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From: ezkcdude <zamir.evan@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Newbie Needs Ada Advice
Date: 8 May 2007 11:51:53 -0700
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Date: 2007-05-08T11:51:53-07:00
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All helpful responses. Thanks. One idea that now makes some sense
(having thought about it for all of a couple of hours), is that the
GUI/interface could be a separate application that simply sets up the
experiment (i.e. microscope configuration). For example, creating an
XML document with appropriate hardware parameters, and then feeding
this document to the "engine", which actually controls the microscope.
The GUI could then be written using something even more high-level
(like my favorite language MATLAB!). The engine could be written in
Ada. I could also write another application that would graphically
monitor the ongoing experiment (i.e. display images).  This monitor
could be web based, and simply interact with the data that is acquired
by the microscope controller engine.

The only issue that still bugs me is that most of the hardware drivers
for the major microscope manufacturers (Leica, Nikon, Olympus, Zeiss)
are in C/C++, so there will still be a need to interface Ada/C/C++ to
some extent.