Re: Access type to member procedure of instance (Object Oriented programming in Ada)

[sbelmont700@gmail.com]

On Monday, November 19, 2012 3:52:17 PM UTC-5, ake.ragna...@gmail.com wrote:
> I hope I am wrong but it seems to me that since Ada lacks the ability to create pointers (maybe access types are the right words) to instance member methods, it is not possible to take advantage of Ada's OOP features when developing Glade3 applications.
> 

The first problem is that "pointers to instance member methods" is a contridiction in terms; methods are *part* of an object, not some independent 'thing' that can ever exist or be executed otherwise.  Given an object, you access it's subprograms, not the other way around.  It's even stated in the LRM: "Note that using an access-to-class-wide tagged type with a dispatching operation is a potentially more structured alternative to using an access-to-subprogram type."  IMHO, the offending programs should be redesigned, not kludges added to the language.

The second problem is that GTK is a C-based, procedural API.  It was kind-of/sort-of "OOP-ized" for Gtk-Ada, but there are many parts that are still very procedural and reek of C.  The fact that you are registering callback procedures (instead of objects) is a dead giveaway that you are not dealing strictly with OOP.

-sb