Re: What is differance between thick and thin binding?

[Marin David Condic <condicma@bogon.pwfl.com>]

John Duncan wrote:

> The CLAW package and the Windex package are thick bindings. There, the
> structure of the win32 SDK is not as obvious from the packages, rather they
> are organized as an Ada-like front-end to the code written in "C".

My impression of CLAW was that it was substantially more than a "binding" - that
it provided its own environment which rides on top of the Win32api, but does not
attempt to exactly duplicate it. Perhaps this is more of a semantic issue, but
I'd consider a thick binding to be one which provided a parallel set of
subprogram interfaces to the Win32api (as an example) but which provided
parameter types and passing mechanisms more suited to Ada. The best example is
the nuisance of trying to turn an Ada string into a C string where a thick
binding would just accept the Ada string and translate for you.

Or maybe we need degrees of thickness? When does a body of software stop being a
binding and start being an entity in its own right?

MDC
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Marin David Condic
Real Time & Embedded Systems, Propulsion Systems Analysis
United Technologies, Pratt & Whitney, Large Military Engines
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