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From: kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen, LJK Software)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: FSF drops Apple boycott, opens gate for GNAT, etc.
Message-ID: <1995Feb5.234630.9042@eisner>
Date: 5 Feb 95 23:46:30 -0500
References: <3gnviq$epn@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM>
Organization: DECUServe
Date: 1995-02-05T23:46:30-05:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <3gnviq$epn@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM>, dweller@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM (David Weller) writes:
> This has probably been mentioned before, but if not...
> 
> In this month's GNU's Bulletin, an atricle indicated the League of
> Programming Freedom (LPF) has dropped its boycott of Apple.  The Free
> Software Foundation (FSF), which was backing the LPF, has also
> announced it will no longer boycott Apple.  This means "the FSF will
> now treat Apple operating systems like other non-free operating
> systems."
> 
> This is, of course, welcome news by all.  For the Ada community, however,
> it speaks volumes.  

I am not sure what volumes it speaks.  Could someone elaborate ?

Does this mean that GNAT authors would just make a version of their compiler?

Does this mean they would define packages for the (many) Macintosh toolboxes?

Does it mean they would reach a cooperative agreement with Apple for periodic
release of the latest Apple toolbox definitions as is done for the commercial
third parties who produce C, Pascal and Fortran compilers?

(Not that proper Ada bindings are as easy as those others, which are done
somewhat automatically.)

I work with computers for a living (rather than use computers to work
with Physics for a living or some such), and it has probably been 25 years
since I wrote a program which did not have to be tightly connected with
the operating system.  As far as commercial products are concerned, it
is not feasible to achieve the "look and feel" expected by customers on
(Macintosh, Windows, VMS, Unix) machines without using a lot of operating
system specific calls.

And presuming I tempt a GNAT expert into responding, would GNAT likely
output both 68000 and PowerPC code, or would it require a Macro assembler,
which relegates it to what some view as the inferior MPW environment?

Larry Kilgallen