicode support and concrete syntax similar to mathematical notation.
An emacs-based tool called fortify transforms ASCII-based Fortress source code into LaTeX output.
For example, the for loop construct was a parallel operation, which would not necessarily iterate in a strictly linear manner, depending on the underlying implementation.
[3][better source needed] Fortress was one of three languages created with funding from the High Productivity Computing Systems project; the others were X10 from IBM and Chapel from Cray, Inc.
[5] Version 1.0 of the Fortress Language Specification was released in April 2008, along with a compliant implementation targeting the Java Virtual Machine.