Re: Development process in the Ada community

["Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@well.com>]

"Gary Scott" <scottg@flash.net> wrote:

> I wish someone would resurrect GKS/CGM.  I love those.  It needs to be
> modernized a little, but I like the clear clean terminology and design. 
> There are only a few things that I prefer about IBM's GDDM over GKS.

Why bless your heart!

There was a half-hearted GKS implementation or binding, I'm not sure
which, for Ada 83, I believe in AdaSAGE; if it had been completed to
handle all the interactive issues, GKS would probably be one of a
working set of graphics packages highly used by the Ada community.

I cannot really blame the implementors, though, when MS-Windows is the
dominant platform and is infamous (at least with me, from harsh
experience writing shrink-wrap software some time ago) for having few or
no device interface standards.  Doing a full up GKS when there is
nothing standard to which it can interface is really tough.  That is
what the VDI (virtual device interface) was supposed to accomplish, but
for all of me, that standard seems to have disappeared without a trace.

The closest thing that exists today to a virtualized device interface is
embedded in the Java Virtual Machine, and I'm too new to Java to know
whether it really caters for all the nastiness of printing and all the
various pointing and clicking devices.

xanthian.

On the bright side, a _lot_ of the interface devices that were popular
back in the GKS days seem to have become deprecated by time; I don't see
many analog to digital devices for real valued input in my limited
viewport to the world, though there are a few 3D mice floating about of
which I'm vbaguely aware.

As to an upgraded GKS, the standards committee is always open to new
membership.

This little tidbit will prove interesting:

Binding Status: The Ada binding to GKS (GKS/Ada) is an ANSI/ISO
standard.

Documentation: The ANSI GKS/Ada Binding is published by ANSI as document
#X3.124.3.  The International Standard is published as ISO 8651-3.  To
inquire about availability of either standard, contact: ANSI, 1430
Broadway, New York,
NY 10018; tel (sales): 212/354-3300; general: 212/354-3300

For more information, contact: Richard F. Puk, Chairman, X3H3.4, Puk
Consulting Services, 7644 Cortina Court, Carlsbad, CA 92009-8206; tel:
619/753-9027; fax: same as phone; e-mail: rpuk@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu.

Found here:

http://archive.adaic.com/tools/bindings/GKS/GKS-bindings.txt

I have no idea whether Dick Puk is still X3H3 Chairman, and I was
baffled by the ANSI main site that it doesn't seem to index its
technical committees.

[ I once implemented full bells-and-whistles 3D graphics on a
stroke-drawn machine from a SIGGRAPH article by Dick Puk; he and I go
back a couple of decades. Neither would recognize the other by now. ]



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