From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.2 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,72234a9aaf4c308e X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Tom Moran Subject: Re: Proposed standard GUI: Update 1 Date: 1998/05/15 Message-ID: <355D2E29.279C@bix.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 353731282 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <6jhras$pbm$3@plug.news.pipex.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Reply-To: TMoran@bix.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Organization: InterNex Information Services 1-800-595-3333 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-05-15T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: As developers of Claw, we would be interested in cooperation for the creation of a standard Ada GUI. We've looked a bit at the issues involved, and concluded that an abstraction layer higher than the current Claw bindings would be required. Therefore, we don't think that the use of Claw as it is currently designed would be appropriate for this task. On the other hand, an interface designed following the same principles as Claw (see our Tri-Ada '97 paper at www.rrsoftware.com for details) would be an admirable goal. We have no objection to "borrowing" those principles for a new design. In any case, we think any such GUI interface should be designed using Ada 95 for maximum portability, and most of the products on your list were not designed for Ada 95. That makes Claw one of the best choices for a starting point. We have kept Claw proprietary to this point mainly because we felt that we needed to keep control over its evolution in order to keep a common vision for its design. Once the binding is mature enough that frequent enhancements are no longer needed, we intend to look at the possibility of making some or all of it public. It is difficult to hide the underlying OS API and at the same time create programs which appear to users to have the 'style' of a particular OS. For some users, this doesn't matter. But for anyone whose applications are to be used by ordinary end-users as opposed to the developers themselves, this is a requirement. We've been made even more aware of this with the Claw GUI builder program, where some of the most common complaints from early testers were about missing Windows-specific features. Claw was designed with an emphasis on creating programs with a 'Windows style'. It would certainly be desirable from a programmers viewpoint to have a GUI as OS-independent as possible. Even if conflicting goals make perfection impossible, work in that direction could produce good, useful products for the short term, and valuable conceptual understandings for the long term. We think it's reasonable to strive toward such a goal. Randy Brukardt Tom Moran