ObjectAda paper documentation and c.l.a vendor-specific content

[kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <32715EA1.2109@thomsoft.com>, Dave Wood <dpw@thomsoft.com> writes:

> The industry trend is definitely toward "paperless" documentation,

For several years the industry trend has been toward C++, but that
does not make C++ something I want :-)

> but like many (most??) people, I like to sit down with a book in
> my lap (not a laptop) in addition to enjoying the fruits of on-line
> docs.   To that end, a full, hardcopy document set will be
> available for the next release of ObjectAda for Windows (v7.1).
> 
> In the meantime, we're making available a draft set of docs,
> (8.5x11, 3-hole punch, shrink-wrap) for a nominal fee to cover
> reproduction and shipping.  Call your sales rep and ask for 
> product 1102-DRFT-DC.

It is Saturday morning, and if you had spent the extra few
keystrokes to include the price, our check would have been
in the mail by noon.  Please post the price, and _I_ will
take the heat for having supported such commercialism in
c.l.a.  After the amount of time we have spent discussing
the fact that Tenon's next price will _not_ be $695, I think
a quick documentation price is acceptable.  Besides, if your
price is too high, we can have another one of those neat
discussions about hidden modulo 32-bit arithmetic :-)

> The OA mailing lists are intended to be essentially self-
> sustaining.  They are just now building up to a critical
> mass where users can help one another as they might here on
> c.l.a.  We think it best not to have product-specific 
> discussions on a general newsgroup because it can clutter
> up discussion of the main topic (hint, hint...)

There will, however, always be some degree of product-specific
discussion appropriate to c.l.a, and progress toward universal
preference for Ada is such that it would be unwise to turn away
questions with a curt "go ask in the vendor-specific forum".
Certainly the existence of a GNAT mailing list does not exclude
GNAT questions from c.l.a.

I imagine it would be a good idea to have product-specific
mailing list signup information written out explicitly on
the Home of the Brave Ada Programmers web site so that
those interested would not have to clamber through a
vendor-specifc web-site hierarchy to get that information.

Larry Kilgallen