Re: HTML as GNAT source

Re: HTML as GNAT source

[Lionel Draghi]

Robert C. Leif, Ph.D. wrote:
>
> To: Robert I. Eachus et al.
> From: Bob Leif, Ph.D.
>
> Using HTML for source text (code) would greatly improve Ada environments.
> It would then be possible to create cross-references between the
> documentation and the source text (code). Thus if I had a requirement in my
> documentation, I could make a link in my source to it. This would permit
> the references in both the source and the documentation to be updated.
>
I agree that it could be (it will be :-) a great improvement.
I daily dream that, in my code, some reference to a
problem report, appears whit a different color. I click on it,
and xemacs open me a new frame containing the problem report.

It's only a dream, but reality is not so far. hTML is a simple and
widely
used technology, so for others tools involved in the developpment
process, there is no real problem. No doubt that Robert's initiative
regarding Ada code will be successfull, but an immediate first step
could be to process html markers in Ada comment. I think this will
cause compiler no special problem.
What we only need is an elisp gourou to merge Ada and html mode :-)

________________________________________________________________________
Lionel Draghi              01 45 28 88 50          17, rue Simon Dereure
                                                  93 110 Rosny-sous-Bois

Re: HTML as GNAT source

[Robert Dewar]

<<It's only a dream, but reality is not so far. hTML is a simple and
widely
used technology, so for others tools involved in the developpment
process, there is no real problem. No doubt that Robert's initiative
regarding Ada code will be successfull, but an immediate first step
could be to process html markers in Ada comment. I think this will
cause compiler no special problem.
What we only need is an elisp gourou to merge Ada and html mode :-)

>>

What does it mean to "process html markers in Ada comment[s]".
Ada comments allow completely arbitrary character sequences, so
I am not sure what you are asking for here.

Re: HTML as GNAT source

[Robert C. Leif, Ph.D.]

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.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------
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!
>
>

Re: HTML as GNAT source

[Robert Dewar]

<<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.
>>

It is perfectly appropriate to move this thread to CLA, but just so there
is no misunderstanding here, other vendors and tool manufacturers are most
certainly welcome to partciipate in this mailing list!

Re: HTML as GNAT source

[Lionel Draghi]

Robert Dewar wrote:
>
> <<It's only a dream, but reality is not so far. hTML is a simple and
> widely
> used technology, so for others tools involved in the developpment
> process, there is no real problem. No doubt that Robert's initiative
> regarding Ada code will be successfull, but an immediate first step
> could be to process html markers in Ada comment. I think this will
> cause compiler no special problem.
> What we only need is an elisp gourou to merge Ada and html mode :-)
>
> >>
>
> What does it mean to "process html markers in Ada comment[s]".
> Ada comments allow completely arbitrary character sequences, so
> I am not sure what you are asking for here.

Ok, you confirm that there his no possible compiler problem
due to exotic comments (considering only Ada95 compiler,
naturlich :-).

What i am asking for is exactly the Ada-mode, plus the ability to
manage few html markers in comments, those allowing to jump to
other documents (why not only hREF?).

Lionel.

Re: HTML as GNAT source

[Robert C. Leif, Ph.D.]

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
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------
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...
>
>
>
>

Re: HTML as GNAT source

[Robert Dewar]

This is really not a GNAT thread any more, I sugest moving it to CLA

Re: HTML as GNAT source

[Doug Smith]

At 6:21 PM -0500 2/6/98, Robert I. Eachus wrote:
[snip]
>   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

No problem:

--<FONT COLOR="#AF0000">Code required for Y2K
  if Natural'Value(Date(1..2)) < 64 then
    Year := Year + 100;
  end if; --</FONT>

There are limits and I suspect as you propose requirements and I
show what can and cannot be done, we will eventually define the
essence of what you want. Or you could experiment enough with
WebAda to define what is missing.

I intend to add a feature in WebAda that will remove the leading
comment and append sequential html comments into one line when
rendered by WebAda. This will help with the line length limit
currently imposed by GNAT (which I do not mind in the least,
a perfectly reasonable requirement).

Doug Smith, EDS
dsmith@clark.net

-- 
Doug
dsmith@clark.net
703-742-8662

Re: HTML as GNAT source

[Robert Dewar]

Robert Leif wrote

<<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.
>>

It is fine for people to decide that they personally insist on writing
only proprietary software. People are free to make this choice.

However, the claim thatcomp. there is a constitutional right to obtain a patent
on your intellectual property is a common misconception, but it is just
that, a misconception. The USA is quite different from many other countries,
e.g. the countries of the EEC, in that the constitution does NOT recognize
any moral rights of authors or inventors.

The commerce clause of the constitution *permits* but does not *require*
congress to provide limited copyright and patent grants to authors and
inventors if, and only if, such grants promote the advance of the
"useful arts". In other words, such grants are constitutional only if
they benefit the public.

This often comes as a surprise, and I often find that people just
assume that authors have these rights. Note that the term "intellectual
property" does not appear anywhere in the constitution.

This is not really an Ada related thread, except rather indirectly, namely
it impinges on the issue of whether software patents promote or retard
the development of software. Such patents are constitutional only if
they promote software development, and this point is arguable. Certainly
there is a concern that software patents can affect the ability to produce
freely distributed software. Given the way patents work, the author of
freely distributed software may violate a patent without any way of knowing
they are doing so (between the application and granting of a patent, it
can be kept secret), and then later may owe substantial royalties even
though they never gained any income from the distribution.

Probably it is not appropriate to start a long thread on this on CLA,
since it has been discussed to death elsewhere. However, it seemed
unfortunate to let Robert Leif's clearly incorrect statement stand
uncorrected. For more detail on this and related topics, I suggest
looking through the information provided by the LPF.

Robert Dewar

Re: HTML as GNAT source

[Robert Dewar]

Robert Leif says

<<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.>>

Actually I think our model of making a profit rather directly addresses
the issue of providing a guarantee of good and timely maintenance. Namely,
we make our profit from providing good and timely maintenance.

We agree that cost-free Ada software would be difficult to support, and
certainly Ada Core Technologies is not in the business of providing
cost-free software to serious users of Ada. Yes, we do provide public
releases of our technology for use by students and others for whom
getting good and timely maintenance, and all the other services that
good support provides, is not important, but that is quite another
matter.

If Robert Leif is saying that the model of free software with paid
support is not a "good choice", I am not sure why he thinks this. It
is certainly the case that Robert considers that we charge too much
for support, and would like to get support from us for much less
money (we know this from conversations we have had with him), to
which we respond that good support is indeed, as Robert appears to
note above, not free!

I am all in favor of Ada vendors making a profit, or at least comfortably
breaking even. We find our business model is entirely compatible with
this goal, and that it generates the income that is needed to ensure
continuing development and support of our Ada 95 products. We cannot
of course speak for other vendors.

Note incidentally that Robert Leif's statement above makes the very
common mistake of mixing up the two meanings of free (though he does
capitalize one and not the other). Free software is all about what
customers can do with the software, i.e. they are free to modify,
redistribute and otherwise make broad use of the software. It is
not about free as in free lunch. I actually don't know anyone providing
supported Ada 95 products at no cost, and would find it surprising if
anyone could afford to do so.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

Re: HTML as GNAT source

[Robert Dewar]

Please note that this and other messages were not posted by me, but
rather have been forwarded without permission. I think there is no
harm in this particular case, and Robert Leif may have misunderstood
what I meant by moving the thread to CLA -- I was not suggesting
that he repost articles wholesale. As I say, no harm done, but it
is useful to remind everyone that generally speaking, one should
not repost articles without author's permission.

I definitely agree that the thread is more appropriate here!

Re: HTML as GNAT source

[Robert Dewar]

Robert Leif said

<<<<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. >>

>>

One further point here is that it is a misconception that because something
is public domain or copylefted (i.e. copyrighted with the GPL in effect),
that it means that other vendors could not use it.

Certainly if something is public domain, of course it can be used, for
anything, by anyone, in any manner. You can even take a public domain
product, modify it slightly, and copyright the result.

As for GPL'ed software, it can often be quite freely used. Any stand
alone tool is certainly usable by anyone even if used in conjunction
with a proprietary compiler. For example, if some vendor of a proprietary
compiler decided that the new GNAT stub generation tool (gnatstub) would
be useful in conjunction with their compiler, then they would be free
to distribute gnatstub (and the necessary components of GNAT) with
their proprietary compiler. There would be no legal problem in such a
distribution, and we would have no objections at all.

Similarly library units from GNAT, given that they are distributed with
the modified GPL that allows free use in a very wide range of circumstances,
could perfectly well be distributed with some other proprietary compiler,
and indeed at least in some previous versions (don'
t know if this is still true), the Aonix Object Ada compiler included
some of the GNAT library routines in its runtime. Again, that is
perfectly legal, and perfectly fine with us, providing that the 
appropriate distribution rules are met (e.g. if Aonix wanted to modify
one of these units, they would have to distribute the source of the
modified unit, and maintain the result under the same license).

So I understand the concern here, but there are two points.

First, anyone building Ada tools or components is most certainly free
to make the decision to distribute their work under the GPL, and if
Robert Leif decides not to use it on this basis, that is his problem!

Second, in actual fact, Robert is probably over-reacting, most likely
he will be able to use the resulting tools without disturbing his 
"right" to copyright and protect his own work in whatever restrictive
manner he wants to.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

Re: HTML as GNAT source

[Robert I. Eachus]

At 09:36 PM 2/6/98 -0800, Robert C. Leif, Ph.D. wrote:
>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 think we are violently agreeing.  I want the HTML<-->Ada source
conversion to be independent of any value-added tools that decorate source
code.  That way we can have a completely vendor-and for that
matter--copyleft free format for exchanging well formatted source code, and
all sorts of people and products can produce (source) code in that format.
The fact that the GNAT front-end that reads this source form would probably
be subject to the same restrictions as GNAT itself would not affect any
code written in that source form.

>   I will not develop software that is potentially is covered by a >
copyleft.

    I'm sorry you feel this way.  I have developed software and released it
into the public domain, software covered by copyleft, software covered by
the LGPL, and proprietary software.  Each piece of software should be
treated individually, and the right restrictions for that software selected.

                                        Robert I. Eachus

with Standard_Disclaimer;
use  Standard_Disclaimer;
function Message (Text: in Clever_Ideas) return Better_Ideas is...

Re: HTML as GNAT source/Knuth's Web

[Samuel Mize]

In article <01bd3364$2c898c80$LocalHost@xhv46.dial.pipex.com>,
Nick Roberts <Nick.Roberts@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>Who remembers Don Knuth's 'Web'?

I rememeber it.  I read his example program, and found the amount
of text surrounding the simplest items excessive and confusing,
the style of cross-reference harder to follow, and the program
overall harder to read than normal Ada code.  

In all fairness, I was seeing his program presented as a written
document.  The programs I work on are large systems, and I do a
lot of navigation with cross-reference tables, find and grep.
Perhaps his overall tool suite would provide similar help, but
it didn't seem to me a particularly better way to organize code.

Obviously, other people felt differently:

>This was a wonderful idea (IMHO!)

Some of his ideas were certainly worth using.  For instance:

- his format encouraged you to discuss the program and its design;

- (if I recall right) his book-like organization included a table of
  contents and an index;

- his format broke the program into subsections in which, as in a
  well-written technical document, only one subject is covered.

>Knuth coined the deliberately perjorative phrase "literate programming" for
>this techinique.

I assume from your discussion that you mean it was deliberately
perjorative toward OTHER techniques.

I've actually seen some very good examples of literate programming
in Ada.  (I HOPE I've created some of them.)  Not in terms of using
a web/spider tool, but in terms of writing in a literate style.

To take the points listed above in the same order:

- we don't generally put the design document into the code (or
  vice versa), but we do follow the design or amend it to reflect
  the code.  Ada code, well written, is fairly self-documenting
  at the line-of-code level, so my comments tend to be blocks of
  text that explain blocks of code, as opposed to:

        N := N + X; -- increment N by X

- Various tools provide indexing and cross-referencing to a great
  degree in Ada.  Also, packages can be used not only to control
  namespaces, but to provide a fairly clear top-level organization
  (although in all fairness, they too often are not used this way);

- the use of packages, contained and child packages, and textual
  division with formalized comment blocks provides a good way to
  break the program into cohesive subsections.  Ada 95 improves
  this over Ada 83 by allowing declarations to be freely intermixed,
  so you can declare all related items together.

>The best thing about it (and I suppose the worst too) was that it
>practically forced you to properly document your program as you wrote it.

Nah.  I could write a program using his tools that had virtually
no documentation, not even meaningful identifiers.

The point to the tool, as I understood it, was to promote the idea
of literate programming in WHATEVER tool system YOU were using.  It's
kind of like Pascal, which was originally intended purely as a way to
give students good coding habits.  If Mr. Knuth had higher hopes for
the specific tool he developed, they didn't pan out -- but I didn't
observe any concerted effort to market it, either (maybe I missed it).

>In an industry which highly valued the production of good quality software,
>this idea would have been a breakthrough.  Needless to say, in reality it
>never caught on!

I think it had an impact, and that it also reflected some trends that
were already crystallizing in the industry.  Of course, I'm immersed
in the Defense/aerospace part of the industry, where (at least some)
people already consider reliability and maintainability to be worth
paying for, unlike some companies.  Not to name any major PC OS vendors.

I wouldn't claim that his ideas have suffused the industry, but they
haven't gone totally ignored, although the tool he built generally has.

Best,
Sam Mize

-- 
Samuel Mize -- smize@imagin.net -- Team Ada
Fight Spam - see http://www.cauce.org/
Personal net account - die gedanken sind frei

Re: HTML as GNAT source/Knuth's Web

[Nick Roberts]

Who remembers Don Knuth's 'Web'?  This was a wonderful idea (IMHO!), in
which pieces of the source code (of any programming language) of a program
were embedded in a text document (TEX or whatever) which also contained the
documentation for the code.

The trick was that the pieces were named, and other pieces could be
embedded, macro-like, into a piece of code, by name.  I tried this idea out
myself, in my youth (many moons ago...), and I liked it.  Two special
programs were needed: one to 'spin' the web document into a file suitable
for printing (or browsing or whatever); one to 'tangle' the web document to
produce the source code for compilation.

Knuth coined the deliberately perjorative phrase "literate programming" for
this techinique.  Once you got used to it, the results could be very neat! 
The best thing about it (and I suppose the worst too) was that it
practically forced you to properly document your program as you wrote it.

In an industry which highly valued the production of good quality software,
this idea would have been a breakthrough.  Needless to say, in reality it
never caught on!

-- 

== Nick Roberts ================================================
== Croydon, UK                       ===========================
==                                              ================
== Proprietor, ThoughtWing Software                   ==========
== Independent Software Development Consultant            ======
== Nick.Roberts@dial.pipex.com                              ====
== Voicemail & Fax +44 181-405 1124                          ===
==                                                            ==
==           I live not in myself, but I become               ==
===          Portion of that around me; and to me             ==
====         High mountains are a feeling, but the hum        ==
=======      Of human cities torture.
===========                             -- Byron [Childe Harold]

Re: HTML as GNAT source

[Nick Roberts]

How would an HTML processor react to <, <=, >=, >, and => delimiters in the
Ada text?  (Are they guaranteed to be ignored?)

Good job Ada doesn't have a </ operator!

-- 

== Nick Roberts ================================================
== Croydon, UK                       ===========================
==                                              ================
== Proprietor, ThoughtWing Software                   ==========
== Independent Software Development Consultant            ======
== Nick.Roberts@dial.pipex.com                              ====
== Voicemail & Fax +44 181-405 1124                          ===
==                                                            ==
==           I live not in myself, but I become               ==
===          Portion of that around me; and to me             ==
====         High mountains are a feeling, but the hum        ==
=======      Of human cities torture.
===========                             -- Byron [Childe Harold]


Lionel Draghi <LioDraghi@FILNET.FR> wrote in article
<34DB8D82.67CF8DC1@filnet.fr>...
[...]
> What i am asking for is exactly the Ada-mode, plus the ability to
> manage few html markers in comments, those allowing to jump to
> other documents (why not only hREF?).

Re: HTML as GNAT source/Knuth's Web

[W. Wesley Groleau x4923]

> Who remembers Don Knuth's 'Web'?  This was a wonderful idea (IMHO!), 
> ....

> The best thing about it (and I suppose the worst too) was that it
> practically forced you to properly document your program as you 
> wrote it.

Correction: It ALLOWED you to document your program as you wrote it.
Is there anyone here who has NEVER seen an uncommented program?

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Wes Groleau, Raytheon Systems Company, Fort Wayne, IN USA
Member of Technical Staff - AFATDS                 Tool-smith Wanna-be
                    wwgrol AT pseserv3.fw.hac.com

        Don't send advertisements to this domain unless asked!  
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