Re: HTML as GNAT source

["Robert C. Leif, Ph.D." <rleif@RLEIF.COM>]

To: Robert Dewar Ph.D. et al.
From: Bob Leif, Ph.D.
Since the original discussion was on GNAT Chat, one could not presume that
the other compiler vendors and tool manufacturers even knew about this
discussion. Therefore following your previous examples concerning subjects
which were of general relevance to Ada rather than specific to GNAT, I
published my reply on Comp.Lang.Ada.

Although I believe that it is of great benefit to the Ada community to have
tools developed for GNAT, I also strongly believe that every reasonable
effort should be made to provide these tools to other Ada compiler vendors.

I believe that there will be many ASIS based tools, which will be separate
entities from the compilers. Of course, the back ends of these will have to
interface with the specific compiler in use. However, one of the major
purposes of ASIS is to work with all Ada compilers which have implemented
ASIS. An ASIS implementation is one of the great advantages GNAT has over
some of its competitors.
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At 07:57 PM 2/4/98 EST, you wrote:
><<Although, GNAT is a very important Ada product, I hope that efforts to use
>HTML will not discriminate against any of the vendors. Let them all build
>editors and other tools based on HTML. This way the front ends and other
>tools will be portable and will work with the HTML version of the Language
>Reference Manual.
>
>The next step will be to build a front end to ASIS which works under HTML.
>
>I have taken the liberty to cross post this to Comp.Lang.Ada because I
>believe that HTML based editors and tools are a generic Ada subject, which
>should be instantiated with all of the vendor's products.
>>>
>
>How can any GNAT-based effort *discriminate* against any Ada vendor. What
>an odd idea. In fact, GNAT is unique in that any effort leads to a work
>product whose ideas can be freely accessed and adapted by any other
>vendor, whereas other vendors keep their tecgnologies guarded and secret!
>
>I do not know what you mean by a front end to ASIS which works under HTML.
>The "front end" to ASIS *is* the compiler!
>
>