Ada 9X -- How OO is it really?

[dog.ee.lbl.gov!overload.lbl.gov!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!usc!elroy.jp]

hi.

Well, we are eagerly waiting for the new Ada 9X standard soon to be voted
on by the ANSI comte.  I will soon be working for a company which is
fairly eager to get into the OO business using Ada and I want to get some
info about it and opinions (lots of them :-)

Well, first question:  how is OO handled by Ada 9x?  is is based on the
package mechanism (i.e. class = package) or some other way?  How is
inheritance handled?  Is MULTIPLE and REPEATED inheritance supported,
as well as the necessary techniques for reolving name clashes?  How about
access types for creating linked structures of objects?  There has been
some discussion recently about look and feel issues - what do you all
think?

Also (and opinions are very welcome here.) how does Ada 9X compare to the
major object-oriented languages: c++,Eiffel,Smalltalk,Sather,CLOS?  How should
Ada 9x be improved to be more object oriented (remember the deadline for
modifiations to the standard is coming pretty quick.)

thanks a lot

*dt*