Re: Interfacing to Numerical Programming libraries (was: How to Design..)

["E. Robert Tisdale" <edwin@netwood.net>]

tmoran@bix.com wrote:

> > Ada 95 library developers are not obliged to reproduce the "compromises"
> > incorporated into the design of the Fortran 77 language binding.
>
> Unless they want the bindings to be easily used
> by folks familiar with the F77 binding,
> or they want to avoid spending a lot of time
> developing and documenting their "thick" binding
> and,  instead, want to just point application programmers
> to the existing F77 manuals.
> If the underlying library is a rapidly changing thing (eg, Windows),
> they might well decide it's not worth the trouble
> to try to modify their "thick" API and its documentation
> every time MS adds a new set of functions.
> Perhaps it's only worth running a program
> to mechanically translate the new API calls
> from one language to another.
> ---
> Now to leave town for a few days....

I think you'd better.  Listening to you,
it sound like no one ever implements libraries in Ada 95 --
they just write thick and thin "bindings" to access libraries
written in other programming languages;-)

You can design and implement an Ada 95 language binding
that is just as bad as any other language binding.
I'm just assuming that, because Ada 95 allows programmers
to design and implement a good language binding,
some of them might wish to do so.