HOW TO MAKE ADA MORE

[news-feed-1.peachnet.edu!umn.edu!csus.edu!netcom.com!netcomsv!nitelog!mic hael.hagerty@gatech.edu (Michael Hagerty)]

On Wed, 2 Jun 1993, Bill Lee posted to All:

  . for something other than the "large" developments is the lack of
  . readily available interfaces to the kind of things you need for
  . writing programs: portable, standard interfaces to the underlying
  . operating system.

Hear, hear...  A project I am working on is not using Ada for a major
portion, just because of the lack of a portable GUI library.  The GUI
library must be portable across DOS, MS Windows, Motif, and Mac.  The
major GUI builders don't support Ada and the Ada GUI builders all seem
to be focussed on Eunuchs...  I do not consider cross-platform portable
to mean Sun Unix, HP Unix, SG Unix...

I spoke with XVT, the builder we are now using, a number of times about
an Ada binding and their response was that there was just not enough of
a market.  Of course, Windon't (Windows NT) is having a cathartic 
effect on a number of vendors.  Even long-time Unix supporters are
beginning to see the circling of the wagons before the PC indians swoop
in to slaughter the fat-margin Unix tool vendors...

I understand that the INEL people have been funded to produce something
like what I was looking for, but it is at least a year out...  Oh, well,
I might have to just wait...

BL. As an example, how do you deal with directories in Ada? Easy to do
  . in C. Good "standard" libraries.

The GOTS AdaSAGE library gives me this, portable across DOS/Unix.

BL. How do you deal with string parsing in Ada? Easy to do in C. Good
  . "standard" libraries.

Two letters: 9X...  Or so I understand...

BL. How do you get command line arguments in Ada?  Easy to do in C.
  . It's part of the language.

Most compilers provide this already, although I prefer using a library
supplied by other than the compiler vendor, theirs is just too proprietary.

BL. What I want is for the Ada vendors to bundle a FULL POSIX 1003.5
  . library with the compiler. And when it is available, a .20 library,
  . too! THAT will make Ada easier to use and will remove many of the
  . arguments that allow the old guard to stay in their C ways.

Amen, brother...

Regards, Mikey <michael.hagerty@nitelog.com>
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 . MR/2 1.50 #63 . Life's a tough job, and the hours are a bitch.