Re: HTML as GNAT source

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

To: Robert I. Eachus et al.
From: Bob Leif, Ph.D.

I agree with everything you wrote except for, "The tools that produce the
input can be either proprietary, public domain (as would probably be case
if I do a Y2K tool), or copylefted." One condition I wrote was that Ada
tools should be available under conditions that permit their use by ALL
compiler vendors. I will not develop software that is potentially is
covered by a copyleft. Firstly, I am a professional inventor. I will NEVER
under any circumstances agree to give up my constitutional right to obtain
a patent on my intellectual property. However, I will agree to join one or
more patent and copyright pools including giving up my right to be a sole
source in exchange for reasonable royalties.

The problem is the term reasonable royalties. I believe that it will be
possible to build a tool based on ASIS which will count the function points
that are included in the final linked code. The tool must not count library
code which is omitted from the final product.

If this type of tool can be created, Ada will have a new, highly relevant,
very important technical and potential commercial advantage. It will be
possible to equitably divide up royalties based on an automated objective
method.  The accountants and the lawyers can then be excluded form this
process.

 Present Ada software pricing often is a boolean, exorbitant or no cost.
Neither is a good choice.  All significant software including quality
products written in Ada require maintenance. The best guarantee of good
timely maintenance is that your vendor makes a profit.  I suspect that
virtually all of the software vendors including the Free software vendors
will agree with this statement. I wish to emphasize that the subject of
providing source code is NOT part of this discussion.

The goal is to maximize the probability of successful the development of
COTS products in Ada by minimizing the initial cost of Ada products. The
cost of the Ada packages used to provide parts of future products can be
minimized including being made available at no cost in return for the
expectation of a share in any significant future profits.

I hope that a lively discussion will now proceed on the correctness of my
statements and, more importantly, on better ways to achieve the goal of a
flourishing Ada COTS industry.

Yours,
Bob Leif
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At 06:21 PM 2/6/98 -0500, you wrote:
>At 06:58 PM 2/5/98 -0500, Doug Smith wrote:
>>I've followed a couple of threads about html and Ada and
>>tried to inject some promos for WebAda, which seem to get
>>ignored in the discussion. So here goes one more time!
>
>    The problem is not that WebAda is being ignored, but that what I am
>proposing works backward from what WebAda currently does.  I want also
>editors that can turn Ada source into nicely formated HTML--but that is not
>what I am proposing here.  I want to be able to take HTML source and
>extract the Ada (or other language) source, keeping the library in HTML,
>but not limiting in any way the chosen format for display.  In particular,
>I want to be able to emphasize some code and "grey out" code is not
>relevant to understanding the unit.
>
>   Yes, this requires a good software engineer to put extra effort into the
>source code he writes, but that is exactly the point.  That information
>doesn't belong in the documentation, it properly belongs in the source.
>
>   Let me give you a simple example.  Let's say that there was a Y2K
>problem in Ada.  (Now you know why I want to support other languages.)  I
>can create a review tool that marks suspect code by highlighting it in red.
> Comments added by the reviewer might be highlighted in a different color,
>and changes could be displayed with the removed code in one color, added
>code in another.  The enabling technology is a "front-end" for gcc that
>supports these conventions, and the added value is the tools that produce
>the HTMLized code.   The "front-end" should and will be copylefted and
>free.  The tools that produce the input can be either proprietary, public
>domain (as would probably be case if I do a Y2K tool), or copylefted.
>
>                                        Robert I. Eachus
>
>with Standard_Disclaimer;
>use  Standard_Disclaimer;
>function Message (Text: in Clever_Ideas) return Better_Ideas is...
>
>
>
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