Re: ObjectAda Libraries

[Dave Wood <dpw@sd.aonix.com>]

You're laboring under a few misperceptions about
ObjectAda.  Allow me to clarify...

Fogartys wrote:
> 
>      I've just purchase ObjectAda Personal Edition and sent in my registration
>  card, but it will probably still be a week or so before I'm eligable for the
>  ObjectAda mailing list or my 30 day window of Aonix telephone support.  

As currently implemented, any ObjectAda user can join the
mailing list simply sending an email to majordomo@aonix.com,
with the following text in the body of the message: 

  subscribe Intel-ObjectAda <your-email-address> 

As far as the 30 day support period goes, if you just sent
in the card and can't wait for it to show up at Aonix, just
explain that to the humans answering the customer support
lines.  You'll find them quite reasonable about this.

>In the
>  meantime, I'm hopefull that experienced ObjectAda users might point me in the
>  right direction in taking advantage of ObjectAda's built-in libraries.
> 
>      For example, even though it's not a required element of the language, I
>  would expect there to be a library package named perhaps, TRIG_FUNCTIONS, that
>  I could "with" into my program and then use cosine, sine, etc.  If such
>  libraries are not included it's not the end of the world; I can write my own.
>  All the same, I'd be dismayed that a $245 commercial compiler would come
>  without such basic functions.

This is part of the language standard (Generic_Elementary_Functions
in the Numerics package).  Given that ObjectAda is a validated 
Ada 95 compiler, you'll find this package is supported.

>      Also, although I didn't get the more expensive professional edition that
>  includes the GUI (Graphic User Interface) Builder, my understanding was that I
>  could still build GUI's in the personal edition by typing in all the code by
>  hand.  Yet in the help features and courseware I have not found any hint of
>  packages that I could "with" into my program to create even simple buttons or
>  do basic pixel manipulation within a window.
> 
>      Perhaps I am missing something obvious.  

Yep.  You need to learn about Win32.

There is nothing that you can do with the GUI Builder
that you can't do without it - it's just harder.  Although
the GUI Builder allows you to graphically depict your GUI,
once you press the Save button it generates Ada code with
Win32 calls.  Therefore, you could certainly write the 
same code yourself.

In the base products, a publicly available Win23 binding,
win32ada, is supplied on the CD along with a number of
substantial GUI examples.  You'll find them in the 
samples folder.

The win32ada binding set covers the full Win32 up 
to NT 3.5.

In addition, an enhanced binding which provides coverage
to NT 4.x is available with the OpenPack, as are a set
of graphics libraries, and a binding to a substantial
subset of MFC.

(Beyond all this, you could use other C/ C++ APIs as 
well, so long as you're willing to make bindings for
whichever calls you want to make.  In general, anything
that you can program in MSVC, you can also program with 
ObjectAda.)

>After all, all my previous Ada
>  programming experience (which includes built-from-scratch GUI programming) has
>  been in DOS.  For that reason, if anyone can recommend a textbook that has
>  been particularly helpful in making the transition between DOS and Windows
>  programming, that also would be appreciated.

I highly recommend that you stop by your local bookstore
and pick up one of the many books on Win32.  You'd be
surprised at the breadth of stuff covered by that API.

For a quick search, the Microsoft Win32 help file is 
supplied with ObjectAda.  To search it or index on it,
launch it directly from the Microsoft Explorer rather
than from the ObjectAda help system.  This is an
extremely valuable tool, however I recommend it only
as a quick reference.  To get a better grasp of context,
you should pick out a good Win32 book.

I hope this helps.

-- Dave Wood
-- Product Manager, ObjectAda for Windows
-- Aonix - "We don' need no steenking mandate..."
-- http://www.aonix.com