General informations about ASIS

General informations about ASIS

[Hibou57 (Yannick Duchêne)]

Hi all once again,

I was looking sometime ago, about ASIS, and come back looking for
informations about it.

I got basics question about it, .... perhaps someone know.

o The first one is : is there an official ASIS 2005 ? I've heard about
AdaCore working on this, but I was not able to know if theire work
bcomes the new standard.
o There are ASIS 2005 declaration packages in some Debian
distribution : are these declarations the one of an official ASIS
2005 ? What is the status of declarations which seems to indeed
enumerates all kind of Ada constructs.
o The third question : what is the content of the ISO/IEC 15291:1999
document ? Is it the same as theses declarations which I could see on
some place ? Are they some specific materials which cannot be found
elsewhere ? (I was trying to figure out if wiether or not it would be
interesting to me to save some money to order this a futur day)
o Fourth, there is a ISO/IEC 15291:1999, which does not seems to apply
to Ada 2005. If I did not found any reference about an ISO standard
for an hypothetical ASIS 2005, does it mean there is no official ASIS
2005 ?
o Fith : what is the legal status of these ASIS declarations ? Is it a
public standard (although apparently none-free, it may still be
public, this would not be contradictory)

With lots of thanks

Y.D.

Re: General informations about ASIS

[Randy Brukardt]

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"Hibou57 (Yannick Duch�ne)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr> wrote in message 
news:6a692bc8-5989-404c-8bfb-593f23c21070@w1g2000prm.googlegroups.com...
> o The first one is : is there an official ASIS 2005 ? I've heard about
> AdaCore working on this, but I was not able to know if theire work
> bcomes the new standard.

Not yet. The plan is that the work on the standard will be finished at the 
next ARG meeting (next week) and then it will start the standardization 
process.

> o There are ASIS 2005 declaration packages in some Debian
> distribution : are these declarations the one of an official ASIS
> 2005 ? What is the status of declarations which seems to indeed
> enumerates all kind of Ada constructs.

Most of the technical decisions for the revised ASIS were done months or 
years ago and can be found on the ARG's website. The draft standard itself, 
unfortunately, is copyright ISO (as is the 1999 version) and thus cannot be 
provided except to people actively working on it. (The reason I'm here 
tonight is to finish that draft and get it distributed before the meeting.)

> o The third question : what is the content of the ISO/IEC 15291:1999
> document ? Is it the same as theses declarations which I could see on
> some place ? Are they some specific materials which cannot be found
> elsewhere ? (I was trying to figure out if wiether or not it would be
> interesting to me to save some money to order this a futur day)

Well, it describes the use of the functions, and there are some examples and 
rationale. Most of that should never have been in the standard in the first 
place, it should have been made freely available -- but it is too late to 
fix that.

> o Fourth, there is a ISO/IEC 15291:1999, which does not seems to apply
> to Ada 2005. If I did not found any reference about an ISO standard
> for an hypothetical ASIS 2005, does it mean there is no official ASIS
> 2005 ?

This is the same as your first question, and it has the same answer.

> o Fith : what is the legal status of these ASIS declarations ? Is it a
> public standard (although apparently none-free, it may still be
> public, this would not be contradictory)

I can't answer that, because we're not sure. The group that did that 
standard has long since disbanded, and as far as we can tell, they didn't 
pay any attention to intellectual property/licensing/copyright issues. 
Personally, I think they intended the specs to be public domain or something 
like that, but it isn't clear that they took the needed steps to ensure that 
is actually true. You'd have to ask a lawyer if you need a definitive 
opinion.

We've tried to address this by restructuring the standard, but whether that 
really works is an open question.

                                                   Randy.

Re: General informations about ASIS

[Hibou57 (Yannick Duchêne)]

On 15 fév, 04:22, "Randy Brukardt" <ra...@rrsoftware.com> wrote:
> Not yet. The plan is that the work on the standard will be finished at the
> next ARG meeting (next week) and then it will start the standardization
> process.
Next week... that's may be why a little bird told be about to go back
to ASIS documentation picking

Will you make an announcement here ?

> Most of the technical decisions for the revised ASIS were done months or
> years ago and can be found on the ARG's website. The draft standard itself,
> unfortunately, is copyright ISO (as is the 1999 version) and thus cannot be
> provided except to people actively working on it. (The reason I'm here
> tonight is to finish that draft and get it distributed before the meeting.)

Is it some work like the ones with « Ada 2005 Issues » ? (the
discussion and submit of corrections to be made to the standard)

> Well, it describes the use of the functions, and there are some examples and
> rationale. Most of that should never have been in the standard in the first
> place, it should have been made freely available -- but it is too late to
> fix that.

Ok, I see. I suppose that the tutorials available on the web cover the
same area. So there is no real worry about it.

> I can't answer that, because we're not sure. The group that did that
> standard has long since disbanded, and as far as we can tell, they didn't
> pay any attention to intellectual property/licensing/copyright issues.
> Personally, I think they intended the specs to be public domain or something
> like that, but it isn't clear that they took the needed steps to ensure that
> is actually true. You'd have to ask a lawyer if you need a definitive
> opinion.

Could you, please, if you allow me to made such a request to you and
have a sufficient time for that, ask them a bout it ?

> We've tried to address this by restructuring the standard, but whether that
> really works is an open question.
>
>                                                    Randy.

Ok, I will try to figure looking for the news in the coming weeks

Lots of thanks Randy

Re: General informations about ASIS

[Randy Brukardt]

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"Hibou57 (Yannick Duch�ne)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr> wrote in message 
news:f51ca824-c447-4e48-84a1-628c6498d9a4@v38g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
...
>> Most of the technical decisions for the revised ASIS were done months or
>> years ago and can be found on the ARG's website. The draft standard 
>> itself,
>> unfortunately, is copyright ISO (as is the 1999 version) and thus cannot 
>> be
>> provided except to people actively working on it. (The reason I'm here
>> tonight is to finish that draft and get it distributed before the 
>> meeting.)

>Is it some work like the ones with � Ada 2005 Issues � ? (the
>discussion and submit of corrections to be made to the standard)

Yes. Look in the same place:  http://www.ada-auth.org/ais.html#ASIS99

I presume the implementions you are finding are based on that work, although 
most likely older versions of that work.

                         Randy.

Re: General informations about ASIS

[Hibou57 (Yannick Duchêne)]

On 16 fév, 23:23, "Randy Brukardt" <ra...@rrsoftware.com> wrote:
> Yes. Look in the same place:  http://www.ada-auth.org/ais.html#ASIS99
>
> I presume the implementions you are finding are based on that work, although
> most likely older versions of that work.
>
>                          Randy.

I did see it, but was not sure (now I am)
I will do with this materials

Have a nice day Randy

Re: General informations about ASIS

[Hibou57 (Yannick Duchêne)]

What about to submit this as a NISO standard ?

I've discovered this standards organisation (seems nice) : http://www.niso.org/home

Re: General informations about ASIS

[Ludovic Brenta]

Hibou57 (Yannick Duchêne) wrote on comp.lang.ada:
> o There are ASIS 2005 declaration packages in some Debian
> distribution : are these declarations the one of an official ASIS
> 2005 ? What is the status of declarations which seems to indeed
> enumerates all kind of Ada constructs.

Debian 4.0 "Etch" includes a package libasis-dev version 2005-5. This
reflects the fact that this version of ASIS is from GNAT GPL 2005
Edition; not to any version of the ASIS standard.  Similarly, 5.0
"Lenny" has the version from GNAT GPL 2007 Edition.

PS. Debian 5.0 "Lenny" was due to become "stable" yesterday. I have
not yet seen the announcement but qa.debian.org already lists it as
"stable". I think the official announcement must be on its way to
thousands of web sites right now.

--
Ludovic Brenta.

Re: General informations about ASIS

[Hibou57 (Yannick Duchêne)]

On 15 fév, 08:55, Ludovic Brenta <ludo...@ludovic-brenta.org> wrote:
> Debian 4.0 "Etch" includes a package libasis-dev version 2005-5. This
> reflects the fact that this version of ASIS is from GNAT GPL 2005
> Edition; not to any version of the ASIS standard.  Similarly, 5.0
> "Lenny" has the version from GNAT GPL 2007 Edition.

And does it differ a lot from the standard ?

But.... what I do not understand is : is it really ASIS if it is not
the standard ? It it does not comply to the ASIS standard, then, it
cannot be ASIS... or am I wrong in some way ?

I've found something (cannot remember where, I forgot to bookmark the
source), a file named asis20s, which seems to be a set of package
specifications for ASIS 2005, but there is no reference at all to any
author (nor to GNAT as well). Do you know this file ?

Thanks to you as well Ludovic


P.S. I apologize for all of my questions

Re: General informations about ASIS

[Hibou57 (Yannick Duchêne)]

I've just find a source for the asis20s : http://www.sigada.org/wg/asiswg/specs/asis20s.txt

Do not know what to think about it

Is it usable/correct ?

Re: General informations about ASIS

[Martin]

On Feb 15, 9:34 pm, Hibou57 (Yannick Duchêne)
<yannick_duch...@yahoo.fr> wrote:
> I've just find a source for the asis20s :http://www.sigada.org/wg/asiswg/specs/asis20s.txt
>
> Do not know what to think about it
>
> Is it usable/correct ?

Not particularly usable:

   type Context is (Implementation_Defined);

So you aren't going to be able to compile it and use it, if that's
what you wanted. It's more for information purposes I guess.

Check the GNAT Libre site for a source version of asis - it has some
tutorials.

Cheers
-- Martin

Re: General informations about ASIS

[Ludovic Brenta]

Hibou57 (Yannick Duchêne) wrote:
> On 15 fév, 08:55, Ludovic Brenta <ludo...@ludovic-brenta.org> wrote:
>
> > Debian 4.0 "Etch" includes a package libasis-dev version 2005-5. This
> > reflects the fact that this version of ASIS is from GNAT GPL 2005
> > Edition; not to any version of the ASIS standard.  Similarly, 5.0
> > "Lenny" has the version from GNAT GPL 2007 Edition.
>
> And does it differ a lot from the standard ?
>
> But.... what I do not understand is : is it really ASIS if it is not
> the standard ? It it does not comply to the ASIS standard, then, it
> cannot be ASIS... or am I wrong in some way ?

The package "asis"  in Debian contains an *implementation* of the
standard, not the standard itself. This implementation has a version
number, in this case 2005 (in Etch) or 2007 (in Lenny). The standard
has another version number and is non-free (copyright ISO, no
redistribution allowed) so is not included in Debian; and the standard
is not software, it is only a document.

> I've found something (cannot remember where, I forgot to bookmark the
> source), a file named asis20s, which seems to be a set of package
> specifications for ASIS 2005, but there is no reference at all to any
> author (nor to GNAT as well). Do you know this file ?

That's the draft of the standard (a document), not an implementation
(software).

--
Ludovic Brenta.