RE: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

RE: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[Robert C. Leif, Ph.D.]

From: Bob Leif
To: Michal Nowak et al.

Michal Nowak suggested, "Maybe a CD-player?"

There are two reasonably simple opportunities for the Windows ME and other
markets.
1) Fax software. Symantec WinFax does not support Windows ME.
2) Roxio (Adaptec) Direct CD has extremely limited functionality for
backups. A GUI version of DOS XCopy would be far more useful.

I believe that the target price should be between $10 to $20 for each
program with automated delivery via the Web.

-----Original Message-----
From: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org
[mailto:comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org]On Behalf Of Michal Nowak
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2001 9:51 AM
To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
Subject: Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?


>Heres a challenge...one that I'm taking up myself. For each Ada developer
>in the group here to find a piece of software that they like and find
useful,
>and do thier own little re-implementation of it in Ada95, with all the
little
>benefits that Ada95 offers implemented in addition to what comes standard
>with the application.
>
>Personally, I think the server side is where this type of challenge would
>truly show Ada95 for the gem that I've found it to be.
>
>It doesnt have to be a huge project. Just a something simple. An email app,
>a database frontend/client, blah blah blah.

[snip]

>What do you think?

I was also thinking about it. For me it's a good idea. I'm still newbie
to Ada and it will be a good exercise to get know Ada better. And it will
be a great pleasure to drop some Ada program to people. Maybe a CD-player?
There are some nice CD-Players for linux, but there was always something
missing. So I have intention to write one and share with it.
I hope I succeed... :)

-Mike

------------------------
Mike Nowak
mailto: vinnie@inetia.pl

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[Michael Erdmann]

"Robert C. Leif, Ph.D." schrieb:

> ..................
> 1) Fax software. Symantec WinFax does not support Windows ME.
> 2) Roxio (Adaptec) Direct CD has extremely limited functionality for
> backups. A GUI version of DOS XCopy would be far more useful.

What ever you intend to do, the impportant question is how we are
boundling such acitivities. Either you all could setup project pages
e.g at sourceforge (if you comply to open source) or we setup one
central place some where to support such an initiative.

I would be willing to support such an effort to some extend!


Regards
   M.,Erdmann

PS:

One thing which i find realy boring that there is no real state of
the art IDE for the GNAT  available.  This is what i am interested
in.

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[McDoobie]

In article <mailman.994781951.32588.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>, Michael
Erdmann <michael.erdmann@snafu.de> wrote:

> "Robert C. Leif, Ph.D." schrieb:
> 
>> ..................
>> 1) Fax software. Symantec WinFax does not support Windows ME.
>> 2) Roxio (Adaptec) Direct CD has extremely limited functionality for
>> backups. A GUI version of DOS XCopy would be far more useful.
> 
> What ever you intend to do, the impportant question is how we are
> boundling such acitivities. Either you all could setup project pages e.g
> at sourceforge (if you comply to open source) or we setup one central
> place some where to support such an initiative.
> 
> I would be willing to support such an effort to some extend!
> 
> 
> Regards
>    M.,Erdmann
> 
> PS:
> 
> One thing which i find realy boring that there is no real state of the
> art IDE for the GNAT  available.  This is what i am interested in.
> 
> 

I tend to teeter more towards to Free Software side of things, ala LGPL. 
However, I'm certainly in favor of commercial projects that develop 
software which is actually of commercial quality.(Much of what passes
as a commercial app today falls far short of that goal.)

A state of the art IDE sounds like an awsome idea. It could be implemented
for the GNAT system initially. If it was Open Source, it wouldn't be too 
difficult to expand it to include other toolchains as well.

Another thing that might help would be to develope a sort of ultra-reliable
toolset, sort of like the Praxis Systems Sparks toolchain, only directed 
more towards servers and the desktop market, rather than the embedded 
and specialized systems that the Spark tools are geared towards.

I'm still an up and coming Ada developer myself, just started learning not
long ago, so I'm not sure how much help I would be. Coming from a 
primarily procedural background(C, Assembler, TI-BASIC.) But I have 
brushed up against the OOP paradigm.(Perl, Python, a little Java.)  
So it would seem that a project like this could really help my training.

Anyways.  Good idea. Lets bounce the idea around a little and see if it's 
workable. Like I said, not sure how much help I would be of yet...but it 
doesnt hurt to try.

Laters

McDoobie
chris@dont.spam.me

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[Dmitry Kazakov]

On Mon, 9 Jul 2001 19:30:03 -0700, "Robert C. Leif, Ph.D."
<rleif@rleif.com> wrote:

>From: Bob Leif
>To: Michal Nowak et al.
>
>Michal Nowak suggested, "Maybe a CD-player?"
>
>There are two reasonably simple opportunities for the Windows ME and other
>markets.
>1) Fax software. Symantec WinFax does not support Windows ME.
>2) Roxio (Adaptec) Direct CD has extremely limited functionality for
>backups. A GUI version of DOS XCopy would be far more useful.
>
>I believe that the target price should be between $10 to $20 for each
>program with automated delivery via the Web.

What about thick (very thick (:-)), maybe a 3D engine) bindings to
OpenGL for Linux/Windows?

Regards,
Dmitry Kazakov

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[chris.danx]

> > One thing which i find realy boring that there is no real state of the
> > art IDE for the GNAT  available.  This is what i am interested in.


> A state of the art IDE sounds like an awsome idea. It could be implemented
> for the GNAT system initially. If it was Open Source, it wouldn't be too
> difficult to expand it to include other toolchains as well.

Could you define State Of The Art IDE for me please?


A while back I had the idea for an IDE that could handle different compilers,
and didn't need things on the PATH.  Anyway, I didn't get very far, but recently
I've been looking at the idea again, possibly using GWindows, and I'm looking
for ideas.

I was thinking of an IDE for Windows with some of the following

- Syntax Highlighting
- Project Management facilities
- Code Completion (good for long package structures like x.y.a.b.c ?)
- Possibility an Object browser
- Ada Aware
- Non Specific Compiler support
- and others

What other features would you like to see?  What features would you not like to
see?

I would be willing to contribute time to this since my current project isn't
anywhere near the coding stage (not that coding of an IDE would start straight
off: DESIGN COMES FIRST), but I have a large gap in my time to fill (until
october) and would be genuinly interested in a SotA IDE for Ada 95.  Development
wouldn't stop after october, just slow down a little (if i was the only
developer!).

I would hope the project to be open source, possibly under the GPL or X
something or other licenses.

Regards,
Chris Campbell

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[Marc A. Criley]

"chris.danx" wrote:
> 
> > > One thing which i find realy boring that there is no real state of the
> > > art IDE for the GNAT  available.  This is what i am interested in.
> 
> > A state of the art IDE sounds like an awsome idea. It could be implemented
> > for the GNAT system initially. If it was Open Source, it wouldn't be too
> > difficult to expand it to include other toolchains as well.
> 
> Could you define State Of The Art IDE for me please?
> 
> A while back I had the idea for an IDE that could handle different compilers,
> and didn't need things on the PATH.  Anyway, I didn't get very far, but recently
> I've been looking at the idea again, possibly using GWindows, and I'm looking
> for ideas.
> 
> I was thinking of an IDE for Windows with some of the following
> 
> - Syntax Highlighting
> - Project Management facilities
> - Code Completion (good for long package structures like x.y.a.b.c ?)
> - Possibility an Object browser
> - Ada Aware
> - Non Specific Compiler support
> - and others
> 
> What other features would you like to see?  What features would you not like to
> see?

What's funny is that Emacs with the Ada-mode (and the other modes with
which it is bundled) already provides most of these features, just...in
the "Emacs idiom".

Emacs is my editor of choice, so I find it quite efficient as an IDE. 
(But then, I find I still have the VT keypad binding for DEC's "ed"
hardwired into my right hand :-)

Providing those features in a Visual Studio like IDE would obviously
expand the potential developer base.

Marc A. Criley
Senior Staff Engineer
Quadrus Corporation
www.quadruscorp.com

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[chris.danx]

> > Could you define State Of The Art IDE for me please?
> >
> > A while back I had the idea for an IDE that could handle different
compilers,
> > and didn't need things on the PATH.  Anyway, I didn't get very far, but
recently
> > I've been looking at the idea again, possibly using GWindows, and I'm
looking
> > for ideas.
> >
> > I was thinking of an IDE for Windows with some of the following
> >
> > - Syntax Highlighting
> > - Project Management facilities
> > - Code Completion (good for long package structures like x.y.a.b.c ?)
> > - Possibility an Object browser
> > - Ada Aware
> > - Non Specific Compiler support
> > - and others
> >
> > What other features would you like to see?  What features would you not like
to
> > see?
>
> What's funny is that Emacs with the Ada-mode (and the other modes with
> which it is bundled) already provides most of these features, just...in
> the "Emacs idiom".
>

I found that hard to adjust to, and the mappings difficult to learn.  That's why
I don't use Emacs except in rare cases.  I guess it's just a matter of personal
preference.

Chris Campbell

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[Al Christians]

"Marc A. Criley" wrote:
> 
> "chris.danx" wrote:
> >
> >
> > What other features would you like to see?  What features would you not like to
> > see?
> 
> 
> Providing those features in a Visual Studio like IDE would obviously
> expand the potential developer base.
> 

Start with Visual Studio and Delphi, list the features, and divide them
into categories, eg  features to jettison, features to copy, features
to do better than they do them.  If you don't have some good number of
items on the 'do better' list, then maybe you should look at Mjolnar's
Beta IDE (free download available).  That has UML integrated into the 
IDE, and "supports a smooth transition from design diagrams to 
implementation code and vice versa. The design notation is a graphical 
syntax" (quote from their docs).  This would be roughly equivalent of
attempting to integerate a graphical case tool like Rose or Together 
into the IDE.  

Short of that, look at Genitor.  This also maintains a high-level view
of
the code, but it is more text-oriented and syntax-oriented than design-
oriented.  Nonetheless, if you are looking to make Ada more popular, you
will have to deal with beginners, and having an IDE that helps them
write
correct code and lets them fill in the blanks to write a program that 
compiles would be great.  


Al

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[Marin David Condic]

I've got some version of EMACS here that I use on occasion when I'm on the
Sun side of things. I don't know what inspires such loyalty. It looks
basically like a thousand other editors I've seen except that it has more of
a VI flavor to it. I don't see any wonderful, spiffy features jumping up at
me that make me say "Hey! This is different!"

In fairness, I don't use it extensively and I've not studied whatever help
is available for it in any detail. I also do not have an "Ada Mode" for it,
so I don't know if this suddenly changes things dramatically. AFAIK, it
doesn't do many of the things I regularly see with CodeWright or the MSVC++
environment. It looks basically like an editor - and that's it. If all I am
getting is an editor - I'd rather have TPU - maybe LSE (but I found it
painful when it was trying to "help" me.) or TPU in EDT mode.

I suppose I'm asking to be told "RTFM" and "You're not doing it right!" but
if all the gold lies burried that deep, I'd blame the tool for that - not
me. If what it has is so spiffy, howcum it isn't immediately visible?

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"chris.danx" <chris.danx@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:pK_27.27350$B56.4717960@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com...
> > > Could you define State Of The Art IDE for me please?
> > >
> > > A while back I had the idea for an IDE that could handle different
> compilers,
> > > and didn't need things on the PATH.  Anyway, I didn't get very far,
but
> recently
> > > I've been looking at the idea again, possibly using GWindows, and I'm
> looking
> > > for ideas.
> > >
> > > I was thinking of an IDE for Windows with some of the following
> > >
> > > - Syntax Highlighting
> > > - Project Management facilities
> > > - Code Completion (good for long package structures like x.y.a.b.c ?)
> > > - Possibility an Object browser
> > > - Ada Aware
> > > - Non Specific Compiler support
> > > - and others
> > >
> > > What other features would you like to see?  What features would you
not like
> to
> > > see?
> >
> > What's funny is that Emacs with the Ada-mode (and the other modes with
> > which it is bundled) already provides most of these features, just...in
> > the "Emacs idiom".
> >
>
> I found that hard to adjust to, and the mappings difficult to learn.
That's why
> I don't use Emacs except in rare cases.  I guess it's just a matter of
personal
> preference.
>
> Chris Campbell
>

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[Michal Nowak]

On 01-07-11, at 09:01, dmitry@elros.cbb-automation.de wrote:

>On Mon, 9 Jul 2001 19:30:03 -0700, "Robert C. Leif, Ph.D."
><rleif@rleif.com> wrote:
>
>>From: Bob Leif
>>To: Michal Nowak et al.
>>
>>Michal Nowak suggested, "Maybe a CD-player?"
>>
>>There are two reasonably simple opportunities for the Windows ME and other
>>markets.
>>1) Fax software. Symantec WinFax does not support Windows ME.
>>2) Roxio (Adaptec) Direct CD has extremely limited functionality for
>>backups. A GUI version of DOS XCopy would be far more useful.

Why not...I now realized, that I do not have any fax program on my
computer, so maybe write a liitle one :-)

>What about thick (very thick (:-)), maybe a 3D engine) bindings to
>OpenGL for Linux/Windows?

I wasn't good at graphics. However, I think I saw somewhere something
similiar, but I don't remeber where...

- Mike

------------------------
Mike Nowak
mailto: vinnie@inetia.pl

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[Al Christians]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> if all the gold lies burried that deep, I'd blame the tool for 
> that - not me. If what it has is so spiffy, howcum it isn't 
> immediately  visible?
> 

If you want to produce a product that stands tall in comparison to 
products produced by <big software company, but I won't mention any
names>,  realize that they have human factors experts who help them
reduce (or increase) the dumbth of their user interfaces to match
user expectations and increase user satisfaction (no fooling).  I
don't want to complain about emacs or any other particular piece of
open software, because it is extraordinary that such wonderful things
are freely available, but I somehow get the idea that maybe emacs, 
etc, weren't designed with human factors suited to the average person 
according to the experts foremost.      

There are many more things besides programming language that determine 
whether or not software meets its objectives.  One of these is human 
factors of the UI.  If you are not an expert in this area, you probably 
can't estimate accurately the percent of otherwise users lost on 
account of the UI if you build and  emacs-like interface --  0%, 1%, 
10%, 50%, or 99%? I surely DK. 

Presumably, with good software, this is all user-configurable.  But
it is daunting to a new user to try to reconfigure emacs, and this is
not something that a product that is aimed at drawing new users should
count on.  To gain a big number of new users, I'd guess you've got to 
have a standard Windows look and feel either standard or not more than 
2.5 clicks away from the default set up. I have seen an emacs setup 
that actually has hot keys on the pull down menus and responds to the 
Windows standard control keys for cut and paste, etc.  Could one 
combine that kind of setup into the Ada mode for emacs? 

If someone could write a program that would get all the emacs haters
to like emacs,  I'd nominate them for the Nobel Peace Prize.


Al

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[Marc A. Criley]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> 
> I've got some version of EMACS here that I use on occasion when I'm on the
> Sun side of things. I don't know what inspires such loyalty. It looks
> basically like a thousand other editors I've seen except that it has more of
> a VI flavor to it. I don't see any wonderful, spiffy features jumping up at
> me that make me say "Hey! This is different!"
> 
> In fairness, I don't use it extensively and I've not studied whatever help
> is available for it in any detail. I also do not have an "Ada Mode" for it,
> so I don't know if this suddenly changes things dramatically. AFAIK, it
> doesn't do many of the things I regularly see with CodeWright or the MSVC++
> environment. It looks basically like an editor - and that's it. If all I am
> getting is an editor - I'd rather have TPU - maybe LSE (but I found it
> painful when it was trying to "help" me.) or TPU in EDT mode.
> 
> I suppose I'm asking to be told "RTFM" and "You're not doing it right!" but
> if all the gold lies burried that deep, I'd blame the tool for that - not
> me. If what it has is so spiffy, howcum it isn't immediately visible?

Yes, the gold is buried that deep, it isn't immediately visible, and
it's the tool's fault.

In other words, your perception is not without merit :-)

As you've heard, Emacs is magnificently full-featured, it's just a
matter of  getting over the learning curve and becoming comfortable with
a keyboard-oriented editing style.  (I hate having to go back and forth
from keyboard to mouse, so I generally detest GUI-oriented editors.)

One day at work a few years ago I resolved to become comfortable with
Emacs and commit to it as my primary editor.  After three or four weeks
(yes, _weeks_!) I had ceased to struggle with remembering command
sequences, and after another month I was fairly proficient and therefore
could gradually become more familiar with its myriad capabilities and
put them to use as needed.

But as Chris said, it's largely a matter of personal preference.

Marc

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[tmoran]

>>>1) Fax software. Symantec WinFax does not support Windows ME.
>Why not...I now realized, that I do not have any fax program on my
>computer, so maybe write a liitle one :-)
  I have a fast Ada uncompressor for the fax bit stream that I'd
contibute, unrestricted.  Of course that leaves modem handling and UI...
  For "a reliable Ada replacement for popular but buggy software"
I'd suggest HP printer drivers. #.#
  What programs should be rewritten in Ada that aren't, at least
partly, IO drivers?

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[chris.danx]

"Al Christians" <achrist@easystreet.com> wrote in message
news:3B4C7EBE.716A8BE8@easystreet.com...
> "Marc A. Criley" wrote:
> >
> > "chris.danx" wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > What other features would you like to see?  What features would you not
like to
> > > see?
> >
> >
> > Providing those features in a Visual Studio like IDE would obviously
> > expand the potential developer base.
> >
>
> Start with Visual Studio and Delphi, list the features, and divide them
> into categories, eg  features to jettison, features to copy, features
> to do better than they do them.

My library consists of the following:

Visual Cafe 3 Pro, JBuilder 3 Pro&Standard, C++ Builder 4 Pro&Standard, Delphi 3
Pro, ObjectAda Special Edition and AdaGIDE.

I think the high Borland count may be detrimental since one Borland Ide is much
the same as another, just geared towards a different language.

> If you don't have some good number of
> items on the 'do better' list, then maybe you should look at Mjolnar's
> Beta IDE (free download available).  That has UML integrated into the
> IDE, and "supports a smooth transition from design diagrams to
> implementation code and vice versa. The design notation is a graphical
> syntax" (quote from their docs).  This would be roughly equivalent of
> attempting to integerate a graphical case tool like Rose or Together
> into the IDE.

Is that a feature developers would like? Integration of UML into the IDE?  I ask
since I have no experience with UML.  I did plan to gain familiarity with it and
did buy a book on it, but as yet haven't read it.


> Nonetheless, if you are looking to make Ada more popular, you
> will have to deal with beginners, and having an IDE that helps them
> write
> correct code and lets them fill in the blanks to write a program that
> compiles would be great.

I would like to cater for beginners, but I would also like to cater for the
seasoned professional.  Doing this properly will be difficult.  One possible
solution is that found in 1st Page 2000.  Basically, the IDE has 5 or 6
different modes.  Each mode is different in functionality.  The lowest level has
limited functionality while the highest level has the greatest functionality.
Another option would be to selectively disable features via an options section.
Just some random thoughts.


I'm off to think about how to reconfigure an IDE at runtime.  You know add tools
to menu's and add new wizards without recompiling (and re-installing) the ide.


Chris

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[McDoobie]

In article <HA137.175336$%i7.114237928@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>,
tmoran@acm.org wrote:

   I have a fast Ada uncompressor for the fax bit stream that I'd
> contibute, unrestricted.  Of course that leaves modem handling and UI...
>   For "a reliable Ada replacement for popular but buggy software"
> I'd suggest HP printer drivers. #.#
>   What programs should be rewritten in Ada that aren't, at least
> partly, IO drivers?

 A good, heavy duty network monitoring app. Along the lines of CheopsNG, 
with some Xtraceroute/Visualroute and the Ethereal frontend to tcpdump 
thrown in. 
 I'm working on learning to write network code so I can do it myself, but as 
my previous posts have stated, my coding skills are still pretty negligable.

 From a specifically Linux/Unix side, I think the Multimedia/video apps 
kinda stink right now. They could certainly use some work.

  I also think that pretty much any kind of server app could benefit from an
Ada implementation. Or at least benefit from some Ada contributions.

  We could also benefit alot by contributing extensions to existing apps,
written in Ada of course.

Basically, it seems that the best way to get some inertia going would
be for us to contribute as much source code to the Public and/or Open 
Source domain as possible, at least until we get some momentum built up.

  Anyways, those are a couple of ideas.

McDoobie
chris@dont.spam.me

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[McDoobie]

In article <dKZ27.26879$B56.4674508@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>,
"chris.danx" <chris.danx@ntlworld.com> wrote:


> Could you define State Of The Art IDE for me please?
> 
> 
> A while back I had the idea for an IDE that could handle different
> compilers, and didn't need things on the PATH.  Anyway, I didn't get
> very far, but recently I've been looking at the idea again, possibly
> using GWindows, and I'm looking for ideas.
> 
> I was thinking of an IDE for Windows with some of the following
> 
> - Syntax Highlighting
> - Project Management facilities
> - Code Completion (good for long package structures like x.y.a.b.c ?)
> - Possibility an Object browser
> - Ada Aware
> - Non Specific Compiler support
> - and others
> 
> What other features would you like to see?  What features would you not
> like to see?
> 
> I would be willing to contribute time to this since my current project
> isn't anywhere near the coding stage (not that coding of an IDE would
> start straight off: DESIGN COMES FIRST), but I have a large gap in my
> time to fill (until october) and would be genuinly interested in a SotA
> IDE for Ada 95.  Development wouldn't stop after october, just slow down
> a little (if i was the only developer!).
> 
> I would hope the project to be open source, possibly under the GPL or X
> something or other licenses.
> 
> Regards, Chris Campbell
> 

I would find an interface similar to Forte to be appealing. However, a 
couple important features would be extensive hotkey support (aka LyX), 
and customization of the look and feel.  I'm pretty open on what and how
many features it contains, as long as each "feature" has a real reason for
being there. It obviously should have plugins for working with an external
debugger(GVD anyone?), and the LRM and Annexes in a Help dialogue that's
easy to get to.

Anyways, that's kinda what I like to see.

Dont mind these guys that are busting your chops about Emacs.  If that's
what they like, then nothings stopping them from using it.  I certainly 
see the value in having an Emacs Ada-mode, and I beleive it should be 
supported by those who use Emacs to write Ada code. But sometimes Emacs 
(and vi) people can start to sound like a bunch of Jehovas Witnesses.
(JWs please dont take that remark personally.)

  I currently like to fiddle around with Grasp. It's currently my second 
favorite editor. My most fav is vi.

Dont know if this helps.

McDoobie
chris@dont.spam.me

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[McDoobie]

In article <Oc237.18425$WS4.2897647@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com>,
"chris.danx" <chris.danx@ntlworld.com> wrote:

> Is that a feature developers would like? Integration of UML into the
> IDE?  I ask since I have no experience with UML.  I did plan to gain
> familiarity with it and did buy a book on it, but as yet haven't read
> it.
> 
> 
>> Nonetheless, if you are looking to make Ada more popular, you will have
>> to deal with beginners, and having an IDE that helps them write correct
>> code and lets them fill in the blanks to write a program that compiles
>> would be great.
> 
> I would like to cater for beginners, but I would also like to cater for
> the seasoned professional.  Doing this properly will be difficult.  One
> possible solution is that found in 1st Page 2000.  Basically, the IDE
> has 5 or 6 different modes.  Each mode is different in functionality. 
> The lowest level has limited functionality while the highest level has
> the greatest functionality. Another option would be to selectively
> disable features via an options section. Just some random thoughts.
> 
> 
> I'm off to think about how to reconfigure an IDE at runtime.  You know
> add tools to menu's and add new wizards without recompiling (and
> re-installing) the ide.
> 
> 
> Chris
> 

Ya know, any easy way to accomplish this would be to make the app 
"Themeable" ala KDE, Gnome, or Mozilla. I know theres a shareware app
out there for Windows now that makes the Windows desktop themeable 
also.
  Theres alot of flexibility there. Just set a default theme for the new-user
with plenty of instructions on customization for the expert.
  Of course, flexibility goes beyond themeing. One could provide plug-in
support for external apps, such as TeX/LaTeX if one wants to print thier
code,  a CVS browser. All kinds of possibilities.  One does not necessarily
need to code every last bit(pun intended) from scratch. After all, isnt that
one of Adas strong points? Code Reuse? Heh.

I've posted a bunch of times in the last day. I just realized, I'm on vacation.
Heh.

McDoobie
chris@dont.spam.me

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <dKZ27.26879$B56.4674508@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>, "chris.danx" <chris.danx@ntlworld.com> writes:

> Could you define State Of The Art IDE for me please?

I would define it as just like Think Pascal.

> I was thinking of an IDE for Windows with some of the following
> 
> - Syntax Highlighting
> - Project Management facilities
> - Code Completion (good for long package structures like x.y.a.b.c ?)
> - Possibility an Object browser
> - Ada Aware
> - Non Specific Compiler support
> - and others
> 
> What other features would you like to see?

User's choice of editor (plug-in).
Incremental compilation.
Trapping incorrect system calls during debugging.
Multiprocess debugging (not just multithread).

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[Jeffrey Carter]

tmoran@acm.org wrote:
> 
>   What programs should be rewritten in Ada that aren't, at least
> partly, IO drivers?

How about a graphical web browser that doesn't crash frequently, and
gives the user control over cookies, cache, contacting domains other
than that requested by the user, redisplaying pages from cache, popping
up unwanted windows, ...

-- 
Jeff Carter
"You empty-headed animal-food-trough wiper."
Monty Python & the Holy Grail

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[DuckE]

"McDoobie" <chris@dont.spam.me> wrote in message
news:0zS27.187213$DG1.31590366@news1.rdc1.mi.home.com...
[...]
> >
> > One thing which i find realy boring that there is no real state of the
> > art IDE for the GNAT  available.  This is what i am interested in.
> >
> >
>
> I tend to teeter more towards to Free Software side of things, ala LGPL.
> However, I'm certainly in favor of commercial projects that develop
> software which is actually of commercial quality.(Much of what passes
> as a commercial app today falls far short of that goal.)
>
> A state of the art IDE sounds like an awsome idea. It could be implemented
> for the GNAT system initially. If it was Open Source, it wouldn't be too
> difficult to expand it to include other toolchains as well.
>

Perhaps this new IDE could start with GVD, which already has cross platform
source level debugging built in, and add edit and compile capabilities.

Perhaps a little code reuse?

SteveD

Emacs vs. the World

[Ted Dennison]

In article <3B4CD02D.D6E3E53C@easystreet.com>, Al Christians says...
>font.  Emacs, wasn't.  So, I just tried it, first time for me,  
>in Delphi and MSVC++.  I find it in 3 mouse clicks (0 keystrokes) 
>through the pulldowns on each of those programs.  I don't have to 

Exactly how did you do that with MSVC++? Seriously. As I said before, the only
way I found to do it in there (version 6.0) requres no less than..let's check
again...1 click-drag-release, followed by 8 mouse clicks. This to get to the
same place I get in Emacs with one simultanious keypress-click.

>It's OK to appeal to the minority who don't like point and click 

It would be nice if we even *had* the problem where it was just a matter of
perspective. For the most part what we have is a bunch of editors that flat out
can't do all the things Emacs can do. I'm not allergic to the mouse specificly.
But I *do* need functionality. I need stuff like saved multi-buffer macros,
rectangular cut-and-paste, source code reformatting at the press of a key or
two, auto-capitalization (even when acronyns are involved), command shells with
infinite history (some would say that I also need "doctor" :-)  ). This stuff
isn't fluff, it saves me tons of time and headaches. IDE's with an editor that
can't do all this (and much more that I didn't mention) may be really nice, but
I can't use them. It would be knowingly wasting my own time.

I'm not trying to sit here and say that its impossible to make an editor better
than Emacs. But Emacs has been under constant development and scrutiny by
hundreds of developers for over 16 years now. You certianly aren't going to whip
up something better in a month, or even a year. Even with a full-time team you
probably couldn't begin to get close to its funtionality and extensibility in 2
years of work, and in that time the Emacs community won't have been standing
still either. So why even try? Just integrate it into your environment. If you
have a good reason to believe that there's something wrong with its
presentation, fix it! It may not be easy, but it'll certianly be easier than
reproducing everything good that Emacs has.

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: GLIDE

[Jeffrey Carter]

"Marc A. Criley" wrote:
> [good things about GLIDE]

OK, you've sold me. Where can I get GLIDE ready to run on Win98? I've
looked but not found such a beast.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Sons of a silly person."
Monty Python & the Holy Grail

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[chris.danx]

> I would find an interface similar to Forte to be appealing.

What's Forte when it's at home?  Is it free?

I ask since it's important to explore various IDEs and see what features work
and what are useless.  However, my requirements are going to be different from
other ppl's and this is going cooperation from ppl to get right.

I've been working on a small prototype that is specifically designed to play
with compiler invocation and configuration.  It should be at the release stage
in a few days, and I would hope ppl will take a peek at it and help me get the
compiler configuration interface into a usuable state.  It's not meant to be
used for serious work and isn't to be considered serious at all (it's a toy
designed to get opinions from folk).

{
it uses gwindows 0.3

how stable is gwindows?  I mean, how much of it is likely to change and become
incompatible in the future?

Should i stick with 0.3 or go for the pre-beta release (I don't imagine there
will be much difference _once I get it compiled_, and it won't impact on the
program at all)
}


> However, a
> couple important features would be extensive hotkey support (aka LyX),

Lyx?

Extensive hotkey support like reconfiguring hotkeys?


> and customization of the look and feel.

It is important to account for different tastes (may increase productivity),
however the level of customisation shouldn't be too great (or useless).


> I'm pretty open on what and how
> many features it contains, as long as each "feature" has a real reason for
> being there.

Oh yes, no point going down the _feature bloat_ route.  Another point on
"features" is not to ram them down the developers throat.  I get annoyed with
some IDEs that make you use a project to compile toy programs.  Anyone else get
annoyed at this?

> It obviously should have plugins for working with an external
> debugger(GVD anyone?), and the LRM and Annexes in a Help dialogue that's
> easy to get to.

I'd really like to have plugins but I don't have a clue how to do this, anyone
know a good introduction to plugin-ability on the windows platform?


Chris

Re: GLIDE

[Marc A. Criley]

Jeffrey Carter wrote:
> 
> "Marc A. Criley" wrote:
> > [good things about GLIDE]
> 
> OK, you've sold me. Where can I get GLIDE ready to run on Win98? I've
> looked but not found such a beast.

Well, I run it on Linux, so it comes as part of one of the ALT rpms. 
For Windows, it looks like you can go to
ftp://cs.nyu.edu/pub/gnat/3.13p/ and download glide-3.13p-src.tgz. 
('course you'll have to be able to unpack a tar'ed, gzipped file.)

I see the distribution comes with several "w32_..." files that use the
Win32 binding.  I have no idea what is involved with getting GLIDE
running on Windows, other than requiring that Emacs and GNAT already be
installed.  The README file just says, type "doinstall".

Good luck.

Marc

Re: GLIDE

[file13]

you can get the GLIDE tarball here:

ftp://cs.nyu.edu/pub/gnat/3.13p/glide-3.13p-src.tgz
(winzip can open this)

GLIDE is an add on for GNU emacs which you can get at

ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/os/Win32/ntEmacs/latest/

you'll probably want the fullbin binary version.
then you just have to tweak the startup script a bit--RTFM  :)
me glide.bat looks like this.
---------------------------
@echo off
set GLIDE_BASE=c:/emacs
set GLIDE_DIR=%GLIDE_BASE%/site-lisp
start /b /Wait %GLIDE_BASE%/bin/glideint %GLIDE_DIR%
%GLIDE_BASE%/bin/emacs.exe -platform %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
---------------------------

enjoy.

file13
http://haxor.redcommandos.com/~file13/

Jeffrey Carter <jrcarter@acm.org> wrote in message news:<3B4E582D.BA0FAC63@acm.org>...
> "Marc A. Criley" wrote:
> > [good things about GLIDE]
> 
> OK, you've sold me. Where can I get GLIDE ready to run on Win98? I've
> looked but not found such a beast.

About private types and reusability?

[Didier Utheza]

There was an interesting comparison on the net of c++, Ada95 and Modula3.
The only critic of Ada was about the inclusion of the description of the
private type in the specification rather than the body of the module.
Modula3 keeps everything private in the body. I know that it was question
to create a third type of file that would have described the private type.
The idea was abandoned because having to deal with three files for one
module will not have simplify things. So my question, if anybody has an
answer, is why this choice. The inclusion of the private type defenition
in the body should keep things modular. The specifications describing to
the user the method to access the object in a transparent way. By
including the private type def. in the specifications, any following
change means that you not only have to recompile the module but also the
whole program since the specifications changed. Where is the advantage?
Thanks for any answer.
				Didier Utheza. 

Re: About private types and reusability?

[Ed Falis]

Didier Utheza wrote:

> There was an interesting comparison on the net of c++, Ada95 and Modula3.
> The only critic of Ada was about the inclusion of the description of the
> private type in the specification rather than the body of the module.
> Modula3 keeps everything private in the body. I know that it was question
> to create a third type of file that would have described the private type.
> The idea was abandoned because having to deal with three files for one
> module will not have simplify things. So my question, if anybody has an
> answer, is why this choice. The inclusion of the private type defenition
> in the body should keep things modular. The specifications describing to
> the user the method to access the object in a transparent way. By
> including the private type def. in the specifications, any following
> change means that you not only have to recompile the module but also the
> whole program since the specifications changed. Where is the advantage?
> Thanks for any answer.
>                                 Didier Utheza.

My understanding is that this is an efficiency tradeoff to some extent.  The
private part of the spec provides information needed by the compiler so that
private types would not need to always involve an extra indirection into the
body definition.  You can, of course, get around it (ie reduce recompilation)
by associating an access type explicitly to an incomplete type whose
defiinition is in the package body.  The presence of this "representation"
information in the private part to the compiler when it processes client code
also aids optimization.  I believe I've heard Tucker Taft use the analogy of
logical and physical interface for the public and private parts of a spec.
I like that analogy.

- Ed

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[chris.danx]

"Brian Orpin" <abuse@borpin.co.uk> wrote in message
news:f49tktghbv140bg63a292jul1h940pj5pt@4ax.com...
> On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 02:47:46 GMT, "DuckE" <nospam_steved94@home.com>
> wrote:
>
> >So yes, I do see the need for these features in the form of an IDE for
> >Windows.  The Windows front end on Emacs is not consistant with other
> >windows programs.  Such an editor is definitely desirable.
>
> Your assumption is that all users are 'Windows' users.

That's not what Steve(?) said at all.  "an IDE for Windows" is not saying all
users are Windows users, it's an IDE for Windows users.

If ppl want Ada to become popular, you have to appeal to the biggest potential
user base, which is the Windows platform.  However much some of you may dislike
the OS, it is the domininant OS and there is no denying it.

I'm doing this IDE because

a) I (and others) need compiler configurability

b) It's an interesting problem comprising of many different
   problems, algorithms and solutions

c) It gives me experience with working on slightly
   bigger apps and managing it all

d) It's a project I can do

e) I'll learn from it.

f) It may do something for Ada*

g) It'll be free and it's


[   Oh yeah, no way am I distribing patches to versions in dif(f) files.  I hate
them, I have nothing but trouble with them, and see no reason for their use in
the modern age.  Everything you need will go in one zip and no bloomin'
iffs.  ]

Jerry Coffin and I have had a discussion of various issues related to the IDE
and it's design on the alt.os.development thread "Re: Ada ? C ? was Re: Jochen
Liedtke has died".  I know the title is a bit iffy, discussing Ada under a
thread that started with a principle L4 developer, but you may want to take a
look through the discussion if curious about the IDE and where it's at...


> Emacs predates

No argument

> Windoze and is available on just about any platform and any OS.

I see no reason why that should be achievable for an IDE (though I have no wish
to do so at present).  One possibility would be to port gwindows to wine or
something, but i'm unsure about this and it's a lot of work.

> You can
> invoke modes to make it 'more Windows like' if you wish.

Yeah, but can you click..click..click , and do this if you don't know how to use
it?  I've never had to look through a bunch of help files to find out how to use
anything like JBuilder or ConTEXT!

[** HCI bit **]

Fitt's law:

(try http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~cs5724/g1/#procons for examples of fitt's law)

tell's us that keystroke interface will win over a totally GUI based solution,
for competent users.  But GUI interfaces do feature keystrokes for at least the
critical functions, making them as fast for competent users for critical tasks.
For non-critical tasks, there is a penalty for the traditional GUI interface.


My thoughts:

The penalty for GUI systems is offset by the familiarity of the interface and
the previous knowledge the user has accumulated in the world (other GUI IDEs).
A keystroke interface, while desirable for experienced users, doesn't allow
knowledge accumulated in the world to be transferred as readily to new
scenarios.  In the case of Emacs however, this is eliminated by the near total
uniformity of the key interface accross various different editing modes.

Comparing the learning curves of a GUI IDE, and a keystroke interface leads me
to the conclusion that a GUI IDE is a suitable candidate for the majority of
uses in circumstances where the time available is tight, or the developer is
eager to get working and they are unfamiliar with the Emacs interface.

Also this analysis applies to the more traditional GUI technologies e.g. linear
menus.  A pie menu on the other hand may offer comparible performance to
keystroke interface, though this needs further investigation.  The benefit of
the pie-menu is negated to some extent by the time it will take for a user to
learn this concept, and become familiar with the mouse ahead sequences.  The
latter will IMO require less time to learn than the keystroke approach.  While
the former requires very little time (and at least a two button mouse :-) ).


NOTE:

If the developer is familiar with Emacs, then he or she is free to use it,
unless their manager objects.

[end HCI bit]


> That is of course what Tutorials (built in) and FAQs are about.

Again, the Windows GUI based IDEs are much easier to learn to use (ok, there are
some oddballs, but those designers haven't read "the design of everyday things"
by Norman :-) ), and it's likely
managers don't want to have a high learning curve for tools.


Chris Campbell

*Ada 95 is a nice language but I'm no die hard.  It's not a good tool for
certain problems and I freely acknowledge this.  When a problem arises and Ada
doesn't offer an elegant solution other languages are used.

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[Bobby D. Bryant]

In article <3B4D0989.7A6120E@acm.org>, "Jeffrey Carter"
<jrcarter@acm.org> wrote:

> tmoran@acm.org wrote:
>> 
>>   What programs should be rewritten in Ada that aren't, at least
>> partly, IO drivers?
> 
> How about a graphical web browser that doesn't crash frequently, and
> gives the user control over cookies, cache, contacting domains other
> than that requested by the user, redisplaying pages from cache,
> popping up unwanted windows, ...

The Galeon browser does most of that, though it's not quite "there"
yet.  It's mostly just a wrapper around the Mozillar rendering engine.

In principle you could write an Ada wrapper for the engine as well,
though I don't have any idea how clean the Mozilla API is.  Nor do I
know how much of the functionality is in Mozilla vs how much is in
Galeon.

Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[McDoobie]

In article <23C37.25392$WS4.3875364@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com>,
"chris.danx" <chris.danx@ntlworld.com> wrote:


> What's Forte when it's at home?  Is it free?
> 
> I ask since it's important to explore various IDEs and see what features
> work and what are useless.  However, my requirements are going to be
> different from other ppl's and this is going cooperation from ppl to get
> right.

  Forte is the Java IDE produced by Sun Microsystems. They have a free 
community version available for download at thier java.sun.com website.
I really like the way I can configure it to pop up different code line 
selections at different spots while I'm coding. Some people find it gets
in the way, but I like it. It's off by default.  Anyways, it's a really nice 
interface, even professional, considering the price.($0)
I would highly encourage you to check it out.
 

> {
> it uses gwindows 0.3
> 
> how stable is gwindows?  I mean, how much of it is likely to change and
> become incompatible in the future?
> 
> Should i stick with 0.3 or go for the pre-beta release (I don't imagine
> there will be much difference _once I get it compiled_, and it won't
> impact on the program at all)

 One thing that I would find really irritating is another IDE designed to run
only on Windows. I'm a FreeBSD user (occasional Linux). Havent used 
Windows in eight years.(Except for when I have no choice, like at the office,
or when fixing my dad's computer.)
  It would certainly be important to keep the app as platform independant 
as possible. We have Windows programmers, OS X programmers, Linux and
Unix programmers, and yes...even BeOS programmers who would probably
find a good Ada IDE to be a major benefit.


>> However, a couple important features would be extensive hotkey support
>> (aka LyX),
> 
> Lyx?

  LyX is the Open Source WYSISWYM(What you see is what you MEAN.) 
GUI processor for the TeX/LaTeX document formatting system. TeX has 
been actively developed for 30+ years, and is about as bug free a system
as your likely to find anywhere. It's a contribution of one Donald E. Knuth 
to the computing world.  It's another software group worth researching.

> Extensive hotkey support like reconfiguring hotkeys?
 
   Yeah. Macros and hotkeys are where it's at for me. I was weaned on VI, so
I'm not very much into the Emacs style of clickity click, but I certainly 
appreciate those features.
 
>> and customization of the look and feel.
> 
> It is important to account for different tastes (may increase
> productivity), however the level of customisation shouldn't be too great
> (or useless).

	My thoughts exactly. Balance is the key.

> Oh yes, no point going down the _feature bloat_ route.  Another point on
> "features" is not to ram them down the developers throat.  I get annoyed
> with  some IDEs that make you use a project to compile toy programs.  Anyone
> else get annoyed at this?

	Your a programmer after my own heart.
> 
> I'd really like to have plugins but I don't have a clue how to do this,
> anyone know a good introduction to plugin-ability on the windows
> platform?
> 
	Corba and/or XML-RPC might be a good way to handle this. I'm not 
sure. Just learning about "Plugins" myself.

> 
> Chris
> 


McDoobie
chris@dont.spam.me

Re: GLIDE

[Jeffrey Carter]

So, I have to build it from sources, for Win98, with only instructions
for UNIX? It doesn't come with emacs? Does the phrase "not ready for
prime time" sound familiar?

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"
Monty Python's Flying Circus

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Michael Erdmann]

"chris.danx" schrieb:

> That's not what Steve(?) said at all.  "an IDE for Windows" is not saying all
> users are Windows users, it's an IDE for Windows users.
>
> If ppl want Ada to become popular, you have to appeal to the biggest potential
> user base, which is the Windows platform.  However much some of you may dislike
> the OS, it is the domininant OS and there is no denying it.

You are right, but keep it potable between platforms e.g. GTK for
Linux.

> I'm doing this IDE because
>
> a) I (and others) need compiler configurability

Why, most of the commercial compilers include an IDE. The times are long a
go, that a compiler was just an CLI issue.  Only the GNAT is not cleanly integrated

into an IDE (except for GLIDE which i dont like)

> b) It's an interesting problem comprising of many different
>    problems, algorithms and solutions
>
> c) It gives me experience with working on slightly
>    bigger apps and managing it all

An IDE is a quite  big application. Assume at least 2 ot 3 PY in average depending
on the functionatlity. The effort will increase dramatically with the user
configuration options.

> d) It's a project I can do

I you start such a project i like to work on this issue as well. Did you already
thought about a home site for the project? May be sourceforge.net is a
good location.

> e) I'll learn from it.

This is for sure. May be it should not be written in Ada at all, may be in Java?

> f) It may do something for Ada*

This is where i am not so sure, but i displike the environment which
is currently available the the GNAT.

Regards
    M.Erdmann

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[chris.danx]

> > That's not what Steve(?) said at all.  "an IDE for Windows" is not saying
all
> > users are Windows users, it's an IDE for Windows users.
> >
> > If ppl want Ada to become popular, you have to appeal to the biggest
potential
> > user base, which is the Windows platform.  However much some of you may
dislike
> > the OS, it is the domininant OS and there is no denying it.
>
> You are right, but keep it potable between platforms e.g. GTK for
> Linux.

That means there can be no use of GWindows and using GTK/Ada instead.  I might
consider that, but I'm not familiar with Gtk at all, and it needs to support
accelerator keys, make plugins possible, allow dynamic menus, allow custom
controls to be created, and more.  Also is Gtk not scripted, slowing the whole
thing down?


> > I'm doing this IDE because
> >
> > a) I (and others) need compiler configurability
>
> Why, most of the commercial compilers include an IDE. The times are long a
> go, that a compiler was just an CLI issue.  Only the GNAT is not cleanly
integrated
>
> into an IDE (except for GLIDE which i dont like)

My thought isn't that it should deal exclusively with Ada (only in the
beginning) but should allow a programmer to use other languages and tools from
within the IDE, link it all together, debug it, etc.  Maybe never needing to
leave the environment to completely build the program.  However I'd be happy if
it handled different Ada compilers seamlessly.



> > d) It's a project I can do
>
> I you start such a project i like to work on this issue as well. Did you
already
> thought about a home site for the project? May be sourceforge.net is a
> good location.

Even a little help would be great, but if not then that's ok, i'm prepared for
the level of work and can handle it.

I don't have a home site yet, and only a little code.  Most of what I've done in
the last few days has been to design a minimal IDE that will make up the first
prototype.  The prototype isn't a release, just an experiment in compiler
configuration.  There is to be no Syntax Highlighting and minimal features in
the 1st prototype.


> > e) I'll learn from it.
>
> This is for sure. May be it should not be written in Ada at all, may be in
Java?

Away you and ... The ide's written in Java I've used have been really slow and
had patchy graphics, well just crap and that was with JIT on.

{ If anyones looking for a fast cross platform technology check out Juice (it's
really fast, whips JVM), the only drawback is they didn't do much with it and
it's not well known (and needs patience and commitment); I say someone should
get an Ada compiler for it.  Then Juice and Ada would blow Java out the water,
well out of the fabric of space and time actually.

The ppl who developed it made the mistake of tying development to the Oberon
Environment, but it can run in diff browsers and all that's needed is a stand
alone version, so you can run and develop apps!  It's a real nice fast system
that could make Sun (and .NET) needing Cocodamol.
 }



Chris

Re: GLIDE

[Robert Dewar]

Jeffrey Carter <jrcarter@acm.org> wrote in message news:<3B4FB2BA.8DDFBDC4@acm.org>...
> So, I have to build it from sources, for Win98, with only instructions
> for UNIX? It doesn't come with emacs? Does the phrase "not ready for
> prime time" sound familiar?

GLIDE is fully supported as part of the GNAT Professional package
for Windows NT and Windows 2000. It may or may not work with home
consumer versions of Windows (such as Windows 98), since such targets
are not supported by GNAT Professional. Further information is
available from sales@gnat.com.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

Re: GLIDE

[Jeffrey Carter]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> 
> GLIDE is fully supported as part of the GNAT Professional package
> for Windows NT and Windows 2000. It may or may not work with home
> consumer versions of Windows (such as Windows 98), since such targets
> are not supported by GNAT Professional. Further information is
> available from sales@gnat.com.

I am quite sure that ACT provides everything to supported customers.
However, as a part-time effort of one person providing GMGPLed
components, NT/2000 and ACT support are slightly out of the question.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries."
Monty Python & the Holy Grail

Re: About private types and reusability?

[Didier Utheza]

Thanks Ed,
If I understand you have the best of both world, since Modula3 uses a
similar scheme to access the private type with a pointer.
			Didier utheza.

RE: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Robert C. Leif, Ph.D.]

From: Bob Leif
To: Chris Danx et al.

I totally agree that, "My thought isn't that it should deal exclusively with
Ada (only in the
beginning) but should allow a programmer to use other languages and tools
from
within the IDE, link it all together, debug it, etc."

This could be accomplished by creating an IDE based on XML and driven by
Ada. Each language would have its own schema. Besides Ada, a schema for XML
should be included. I hope to have a discussion and would welcome one or
more presentations on this subject at the SIGAda 2001 Workshop on �Creating
a Symbiotic Relationship Between XML and Ada�.

-----Original Message-----
From: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org
[mailto:comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org]On Behalf Of chris.danx
Sent: Saturday, July 14, 2001 5:52 AM
To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
Subject: Re: An Ada IDE and discussions


> > That's not what Steve(?) said at all.  "an IDE for Windows" is not
saying
all
> > users are Windows users, it's an IDE for Windows users.
> >
> > If ppl want Ada to become popular, you have to appeal to the biggest
potential
> > user base, which is the Windows platform.  However much some of you may
dislike
> > the OS, it is the domininant OS and there is no denying it.
>
> You are right, but keep it potable between platforms e.g. GTK for
> Linux.

That means there can be no use of GWindows and using GTK/Ada instead.  I
might
consider that, but I'm not familiar with Gtk at all, and it needs to support
accelerator keys, make plugins possible, allow dynamic menus, allow custom
controls to be created, and more.  Also is Gtk not scripted, slowing the
whole
thing down?


> > I'm doing this IDE because
> >
> > a) I (and others) need compiler configurability
>
> Why, most of the commercial compilers include an IDE. The times are long a
> go, that a compiler was just an CLI issue.  Only the GNAT is not cleanly
integrated
>
> into an IDE (except for GLIDE which i dont like)

My thought isn't that it should deal exclusively with Ada (only in the
beginning) but should allow a programmer to use other languages and tools
from
within the IDE, link it all together, debug it, etc.  Maybe never needing to
leave the environment to completely build the program.  However I'd be happy
if
it handled different Ada compilers seamlessly.



> > d) It's a project I can do
>
> I you start such a project i like to work on this issue as well. Did you
already
> thought about a home site for the project? May be sourceforge.net is a
> good location.

Even a little help would be great, but if not then that's ok, i'm prepared
for
the level of work and can handle it.

I don't have a home site yet, and only a little code.  Most of what I've
done in
the last few days has been to design a minimal IDE that will make up the
first
prototype.  The prototype isn't a release, just an experiment in compiler
configuration.  There is to be no Syntax Highlighting and minimal features
in
the 1st prototype.


> > e) I'll learn from it.
>
> This is for sure. May be it should not be written in Ada at all, may be in
Java?

Away you and ... The ide's written in Java I've used have been really slow
and
had patchy graphics, well just crap and that was with JIT on.

{ If anyones looking for a fast cross platform technology check out Juice
(it's
really fast, whips JVM), the only drawback is they didn't do much with it
and
it's not well known (and needs patience and commitment); I say someone
should
get an Ada compiler for it.  Then Juice and Ada would blow Java out the
water,
well out of the fabric of space and time actually.

The ppl who developed it made the mistake of tying development to the Oberon
Environment, but it can run in diff browsers and all that's needed is a
stand
alone version, so you can run and develop apps!  It's a real nice fast
system
that could make Sun (and .NET) needing Cocodamol.
 }



Chris

Re: GLIDE

[Simon Wright]

Jeffrey Carter <jrcarter@acm.org> writes:

> So, I have to build it from sources, for Win98, with only instructions
> for UNIX? It doesn't come with emacs? Does the phrase "not ready for
> prime time" sound familiar?

A binary GLIDE consists (approximately) of

- Emacs
- a set of Emacs lisp source files
- documentation
- a tiny Ada front-end that fires up Emacs.

A source GLIDE omits Emacs.

You can get along fine with just a standard Emacs (20.3 or later, but
I'm not sure about that, the binary comes with 20.5, source works fine
on 20.7); nothing to build, provided you can manage putting lisp code
in your Emacs load path (or just follow the instructions).

Re: GLIDE

[Robert B. Love]

In <x7vg0byk8eb.fsf@smaug.pushface.org> Simon Wright wrote:
> 
> A binary GLIDE consists (approximately) of
> 
> - Emacs
> - a set of Emacs lisp source files
> - documentation
> - a tiny Ada front-end that fires up Emacs.
> 
> A source GLIDE omits Emacs.
> 
> You can get along fine with just a standard Emacs (20.3 or later, but
> I'm not sure about that, the binary comes with 20.5, source works fine

Has anybody got any tips for running GLIDE with xemacs instead of emacs?

--
----------------------------------------------------------------
 Bob Love                                   
 rlove@neosoft.com                            
----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Stefan Skoglund]

"chris.danx" wrote:
> That means there can be no use of GWindows and using GTK/Ada instead.  I might
> consider that, but I'm not familiar with Gtk at all, and it needs to support
> accelerator keys, make plugins possible, allow dynamic menus, allow custom
> controls to be created, and more.  Also is Gtk not scripted, slowing the whole
> thing down?

Do Gtk+ support acc keys (graphical artistis likes acc. keys) yes
Plugins (script-fu in gimp) yes
Dynamic menus yes.
Custom controls yes
Gtk+ scripted NO
libglade gives you an application whose GUI is stored as a xml file.

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[Stefan Skoglund]

Al Christians wrote:
> have a standard Windows look and feel either standard or not more than
> 2.5 clicks away from the default set up. I have seen an emacs setup
> that actually has hot keys on the pull down menus and responds to the
> Windows standard control keys for cut and paste, etc.  Could one
> combine that kind of setup into the Ada mode for emacs?

Hrrmm, i would be terriby lost because it would kill my ability
to find my way in Emacs and i well started to use emacs in 1987 on a
PR1ME.

it would have to be a clearly documented tweak ie every hardline
emacs should know how to switch of the DAMN windows compatibility mode.

> If someone could write a program that would get all the emacs haters
> to like emacs,  I'd nominate them for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Agreed.

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Marin David Condic]

The last time I looked at Gtk, my conclusion was this: "It has potential. It
needs a good 'How To' book"

It does work on Windows (I had some installation problems) and Unix systems,
so you gain a lot in the way of portability. However, its look-and-feel is
un-Windows-ish. Maybe thats a good thing - maybe not - that's a matter of
perspective. Its a classic problem - if you want portability, you have to
play to the least common denominator between systems. Personally, I'd like
to have the portability.

You may want to take a serious look at Gtk. For me (since I have to actually
earn a living doing something that doesn't involve playing with things like
Gnat & Gtk), I'm waiting for it to mature some more before taking another
pass at it. The reason for me is that the Motif-ish style of building a GUI
wasn't intuitively obvious (my world is different) and there was not a good
"Let me take you step-by-step through the process of building a GUI with
Gtk" manual available. I'd received advice to read up on the underlying C
calls and got pointed at related documents of similar flavor. If I had the
time, I suppose I could delve into it and learn enough to make it work.
Maybe by now someone has written a "How To" guide for it & I should take
another glance at it? I certainly wouldn't discourage you from looking it
over.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"chris.danx" <chris.danx@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:JeX37.39341$B56.8075497@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com...
>
> That means there can be no use of GWindows and using GTK/Ada instead.  I
might
> consider that, but I'm not familiar with Gtk at all, and it needs to
support
> accelerator keys, make plugins possible, allow dynamic menus, allow custom
> controls to be created, and more.  Also is Gtk not scripted, slowing the
whole
> thing down?
>
>

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Ted Dennison]

In article <ytL37.37665$B56.7588180@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>, chris.danx
says...
>I'm doing this IDE because

Well certianly don't let blowhards like myself deter you from writing this. If
its got you exited enough to do it, go for it.

Anyway, it'd be good to point newbies to. Emacs will always be there when they
are ready to do real work. ;-)


---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Ted Dennison]

In article <JeX37.39341$B56.8075497@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>, chris.danx
says...
>controls to be created, and more.  Also is Gtk not scripted, slowing the whole
>thing down?

No, you are probably thinking of TK. Gtk is written in C and has a C interface.
Its a rather nice toolkit too. The only thing I'd really like to see that it
doesn't have is some kind of loadable interface definition language, like UIL.
But if you are set on something that will be intuitively familiar to Windows
users, you'd probably be better off using the base Windows UI, as Gtk probably
doesn't have an equivalent for *everything*.

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Al Christians]

Ted Dennison wrote:
> 
> In article <JeX37.39341$B56.8075497@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>, chris.danx
> says...
> >controls to be created, and more.  Also is Gtk not scripted, slowing the whole
> >thing down?
> 
> No, you are probably thinking of TK. Gtk is written in C and has a C interface.
> Its a rather nice toolkit too. The only thing I'd really like to see that it
> doesn't have is some kind of loadable interface definition language, like UIL.
> But if you are set on something that will be intuitively familiar to Windows
> users, you'd probably be better off using the base Windows UI, as Gtk probably
> doesn't have an equivalent for *everything*.
> 

I have the idea that it is expected that GNAT will soon (whatever that
means, say over the next couple of years) be more compatible with the
other gcc implementations, in particular the c++ compiler.  Will that
make it easier for Ada code compiled by GNAT to interoperate with C++ 
gui code (eg wxWindows and/or fltk)?  

If that was possible, I would suggest that it might be better to try
to promote Ada as a powerful back-end engine, and not get into one of
these 10-year gui toolkit projects (look at how long wxWindows has been
developing, eg).   

In a good gui development system, maybe the developer doesn't have a
lot of need to look at the gui code and doesn't care what kind of 
language it's in. Graphical programming (graphically connecting UI 
the rest of the program) as in IBM Visual Age might be fine.  So 
might XML.  Who cares where it goes from there? 

An Ada IDE with gui builder could build a UI in c++ for one of the c++ 
toolkits and hide the c++ so that the developer would not normally 
see it.  There is some kind of gui spaghetti that develops when one
starts writing too much code in the middle of gui classes.  An IDE that
prevented this by forcing separation of UI and implementation could be 
advantageous.  

Al

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Mark Lundquist]

"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:K4F47.21102$Kf3.266366@www.newsranger.com...
> In article <JeX37.39341$B56.8075497@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>,
chris.danx
> says...
> >controls to be created, and more.  Also is Gtk not scripted, slowing the
whole
> >thing down?
>
> No, you are probably thinking of TK. Gtk is written in C and has a C
interface.

And just to clarify, there is no relationship between Tk and Gtk, beyond the
common letters in the names!

-- mark

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Ed Falis]

Al Christians wrote:An Ada IDE with gui builder could build a UI in c++ for one of
the c++

> toolkits and hide the c++ so that the developer would not normally
> see it.  There is some kind of gui spaghetti that develops when one
> starts writing too much code in the middle of gui classes.  An IDE that
> prevented this by forcing separation of UI and implementation could be
> advantageous.
>
> Al

GtkAda already works with the GTK+ "glade" GUI builder, with a choice of output
languages for source code, including Ada 95.  As far as windows look-and-feel goes,
there's a "redmond" GTK+ theme you can install on your machine that goes a good bit
of the way there.

- Ed

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Emmanuel Briot]

Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com> writes:
> No, you are probably thinking of TK. Gtk is written in C and has a C interface.
> Its a rather nice toolkit too. The only thing I'd really like to see that it
> doesn't have is some kind of loadable interface definition language, like UIL.
> But if you are set on something that will be intuitively familiar to Windows
> users, you'd probably be better off using the base Windows UI, as Gtk probably
> doesn't have an equivalent for *everything*.


I'm in no way a UIL expert, but Gtk has something similar, based on XML. You
can dynamically load an interface written in XML. There's even a GUI builder to
generate the XML for you.

The only potential problem is for callbacks, since you need to actually write
them yourself, but then in a compiled language I don't see how it would
work. Any idea welcome.

Emmanuel

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Emmanuel Briot]

"Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> writes:

> The last time I looked at Gtk, my conclusion was this: "It has potential. It
> needs a good 'How To' book"


And of course, being a person who really wants to develop Ada, you decided to
contribute one, so that Ada could be used by more developers... I must have
missed it, though.


> The reason for me is that the Motif-ish style of building a GUI
> wasn't intuitively obvious (my world is different) and there was not a good
> "Let me take you step-by-step through the process of building a GUI with
> Gtk" manual available.

About the Motif-ish style: for people not completely aware of GUI programming,
this means that basically your interface is built through blocks and boxes,
that you embed in others boxes, and so on. This hugely facilitates the handling
of resizing, since the containers themselves take care of repositionning the
widgets at the right location.

Now, there's also a documented widget in GtkAda, called Gtk_Fixed, that
provides the windows style of programming (for the few things I know about
windows), that is you specify the coordinates and sizes of the widgets. This is
of course usable from the GUI builder. So the restriction Marin is speaking
about doesn't seem to apply. Of course, you are on your own to manage the
repositioning of widgets after the window has been resized by the user...



> I'd received advice to read up on the underlying C calls and got pointed at
> related documents of similar flavor. If I had the time, I suppose I could
> delve into it and learn enough to make it work.  Maybe by now someone has
> written a "How To" guide for it & I should take another glance at it? I
> certainly wouldn't discourage you from looking it over.

And I would say the same thing again: there are some very good books about C
programming and gtk+ programming. They fully apply to GtkAda, since basically
what is needed in a howto is to describe the various containers and explain how
to build an interface from there, not all the low-level details specific to Ada.

The only area where things are really different is for callbacks, and the
technics is fully describe in the 31 pages of the GtkAda user's guide.

You should really consider contributing such a howto, if you think the existing
documentation is not enough.

Of course, supported users of ACT do ask questions that get answered generally
very fast, so that they don't stay blocked...

Emmanuel

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Tor Fredrik Aas]

Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com> writes:

>... 
> doesn't have is some kind of loadable interface definition language, like UIL.
> But if you are set on something that will be intuitively familiar to Windows
>... 

But is has, GTK has glade for dynamic loadable interface descriptions. A underlying
XML based format, even has a nice graphical  dialog editor ( named glade, oddly enough ).
Loading of dialogs is done through libglade - you should read the documentation that comes
with libglade for more on this.

There is even a nice book for en introduction to GTK named "Developing Linux applications
with GTK and GLIB" or something like that. This is purely C, but it should tranfer quite easy
to ada I would guess, but then I have never used GtkAda ( might do that someday since I am forced
to do some ada work right now).

--
Tor Fredrik Aas

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[nicolas]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1438 bytes --]

"Emmanuel Briot" <briot@act-europe.fr> a �crit dans le message news:
m3r8vg5778.fsf@lyon.act-europe.fr...

> And of course, being a person who really wants to develop Ada, you decided
to
> contribute one, so that Ada could be used by more developers... I must
have
> missed it, though.
<snip>
>Now, there's also a documented widget in GtkAda, called Gtk_Fixed, that
>provides the windows style of programming (for the few things I know about
>windows),

More likely you missed what Marin said just a few lines below :
"(since I have to actually earn a living doing something that doesn't
involve playing with things like Gnat & Gtk)"

Honestly I don't think you can have the slightest hope to expand (and even
maintain) Ada use,
if you are not really competitive on Win32 platform whatever you think about
it.
That means that compiler vendors must provide everything so that potential
users won't see any regression or any increased complexity when they try Ada
for the first time.
More than that, they must really see benefits.
It includes debuggers, IDE, GUI (as intuitive and easy for Windows
developpers, as what they are used to)

I have no illusion about the feelings of a programmer coming to Ada and Java
for the first time,
and tries to build a basic application in both languages.
You cannot rely only on people who are already convinced that they have to
use Ada (Especially if they are not building Win32 applications)

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Marin David Condic]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3182 bytes --]

Well, its not *my* product and I don't earn a living directly or indirectly
from it so I'm more on the "customer" side of things. It kind of comes down
to this: If I'm trying to build a GUI, I have alternatives as to what tools
are available to do that job. If someone has a GUI builder out there that is
well documented and includes all the info I need to use it versus (maybe a
perfectly wonderful) tool that "hides its light under a bushel basket" by
not having all the info one needs to effectively use it, which way do you
think I'm likely to go?

I don't mean to criticise the guys building GtkAda and say that their tool
is doodoo. I've driven the tool enough to know that it does seem to work and
does provide a means of building GUIs that can be used on different
platforms. That's an achievement. However, as an "Art Critic" I'm picking on
what I perceive to be a certain lack of documentation that I believe is
needed to explain how to use the tool. I think the developers should take
that in the spirit in which it is offered - a helpful criticism that might
just serve to making a better & more successful product.

I've done GUI building on the Windows platform and you're right about
wanting things to look familiar. I'm willing to accept that the GtkAda GUI
builder operates on different concepts and that I would have to learn how to
develop using those concepts. That's where I'm saying there is a missing
layer of documentation. If a toolmaker wants to build something that
operates differently from what the end-user is used to seeing, maybe that is
a good thing, but to do so implies that the toolmaker is going to have to
help the customer transition to the new paradigm. Otherwise, we stick to
what we know... :-)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"nicolas" <n.brunot@cadwin.com> wrote in message
news:9j12ic$bvi$1@s1.read.news.oleane.net...
> "Emmanuel Briot" <briot@act-europe.fr> a �crit dans le message news:
> m3r8vg5778.fsf@lyon.act-europe.fr...
>
>
> More likely you missed what Marin said just a few lines below :
> "(since I have to actually earn a living doing something that doesn't
> involve playing with things like Gnat & Gtk)"
>
> Honestly I don't think you can have the slightest hope to expand (and even
> maintain) Ada use,
> if you are not really competitive on Win32 platform whatever you think
about
> it.
> That means that compiler vendors must provide everything so that potential
> users won't see any regression or any increased complexity when they try
Ada
> for the first time.
> More than that, they must really see benefits.
> It includes debuggers, IDE, GUI (as intuitive and easy for Windows
> developpers, as what they are used to)
>
> I have no illusion about the feelings of a programmer coming to Ada and
Java
> for the first time,
> and tries to build a basic application in both languages.
> You cannot rely only on people who are already convinced that they have to
> use Ada (Especially if they are not building Win32 applications)
>
>
>

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[chris.danx]

"Stefan Skoglund" <stetson@ebox.tninet.se> wrote in message
news:3B52CC1D.21CFB0B8@ebox.tninet.se...
> "chris.danx" wrote:
> > That means there can be no use of GWindows and using GTK/Ada instead.  I
might
> > consider that, but I'm not familiar with Gtk at all, and it needs to support
> > accelerator keys, make plugins possible, allow dynamic menus, allow custom
> > controls to be created, and more.  Also is Gtk not scripted, slowing the
whole
> > thing down?
>
> Do Gtk+ support acc keys (graphical artistis likes acc. keys) yes
> Plugins (script-fu in gimp) yes
> Dynamic menus yes.
> Custom controls yes
> Gtk+ scripted NO
> libglade gives you an application whose GUI is stored as a xml file.

Thanks, I was getting confused with tcl/tk or somthing.

I've been rather busy training my Ape, Kira, to be nice to those moany
villagers, but I will make a decision on Gtk soon (today or tommorrow).


Thanks again,
Chris Campbell

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Ted Dennison]

In article <v7telrgm1nf.fsf_-_@sun234.fof.kog.no>, Tor Fredrik Aas says...
>
>Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com> writes:
>
>> doesn't have is some kind of loadable interface definition language, like 
>> UIL. But if you are set on something that will be intuitively familiar to 

>But is has, GTK has glade for dynamic loadable interface descriptions. A 
>underlying XML based format, even has a nice graphical  dialog editor ( named 
>glade, oddly enough ).


When last I looked at it, I thought Glade created files which then got
translated into source code so that they can compiled and linked into the
application (after editing to add in any callback code). That's not even close
to the same thing.

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Ted Dennison]

In article <h3X47.42779$WS4.6503459@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com>, chris.danx
says...
>I've been rather busy training my Ape, Kira, to be nice to those moany
>villagers, but I will make a decision on Gtk soon (today or tommorrow).

Just rub his tummy a bit, give him a big pile of food, and leave him tied up to
the village store with the pink fluffy leash. :-)

That should give you enough time to start reading through the user guide at
http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/docs/gtkada_ug.html to see if it can do
everything you need. The widget hierarchy is at
http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/docs/gtkada_ug.html#SEC9 .

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

RE: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Robert C. Leif, Ph.D.]

From: Bob Leif
To: Emmanuel Briot et al.

Are you sure that you want callbacks? Could we use Ada tasks and protected
types. If necessary, you could expand your XML server.

-----Original Message-----
From: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org
[mailto:comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org]On Behalf Of Emmanuel Briot
Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2001 12:43 AM
To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
Subject: Re: An Ada IDE and discussions


Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com> writes:
> No, you are probably thinking of TK. Gtk is written in C and has a C
interface.
> Its a rather nice toolkit too. The only thing I'd really like to see that
it
> doesn't have is some kind of loadable interface definition language, like
UIL.
> But if you are set on something that will be intuitively familiar to
Windows
> users, you'd probably be better off using the base Windows UI, as Gtk
probably
> doesn't have an equivalent for *everything*.


I'm in no way a UIL expert, but Gtk has something similar, based on XML. You
can dynamically load an interface written in XML. There's even a GUI builder
to
generate the XML for you.

The only potential problem is for callbacks, since you need to actually
write
them yourself, but then in a compiled language I don't see how it would
work. Any idea welcome.

Emmanuel

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[nicolas]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2217 bytes --]

"Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> a �crit dans
le message news: 9j1ee8$258$1@nh.pace.co.uk...
> Well, its not *my* product and I don't earn a living directly or
indirectly
> from it so I'm more on the "customer" side of things.

Well, I just meant that if compiler vendors are waiting for their potential
customers to do their job, they'd better not be in a hurry :-)
Especially when they say more or less :
"You want to use Ada ? You should be ashamed not contributing to tools that
everybody expects to come with a decent compiler ..."

> to this: If I'm trying to build a GUI, I have alternatives as to what
tools
> are available to do that job. If someone has a GUI builder out there that
is
> well documented and includes all the info I need to use it versus (maybe a
> perfectly wonderful) tool that "hides its light under a bushel basket" by
> not having all the info one needs to effectively use it, which way do you
> think I'm likely to go?

I guess we agree that you are likely to go the same way every sensible
person would go ...

> I've done GUI building on the Windows platform and you're right about
> wanting things to look familiar. I'm willing to accept that the GtkAda GUI
> builder operates on different concepts and that I would have to learn how
to
> develop using those concepts. That's where I'm saying there is a missing
> layer of documentation. If a toolmaker wants to build something that
> operates differently from what the end-user is used to seeing, maybe that
is
> a good thing, but to do so implies that the toolmaker is going to have to
> help the customer transition to the new paradigm. Otherwise, we stick to
> what we know... :-)

Well, on that specific point, Win32 programming is such a standard, that I'm
not sure that there is any choice.
It's up to Ada vendors to provide something natural and intuitive for Win32
programmers if they want to survive.
Or at least something natural and intuitive to Java programmers who find
almost everything coming with their compiler.
Why trying to promote others concepts than those which satisfy almost
everybody ?
After all, Ada is about standards, reuse, and not invent the wheel again
every day.

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Marin David Condic]

Win32 programming *is* a standard of sorts that is widely used - millions of
people have it & use it daily. Hence ignoring that market is not wise. But
remember that the various flavors of Unix are *also* a kind of a standard
that is used by millions of people daily. Operating in that environment is
very important as well.

Ada is (at least in part) about standards *and* portability. Its nice to be
able to build code on one machine and have it compile/run on another machine
with a very different architecture. To this end, I applaud GtkAda - it is
trying to provide a common GUI building environment across two very
different platforms & from what I gather is succeeding at that. It is hard
to merge the two systems without settling on *some* style that is going to
clash with the other style. Is it wise to adopt the Unix/Motif look-&-feel
and try to force Windows into that mode? Or should the Windows L&F have been
forced onto the Unix side? Take your pick - some substantial part of the
computer programming & using weorld is going to be unhappy.

I guess that since the GtkAda started from the Gtk/Unix world, the choice
got made to move that style to the Windows side. Should they have pitched
the style & started fresh? They might not have had a product at all if they
did. Certainly, they'd face competition from Claw and others. It might have
become a "me too!" product that had no special niche.

I won't gripe about GtkAda not fitting the paradigm I'm used to. I'd
consider it as a potential tool if a) I was developing in Ada and b) I
needed portability between Unix & Windows. (If I was Windows only, I'd want
something that did the L&F of Windows rather than a compromise.) One could
also evaluate the possibility of using Ada and Java to produce systems that
were portable - and even Internet ready, so there are alternatives. The
decision would come down to a comparison of environments & features & price
and so on. The minute you remove constraint A (develop in Ada) the choices
expand a lot. Hence if the objective is to build apps that are portable
between Unix and Windows, GtkAda has to stack up favorably against a lot of
other players. So the question for the developers is "What market(s) are you
shooting for and how do you stack up against the competitors in that
market?"

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/



"nicolas" <n.brunot@cadwin.com> wrote in message
news:%vY47.3041$Aw2.4266090@nnrp6.proxad.net...
>
> Well, on that specific point, Win32 programming is such a standard, that
I'm
> not sure that there is any choice.
> It's up to Ada vendors to provide something natural and intuitive for
Win32
> programmers if they want to survive.
> Or at least something natural and intuitive to Java programmers who find
> almost everything coming with their compiler.
> Why trying to promote others concepts than those which satisfy almost
> everybody ?
> After all, Ada is about standards, reuse, and not invent the wheel again
> every day.
>

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[chris.danx]

"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:1SX47.22269$Kf3.285163@www.newsranger.com...
> In article <h3X47.42779$WS4.6503459@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com>, chris.danx
> says...
> >I've been rather busy training my Ape, Kira, to be nice to those moany
> >villagers, but I will make a decision on Gtk soon (today or tommorrow).
>
> Just rub his tummy a bit, give him a big pile of food, and leave him tied up
to
> the village store with the pink fluffy leash. :-)

Tried that with this ape.  She's got a mind of his own and wanders off even
though Kira's still tied to the store (looking for fish would you believe?).
Stupid ape... I'm trading her in for a tiger.  He might not be smart but at
least he won't wander for miles looking for fish!!!  No, he'll just pick up the
first villager he comes across.

> That should give you enough time to start reading through the user guide at
> http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/docs/gtkada_ug.html to see if it can do
> everything you need. The widget hierarchy is at
> http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/docs/gtkada_ug.html#SEC9 .

Thanks Ted, do you know of a tutorial (I only found the ACT one and it wasn't
downloadable)?


Thanks Again,
Chris Campbell

Re: GLIDE

[David C. Hoos]

I built and installed glide from the ftp.cs.nyu.edu site, but found
that that distribution does not include the glide tutorial which
the glide startup screen wants to view.

Is there somewhere this tutorial is publicly available?

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Simon Wright" <simon@pushface.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
To: <comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2001 1:34 AM
Subject: Re: GLIDE


> Jeffrey Carter <jrcarter@acm.org> writes:
> 
> > So, I have to build it from sources, for Win98, with only instructions
> > for UNIX? It doesn't come with emacs? Does the phrase "not ready for
> > prime time" sound familiar?
> 
> A binary GLIDE consists (approximately) of
> 
> - Emacs
> - a set of Emacs lisp source files
> - documentation
> - a tiny Ada front-end that fires up Emacs.
> 
> A source GLIDE omits Emacs.
> 
> You can get along fine with just a standard Emacs (20.3 or later, but
> I'm not sure about that, the binary comes with 20.5, source works fine
> on 20.7); nothing to build, provided you can manage putting lisp code
> in your Emacs load path (or just follow the instructions).
> _______________________________________________
> comp.lang.ada mailing list
> comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
> http://ada.eu.org/mailman/listinfo/comp.lang.ada
> 

Firstish Impressions of Gtk+(GtkAda): was Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[chris.danx]

It's a bit grey, but not windows grey!

I could get used to it, but it'd stand out like a soar thumb when ppl use
themes.  Is there no way to change the colors?  Like have windows grey buttons
and frames.

Like I say, I can get used to the colours and that.  The weird bit is going to
be getting used to the unixey attaching GUI bitty.

Windows is nicer for this to me, but that's only because I've done some GUI
programming in this style.

I ran an extensive search for GtkAda tutorial using copernic basic(a good tool,
if you want it grab it from http://www.copernic.com/) but couldn't find a link
not relating to ACT (I couldn't find a downloadable version and time is money).
So now I'm looking for a GTK tutorial which might be in Ceis Uglieis but I'll
make do.


Regards,
Chris Campbell

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Ted Dennison]

In article <X8X47.22203$Kf3.282197@www.newsranger.com>, Ted Dennison says...
>
>In article <v7telrgm1nf.fsf_-_@sun234.fof.kog.no>, Tor Fredrik Aas says...
>>
>>But is has, GTK has glade for dynamic loadable interface descriptions. A 
>>underlying XML based format, even has a nice graphical  dialog editor ( named 
>>glade, oddly enough ).
>
>
>When last I looked at it, I thought Glade created files which then got
>translated into source code so that they can compiled and linked into the
>application (after editing to add in any callback code). That's not even close
>to the same thing.

While finding the link for someone else, I took the oppertunity to glance at
this part of the GTKAda UG. There is indeed a library (libglade) that you can
use to parse those files and load the appropriate widgets at runtime. UIL
actually has its own compiler to get the parsing out of runtime, but this is
pretty close. Its a shame I don't currently have a good excuse for trying it
out...

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Pascal Obry]

"Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> writes:

> Well, its not *my* product and I don't earn a living directly or indirectly
> from it so I'm more on the "customer" side of things. It kind of comes down

Well this is an Open Source project. In a sense this is OUR product. You can
build nice documentation for it, add some features that will make it the best
GUI builder in the world... and sell it if you like or sell you support or
whatever. Of course you'll need to also distribute the sources.

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|         http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.obry
--|
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Marin David Condic]

Still sounds suspiciously like someone trying to get me to work for free.
:-)

If I had a business - or worked for one - in which GtkAda or some similar
products were part of the end product, I could see an argument for
contributing to the project. The "Rising Tide Lifts All Boats" argument
might be one reason I'd want to extend the basic product then let my
competitors have the enhancements. I might see a case where I sell the
enhancements for $$$ and maybe not make them available to my competitors.
(In this case, we're talking about a manual - not software - so I'm some
kind of value-added repackager.)

If my company were already in the process of utilizing this tool, I again
might (I stress, "might") find some reason as a customer why it is to my
benefit to make some enhancements and make those enhancements available to
the folks who sold me the tool - or the general public. A larger user
community might have some advantage to me, so providing enhancements may
encourage more use & I might gain from that. Maybe. (Why not just buy a tool
for a few hundred bucks that already has what I need - including the large
user community? A developer's time is *very* expensive in comparison.)

But if I'm just a part-time, home-brew, hacker, I don't see much advantage
to it. I develop some enhancements as a "Labor of Love" and give it away so
that some for-profit company can use it to generate more revenue? How do I
gain? Why not just keep it for myself?

Likewise, if my company does not have some kind of vested interest in the
toolset and is just shopping around for a toolset to get some job done,
where is there an incentive for me to do this? If my company wanted to be a
tool-building company, presumably we'd have done that already. If we just
have some job to do, we want to do it with our efforts concentrated on the
job - not tool building. Hence, we go select some tool that will do the job
and move on. If the tool doesn't do 100% of what we want, we evaluate other
tools to see how close we can get. If we find something that does 100% of
what we want, we might look at the price tag and make the classic "Make Or
Buy" decision - guess which way that is likely to go... So unless I
absolutely can't live without *this* tool and it absolutely needs *this*
enhancement and I can't pay someone to make the enhancement less that what
it would cost me to do it myself, where is the incentive for me to enhance
it? And if I do, where is the incentive to share it?

I guess I just don't see much advantage to doing that sort of work unless I
stand to gain in some way. How is it I gain if I am not either a tool vendor
or don't have a choice about toolsets and need some enhancement? I think
that is part of the problem with the GPL. It won't breed developers forever
because it doesn't incentivize them much. Sooner or later even computer
geeks will catch on. :-)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Pascal Obry" <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message
news:uzoa3phda.fsf@wanadoo.fr...
>
> Well this is an Open Source project. In a sense this is OUR product. You
can
> build nice documentation for it, add some features that will make it the
best
> GUI builder in the world... and sell it if you like or sell you support or
> whatever. Of course you'll need to also distribute the sources.
>

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Stefan Skoglund]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> 
> The last time I looked at Gtk, my conclusion was this: "It has potential. It
> needs a good 'How To' book"

http://developer.gnome.org/doc/GGAD/ (for the book.tar.gz file)
http://developer.gnome.org/doc/GGAD/ggad.html (directly)

Written by Havoc for the GNOME project.

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Stefan Skoglund]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> with a very different architecture. To this end, I applaud GtkAda - it is
> trying to provide a common GUI building environment across two very
> different platforms & from what I gather is succeeding at that. It is hard
> to merge the two systems without settling on *some* style that is going to

GtkAda depends on Gtk+ which really is the toolkit in the GIMP project
so well a Ada program written with the help of GtkAda could easily look
like the Gimp.

> and try to force Windows into that mode? Or should the Windows L&F have been
> forced onto the Unix side? Take your pick - some substantial part of the
> computer programming & using weorld is going to be unhappy.

Using the windows look&feel in the GIMP wouldn't work !!

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Stefan Skoglund]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> But if I'm just a part-time, home-brew, hacker, I don't see much advantage
> to it. I develop some enhancements as a "Labor of Love" and give it away so
> that some for-profit company can use it to generate more revenue? How do I
> gain? Why not just keep it for myself?

Because some other guys could do some enhancements to your work
and if he/she is a nice guy and not a crook send his enhancements
to YOU.

> it would cost me to do it myself, where is the incentive for me to enhance
> it? And if I do, where is the incentive to share it?

The reasons to contribute your enhancements to some community written
tool is to lessen your own maintenance burden.

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Stefan Skoglund]

Ted Dennison wrote:
> doesn't have is some kind of loadable interface definition language, like UIL.
> But if you are set on something that will be intuitively familiar to Windows
> users, you'd probably be better off using the base Windows UI, as Gtk probably

In the gnome project they uses glade (gtk+ ui dev tool) to generate xml
files which describes the application.

GNUmeric is written with the help of {lib}glade.

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Stefan Skoglund]

Ted Dennison wrote:
> doesn't have is some kind of loadable interface definition language, like UIL.
> But if you are set on something that will be intuitively familiar to Windows
> users, you'd probably be better off using the base Windows UI, as Gtk probably
> doesn't have an equivalent for *everything*.

Check out
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/gnome-glade/index.html?dwzone=linux

Howto use libglade and glade in a project.

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Stefan Skoglund]

Ted Dennison wrote:
> >application (after editing to add in any callback code). That's not even close
> >to the same thing.
> 
> While finding the link for someone else, I took the oppertunity to glance at
> this part of the GTKAda UG. There is indeed a library (libglade) that you can
> use to parse those files and load the appropriate widgets at runtime. UIL
> actually has its own compiler to get the parsing out of runtime, but this is
> pretty close. Its a shame I don't currently have a good excuse for trying it
> out...

Pick up the current gnumeric and look on glade/libglade in action
(you need a lot of cruft :-) )

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Pascal Obry]

"Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> writes:

> Still sounds suspiciously like someone trying to get me to work for free.
> :-)

Ok if you need a better reason. I think that Ada is not that visible in the
software world. The work we can put together (all of us) are to make Ada more
visible, more accepted and (we can dream) have Ada sometime be the most
popular language :) Of course I'm not completly stupid, I don't see that this
comming year but next year :-)

Just look five years ago, the Ada world was not the same at all and one reason
is that there is many good piece of GPL code under Ada.

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|         http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.obry
--|
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[nicolas]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 878 bytes --]

"Stefan Skoglund" <stetson@ebox.tninet.se> a �crit dans le message news:
3B54BF44.646290DC@ebox.tninet.se...
> Using the windows look&feel in the GIMP wouldn't work !!

Is there a technical reason for that ?

We have a proprietary GUI originally developped for DOS
It was then ported to Unix
And finally to Windows when it came to evidence that in our market every DOS
user and 99% of unix users switched to Windows.

Originally it was a Motif look GUI.
A few years ago we changed the look to a Windows look GUI

There was some strong debate about that, but a few weeks after the change,
nobody (us internally as well as customers) would even think in coming back
to Motif

I have a RH 7.0 where a lot of things have a Windows look.
When you use swing, you have a choice, but you have a Windows look

By the way, are you sure it is very useful to re-invent swing again ?

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[Mats Karlssohn]

"chris.danx" wrote:
%<
> Could you define State Of The Art IDE for me please?

IMHO one should differentiate between the IDE and the editor. The editor
should be replaceable, so that I may use vi when I want to or emacs as
usual...

%<
> - Syntax Highlighting
> - Code Completion (good for long package structures like x.y.a.b.c ?)
> - Ada Aware

This is editor functionallity.

> - Project Management facilities
> - Possibility an Object browser
> - Non Specific Compiler support

This is IDE funcionality.


To allow the IDE to use the editor some kind of scripting is probably
needed. The IDE must also be able to insert sommands into the editor's
input stream. A very nice way of letting programs control other programs
is the arexx port of some Amiga programs.

-- 
Mats Karlssohn, developer                         mailto:mats@mida.se  
Mida Systemutveckling AB                          http://www.mida.se
Box 64, S-732 22 ARBOGA, SWEDEN
Phone: +46-(0)589-89808   Fax: +46-(0)589-89809

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Marin David Condic]

I think we agree wholeheartedly on the objective you outlined. We both want
to see Ada accepted at a greater level than it is. I think we both agree
that the presence of lots of Ada code available for development serves this
goal. I think we also both agree that your garden variety hacker, small
business, internal corporate developer, etc. ought to be able to get the
source, use it in their software, modify it as needed, etc. and not have to
pay a royalty. (That's what will get Ada accepted for various forms of
internal development.) Where I think we part company (correct me if I'm
wrong) is that I believe a different license is possible/desirable that
secures some financial rights for the authors of a work in the event that
someone takes their work & uses it for financial gain. If I understand you
correctly, you seem to be favoring the GPL which basically does not secure
those rights - or at least has not dealt with that question.

I might be willing to contribute to some community accessible code, but I'd
like to think that if I'm spending time on it that there is some $$$ in it
for me if someone else is going to take my work and make $$$ for themselves
with it. Otherwise, it seems I'm just making a gift to "The Community" of my
time and talent. Granted, I may receive other people's gifts to the
community by way of picking up their changes, but I think that from a
cost/benefit analysis in most cases, I may be better off simply purchasing
what I want rather than paying for it with sweat equity. (My time is worth a
considerable amount of money when compared to the cost of many commercially
available products.)

Or I could simply take and never give back and turn a hard heart towards the
community contributors when they cry "Unfair!" :-) (Hint: That's why
currency and markets and free enterprise and trade were invented in the
first place! :-)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Pascal Obry" <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message
news:uu20an3i8.fsf@wanadoo.fr...
>
> Ok if you need a better reason. I think that Ada is not that visible in
the
> software world. The work we can put together (all of us) are to make Ada
more
> visible, more accepted and (we can dream) have Ada sometime be the most
> popular language :) Of course I'm not completly stupid, I don't see that
this
> comming year but next year :-)
>
> Just look five years ago, the Ada world was not the same at all and one
reason
> is that there is many good piece of GPL code under Ada.
>

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Marin David Condic]

Thanks for the links. This may be helpful in some ways. A cursory inspection
though seems to indicate that this documentation is related to some other
parts of the Gtk tools. I was specifically interested in the GtkAda GUI
building program and I don't think this document addresses that. (I probably
was unclear and inaccurate in the original post) However, I will go look it
over more thoroughly.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/

"Stefan Skoglund" <stetson@ebox.tninet.se> wrote in message
news:3B54BD52.B4A5C83E@ebox.tninet.se...
>
> http://developer.gnome.org/doc/GGAD/ (for the book.tar.gz file)
> http://developer.gnome.org/doc/GGAD/ggad.html (directly)
>
> Written by Havoc for the GNOME project.

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[McDoobie]

In article <K4F47.21102$Kf3.266366@www.newsranger.com>, Ted
Dennison<dennison@telepath.com> wrote:

> In article <JeX37.39341$B56.8075497@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>,
> chris.danx says...
>>controls to be created, and more.  Also is Gtk not scripted, slowing the
>>whole thing down?
> 
> No, you are probably thinking of TK. Gtk is written in C and has a C
> interface. Its a rather nice toolkit too. The only thing I'd really like
> to see that it doesn't have is some kind of loadable interface
> definition language, like UIL. But if you are set on something that will
> be intuitively familiar to Windows users, you'd probably be better off
> using the base Windows UI, as Gtk probably doesn't have an equivalent
> for *everything*.

The Mozilla project has developed XUL, which seems to fit your description
of a UIL nicely.
Another nice feature of XUL is that it's implementation independant. As
long as 'whatever' has XUL support, it'll work.

Theres also the Gtk .rc files, but those dont really fit the definital of a UIL.

McDoobie
chris@dont.spam.me

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Pascal Obry]

"Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> writes:

> I think we agree wholeheartedly on the objective you outlined. We both want
> to see Ada accepted at a greater level than it is. I think we both agree
> that the presence of lots of Ada code available for development serves this
> goal. I think we also both agree that your garden variety hacker, small
> business, internal corporate developer, etc. ought to be able to get the
> source, use it in their software, modify it as needed, etc. and not have to
> pay a royalty. (That's what will get Ada accepted for various forms of
> internal development.) Where I think we part company (correct me if I'm
> wrong) is that I believe a different license is possible/desirable that
> secures some financial rights for the authors of a work in the event that
> someone takes their work & uses it for financial gain. If I understand you
> correctly, you seem to be favoring the GPL which basically does not secure
> those rights - or at least has not dealt with that question.

Yep. Because everything I build is based on the GPL license. All my work would
not be possible without GNAT for example. I will not like to have to buy an
Ada compiler for my home/hobby job !

So yes I favor the GPL because my work is based on plenty of other GPL
softwares. Piece by piece we can as hobbyist build very nice software. Today
with Linux, GNAT and AWS, I can build some very nice Web server. And I do not
count all Ada components and library I use. All this will not be possible if I
had to pay some compagnies to be able to use Linux, GNAT and some Ada
components.

Now, this is certainly not a problem for a company where buying a software
and/or support for it is just the right things to do. I would not start a
project in my company without some kind of support. But Pascal Obry at home
don't want to spent some hundred of $ to have the right to build and
distribute a software.

> I might be willing to contribute to some community accessible code, but I'd
> like to think that if I'm spending time on it that there is some $$$ in it
> for me if someone else is going to take my work and make $$$ for themselves
> with it. 

Don't you have some piece of code in your hard disc that you could share ? As
I said in my previous message, I don't write software only for the community
but just to learn something or for the fun :) For example AWS has started
because I wanted to understand how the HTTP protocol was working... and some
time after... well you know the story :) Idem for SMTP, POSIX...

Anyway, let me just add something. I find the Ada community to be less active
in the Open Source movement. I don't say it is bad or good, just that it seems
to me that the C/C++, Java, Eiffel, Perl... communities are doing far more in
this area.

I'll just add, let's talk about $$$ when Ada will be on the right tracks. I'm
convinced that without GNU/Ada Ada will be just invisible today, used only in
some very small niche.

Just my 2 cents,
Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|         http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.obry
--|
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"

Making money from free software [was Re: An Ada IDE and discussions]

[Matthias Benkmann]

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001 10:12:48 -0400, "Marin David Condic"
<marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> wrote:

>I think we agree wholeheartedly on the objective you outlined. We both want
>to see Ada accepted at a greater level than it is. I think we both agree
>that the presence of lots of Ada code available for development serves this
>goal. I think we also both agree that your garden variety hacker, small
>business, internal corporate developer, etc. ought to be able to get the
>source, use it in their software, modify it as needed, etc. and not have to
>pay a royalty. (That's what will get Ada accepted for various forms of
>internal development.) Where I think we part company (correct me if I'm
>wrong) is that I believe a different license is possible/desirable that
>secures some financial rights for the authors of a work in the event that
>someone takes their work & uses it for financial gain. If I understand you
>correctly, you seem to be favoring the GPL which basically does not secure
>those rights - or at least has not dealt with that question.
>
>I might be willing to contribute to some community accessible code, but I'd
>like to think that if I'm spending time on it that there is some $$$ in it
>for me if someone else is going to take my work and make $$$ for themselves
>with it. Otherwise, it seems I'm just making a gift to "The Community" of my
>time and talent. Granted, I may receive other people's gifts to the
>community by way of picking up their changes, but I think that from a
>cost/benefit analysis in most cases, I may be better off simply purchasing
>what I want rather than paying for it with sweat equity. (My time is worth a
>considerable amount of money when compared to the cost of many commercially
>available products.)
>
>Or I could simply take and never give back and turn a hard heart towards the
>community contributors when they cry "Unfair!" :-)

The GPL prevents that someone just takes and doesn't give. If you GPL
a program, everyone who uses that code in his own projects has to GPL
those, which includes making them available to the community again.
This is how the GPL is different from the BSD license. 

And about the money-making issue: You misinterpret things slightly.
When Red Hat puts together a Linux distro and sells it, it is *NOT*
making money of the works of the developers who wrote the programs
contained in the distro. 
All of those programs are available for free download. 
Unless Red Hat customers are total idiots who don't know that they can
download the software for free, these customers are obviously *NOT*
paying for the software. Only an idiot pays for something he can
download for free. 
So Red Hat is *NOT* capitalizing on the effort made by the developers
of the software. What people ARE paying for is the effort that Red Hat
put into collecting all this software, compiling it (have you ever
tried to build a Linux distro as complete as Red Hat's from scratch?
Have you ever even tried to locate and download all those packages
manually?) and making it (relatively) easy to install and maintain.
This is 100% Red Hat's effort. The developers of the software have not
contributed to this in the least. In fact the developers of the
software are the reason why Red Hat is needed. These developers make
installing the software a hard piece of work. So all the money Red Hat
makes is 100% Red Hat's money. I don't see why any of the developers
should get a dime for something that they didn't do.
If they want that money, they should create their own distro. No one's
stopping them.

To get back to the GPL. Let's say you write a program and put it under
the GPL and some company picks it up. If they change it or build
something around it they have to put it under the GPL and you and
everybody else is free to use their changes. Maybe they charge money
for a CD with the software on it. If that bothers you and you want a
slice of the cake, just take their code, burn it on a CD and sell it
yourself. The GPL is about freedom. This includes the freedom to make
money. If you want to make money from it, go ahead and sell GPL
software.

Developers who reject the GPL with the argument that "someone else can
make money from it without paying me" are just lazy. It's these
developers who are the parasites, not the people who make money
selling free software. These developers just want to sit back and wait
till someone takes considerable financial risk, puts a lot of effort
into a business, and then they want to jump in when everything is done
and just get paid.
 If your program is so good, then why don't YOU sell it? If you don't
want other people to have your code, why do you release it in the
first place?

I think a developer has only 3 choices:

a) Make a 100% commercial product where no one else is allowed to do
anything with your code without explicit permission. Note that this
does not exclude publishing your source code. You may publish it and
even allow certain people to make changes or use it in their projects,
but they need explicit permission from you and may or may not have to
pay you royalties (as you choose). Use one of the standard EULAs
(they're all the same, no matter what company they come from) if you
want this.

b) Make a 100% free product, where everyone can use, modify, sell,
change etc. your code without restrictions. It is even allowed that
people take your code and integrate it into proprietary products as
described in a). If this is your intent, use a license similar to
BSD's

c) Make a product that is free and that will remain free. In that
case, use the GPL.

Trying to invent a license that combines a) (i.e. control over who
uses and makes money with your stuff) and c) or b) (i.e. allow people
to use your stuff freely) is like trying to invent water that isn't
wet. 

MSB

----
By the way:
Vacuum cleaners suck!

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Marin David Condic]

"Pascal Obry" <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message
news:upuaymc2i.fsf@wanadoo.fr...
>
> Yep. Because everything I build is based on the GPL license. All my work
would
> not be possible without GNAT for example. I will not like to have to buy
an
> Ada compiler for my home/hobby job !
>
Maybe you missed my point. I'm not talking about charging you to use the
software as a home/hobbyist. Nor even if you are at work developing
something for in-house use. I'm interested if you take some of my code and
use it to build "PascalSoft Spreadsheet" (or similar) and start selling it
for $29.95 on the open market. That's when I think you would owe me some $$$
for my contribution to your commercial success.

Check out the Ada Developers Cooperative Licence (ADCL) that Dr. Leif has
written about in Ada Letters - article referenced somewhere in this
newsgroup recently. I think you would see that the basic idea is to let
software be open source and allow it to be used widely, but insisting on
some kind of royalty if money starts changing hands.


>
> Don't you have some piece of code in your hard disc that you could share ?

Yes. Go visit my web site and look over what is there.
(http://www.mcondic.com/) I think you will find that I can be very easy with
licensing terms if you decide you want to do something commercial with the
software I put there.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Ted Dennison]

In article <9j4g2a$802$1@nh.pace.co.uk>, Marin David Condic says...
>
>Maybe you missed my point. I'm not talking about charging you to use the
>software as a home/hobbyist. Nor even if you are at work developing
>something for in-house use. I'm interested if you take some of my code and
>use it to build "PascalSoft Spreadsheet" (or similar) and start selling it
>for $29.95 on the open market. That's when I think you would owe me some $$$
>for my contribution to your commercial success.

If that bugs you, GPL your software (with no GMGPL-style excemptions). Then when
someone does that kind of thing, they will have to GPL it, which will give you
(and everyone else) free access to it. They can still sell it for $30, but that
has to be covering the convenience of having it on CD (perhaps with hardcopy
docs and instructions).

I generally don't want to do that with my stuff, because I want to be able to
use it myself freely at work.

>Check out the Ada Developers Cooperative Licence (ADCL) that Dr. Leif has
>written about in Ada Letters - article referenced somewhere in this
>newsgroup recently. I think you would see that the basic idea is to let
>software be open source and allow it to be used widely, but insisting on
>some kind of royalty if money starts changing hands.

I'd like to see it (I don't suppose its online anywhere?). But if it
discriminates against certian types of users, or requires any kind of royalty
for any distribution of it, it is *not* OpenSource (according at least points 1
and 6 in the defintion - http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.html ).



---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Pascal Obry]

"Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> writes:

> "Pascal Obry" <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message
> news:upuaymc2i.fsf@wanadoo.fr...
> >
> > Yep. Because everything I build is based on the GPL license. All my work
> would
> > not be possible without GNAT for example. I will not like to have to buy
> an
> > Ada compiler for my home/hobby job !
> >
> Maybe you missed my point. I'm not talking about charging you to use the
> software as a home/hobbyist. Nor even if you are at work developing
> something for in-house use. I'm interested if you take some of my code and
> use it to build "PascalSoft Spreadsheet" (or similar) and start selling it
> for $29.95 on the open market. That's when I think you would owe me some $$$
> for my contribution to your commercial success.

Not sure I missed the point. This is theorical, do we have a single example
where somebody have charged something for a tool/soft he has done nothing for
in the GPL world.

And in anycase if your software if GPL (we are talking about GPL software
here) then this guys needs also to have his soft distributed with sources. And
if the sources is identical I just can't see why somebody will buy something
that is plain free "one-click" away !

Now if he has done something nice with your GPL code, of course he can
distribute and sell it... but you can do the same things with any piece of GPL
code. The market will anyway kill any abuse from the start! I mean here a
contribution to some code that just serve nothing.

All in all I understand your point, and I agree about your expectations, it is
just that I do not see the world with the same glasses... I'm ready to play
this game (giving for free) as long as all my life is not based on this
principle :) I of course get payed for my day job :)

> Check out the Ada Developers Cooperative Licence (ADCL) that Dr. Leif has

I'll have a look when I'll have some time.

> > Don't you have some piece of code in your hard disc that you could share ?
> 
> Yes. Go visit my web site and look over what is there.

I know, I already had a look at your homepage. This was more a general
comment nothing against you.

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|         http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.obry
--|
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[chris.danx]

"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:1SX47.22269$Kf3.285163@www.newsranger.com...
> In article <h3X47.42779$WS4.6503459@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com>, chris.danx
> says...
> >I've been rather busy training my Ape, Kira, to be nice to those moany
> >villagers, but I will make a decision on Gtk soon (today or tommorrow).
>
> Just rub his tummy a bit, give him a big pile of food, and leave him tied up
to
> the village store with the pink fluffy leash. :-)

Oops I was wrong.  A bit more persistence and the rope of learning and it
worked.  Yes, yes, yes!!!  Kira has the distinct glow of goodness and villagers
now worship at her pen in awe of her magnificent glow!


Thanks Ted,
Chris Campbell

> That should give you enough time to start reading through the user guide at
> http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/docs/gtkada_ug.html to see if it can do
> everything you need. The widget hierarchy is at
> http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/docs/gtkada_ug.html#SEC9 .
>
> ---
> T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
>           home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Marin David Condic]

http://www.acm.org/sigada/ada_letters/March1999.html  has an abstract of the
article. However, you'd need to contact Dr. Leif for the original. He posted
his address elsewhere in the group: rleif@rleif.com

As for when something is open source and when it isn't, I guess you could
get into definitional wars. If there is such a thing as "OpenSource(tm)"
then the owner of the (tm) can define it any way they like and maybe that
excludes the ADCL. However, from my reading of the ADCL and my maybe more
"broad" interpretation of the meaning of "open source" I think you still
have that. In some ways, its more "open" because AFAIK, it doesn't require
that use of ADCL software automatically makes the using software ADCL - no
"infection". (Maybe you'd consider that "bad" - I'd look at it as making the
software more generally useful.)

Anyway, I don't think that would stop you from using your code at work any
more than the GPL would stop you. Not unless you are making a product that
is going to be sold to someone.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:%Fk57.23889$Kf3.323037@www.newsranger.com...
>
>
> I'd like to see it (I don't suppose its online anywhere?). But if it
> discriminates against certian types of users, or requires any kind of
royalty
> for any distribution of it, it is *not* OpenSource (according at least
points 1
> and 6 in the defintion - http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.html ).
>

Re: Making money from free software [was Re: An Ada IDE and discussions]

[Marin David Condic]

That seems a kind of disingenuous fiction. Suppose you wrote your
autobiography and put it out in book form. I pick up your book and say "This
would make a marvelous movie!", so I hire actors, translate your book into a
screenplay, build the sets, produce the movie, market it and make millions
at the boxoffice on your life's story. Would you say that I did *not*
capitalize on your efforts? After all, I pulled together all the pieces and
assembled the finished work - the fact that you originally wrote the book is
no different that if you originally wrote some significant part of Linux.

Or would you think it was inherently fair for someone to pick up books at
the library (free!) and turn them into movies and make money on them without
paying the authors anything? It seems an analogous situation. Granted, the
authors of GPL code have given their permission for this to happen, so it
isn't illegal and they have little right to complain about it now. But it
doesn't sound like a scenario that I'd want to sign up for personally.

I'm not saying that Red Hat, et alia, don't deserve to make money for their
part in integrating all the pieces and distributing it to the world. They
put capital at risk and invested labor in the process. But I think the
original authors have some non-zero contribution to this and that by virtue
of the GPL license, they don't share financially in any of the rewards. I'd
like to think that if I were to contribute some non-zero share to a
company's product, that I'd get some non-zero payback in the process.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Matthias Benkmann" <mbenkmann@gmx.de> wrote in message
news:3b55c03c.15655171@news.cis.dfn.de...
>
> And about the money-making issue: You misinterpret things slightly.
> When Red Hat puts together a Linux distro and sells it, it is *NOT*
> making money of the works of the developers who wrote the programs
> contained in the distro.
> All of those programs are available for free download.
> Unless Red Hat customers are total idiots who don't know that they can
> download the software for free, these customers are obviously *NOT*
> paying for the software. Only an idiot pays for something he can
> download for free.
> So Red Hat is *NOT* capitalizing on the effort made by the developers
> of the software. What people ARE paying for is the effort that Red Hat
> put into collecting all this software, compiling it (have you ever
> tried to build a Linux distro as complete as Red Hat's from scratch?
> Have you ever even tried to locate and download all those packages
> manually?) and making it (relatively) easy to install and maintain.
> This is 100% Red Hat's effort. The developers of the software have not
> contributed to this in the least. In fact the developers of the
> software are the reason why Red Hat is needed. These developers make
> installing the software a hard piece of work. So all the money Red Hat
> makes is 100% Red Hat's money. I don't see why any of the developers
> should get a dime for something that they didn't do.
> If they want that money, they should create their own distro. No one's
> stopping them.
>

Re: Making money from free software [was Re: An Ada IDE and discussions]

[Ted Dennison]

In article <9j4sr9$d0s$1@nh.pace.co.uk>, Marin David Condic says...
>That seems a kind of disingenuous fiction. Suppose you wrote your
>autobiography and put it out in book form. I pick up your book and say "This

That's kind of a bogus analogy, because it is founded on the (implied) assertion
that computer programs and non-fiction books are roughly the same type of work,
which they are clearly not. A computer program is in essence a series of
instructions for how to perform something useful. 

The closest real-world equivalent we have to them is recipes. So if you insist
on making a real-world analogy, you should make it to someone reusing (possibly
extending) a recipe, and selling the result (the prepared food), or putting the
modification in a cookbook and selling that. 

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Ted Dennison]

In article <SeZ47.58512$B56.11546588@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>, chris.danx
says...
>Thanks Ted, do you know of a tutorial (I only found the ACT one and it wasn't
>downloadable)?

I believe I went through a non-Ada-specific one I found on the GTK+ website. (
http://www.gtk.org/tutorial/ , probably). That and the GTKAda user guide ought
to be enough to get you started. But I have had Motif and Motif GUI-builder
experience. Others without that experience might have more trouble, I really
can't say.

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[Kjell Mesch]

Stefan Skoglund <stetson@ebox.tninet.se> wrote in 
news:3B52CD79.A3B1A8F5@ebox.tninet.se:

> Al Christians wrote:
>> have a standard Windows look and feel either standard or not more than
>> 2.5 clicks away from the default set up. I have seen an emacs setup
>> that actually has hot keys on the pull down menus and responds to the
>> Windows standard control keys for cut and paste, etc.  Could one
>> combine that kind of setup into the Ada mode for emacs? 
> 
> Hrrmm, i would be terriby lost because it would kill my ability
> to find my way in Emacs and i well started to use emacs in 1987 on a
> PR1ME.
> 
> it would have to be a clearly documented tweak ie every hardline
> emacs should know how to switch of the DAMN windows compatibility mode.
> 
>> If someone could write a program that would get all the emacs haters
>> to like emacs,  I'd nominate them for the Nobel Peace Prize. 
> 
> Agreed.
> 

Well emacs is the greatest, but it's not easy to learn how to use it.
But thats when U do know it there is no finer editor.
I guess if I had started using emacs i 1987 I would know it to perfection..
Wait a minute...I did start using It in 1987 on an Amiga, how come I learn 
new stuff still??? :-)

Kjell - where ever i put my .emacs thats my home

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Stefan Skoglund]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> secures some financial rights for the authors of a work in the event that
> someone takes their work & uses it for financial gain. If I understand you
> correctly, you seem to be favoring the GPL which basically does not secure
> those rights - or at least has not dealt with that question.

I will reiterate what the GPL says in this case:
if someone uses some GPL:ed code in his/her/their product
and distributes it with an license incompatible with the GPL
that guy is a THIEF and should go to jail for that.

They can distribute it to their customers under the GPL and still
charge money but their customers can request and must receive 
the source of said sw.

The customers can also distribute the sw by themselves too.
but the company still distributes the sw with a Gnu Public License.

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Stefan Skoglund]

McDoobie wrote:
> Theres also the Gtk .rc files, but those dont really fit the definital of a UIL.

They are really to support customization of the Gtk+ gui.
It you want to use different fonts for different types of buttons
you do it thru a modificaton to your .gtkrc

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Ted Dennison]

In article <9j4o47$b5a$1@nh.pace.co.uk>, Marin David Condic says...
>get into definitional wars. If there is such a thing as "OpenSource(tm)"
>then the owner of the (tm) can define it any way they like and maybe that
>excludes the ADCL. However, from my reading of the ADCL and my maybe more

They tried to do just that right after the term was coined. However, apparently
OpenSource is too generic of a term to trademark. But this is as close to
official as you can get. You aren't really OpenSource unless you conform to that
defintion, and saying you are is just going to bring down a whole lot of heat on
yourself (as several companies have already found out).

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Marin David Condic]

Well then, lets coin whatever different terms we like for it - just so we
don't run afoul of the OpenSource Cops. :-)

The way I see it, there are two different things going on here. One is the
issue of making source code available so that it can be used, studied,
modified and extended. The other is the assignment of rights to one or more
parties in the process. On the one hand, I'm in favor of making source
widely available. On the other hand, I'm against the idea of a) signing my
rights away when I distribute source for some subsystem and b) attempting to
force someone else to sign their rights away just because they want to use
my subsystem in their (sub)system.

If I put useful code out in some forum, I'd like for you to be able to use
it in building your home or work projects. I'd like to be sure that if you
give someone else your project that you include with that (at minimum) the
source that I gave you - without forcing you to give out your source code if
that is your choice. If you *change* my source (as opposed to simply calling
it or extending it - as in class extension {think of separate files versus
changing my files}) that you make those changes available to me and anyone
else that you may have given the code to. All of this serves to get my
source code into as many hands as possible and to be used with the minimal
of restrictions that might discourage anyone from wanting to use it.

If we can't call this OpenSource, then let's call it AvailableSource.

The part two of this contraption is the business of rights and remuneration.
If you take my work and use it in your work *and* sell your work for money,
it seems fair to me that I should get some part of that sale since part of
the product is the fruit of my labor. I may choose to make that dolar figure
high, low or even non-existant, but the right exists and I'd prefer not to
arbitrarily give it away just by giving you the source code. Its your choice
to decide if it is worth it to you to pay me the royalty I ask in order to
get some percentage of your product out the door quicker, better, cheaper,
etc., or if the cost is too steep to justify the use. (We can always haggle
over price!)

Granted, there are problems with this model on all sorts of fronts. For one
thing, if you use my work in your business and don't resell it, I'm still
subsidizing your business. (If you didn't have to write it or buy it
elsewhere, this saves you expenses you'd otherwise have to pay for with
revenue.) For another thing, you can always get creative in terms of
accounting and how you choose to market your end product. You may charge a
bundle for services and nothing (or nearly nothing) for the software - in
which case, I again lose out. (I hear that in Salt Lake City the booze laws
are so restrictive that some bars give away liquor with the purchase of a
soft-drink. Hence you pay for the coke and the rum is free and the laws
regarding sale of rum don't apply.)

But even if the system isn't perfect, I think it is still an interesting
concept. It promotes the development of generally available source code
because the writers stand at least *some* chance of gaining from making
useful code available. Even though it isn't 100% equitable, it reduces the
worst inequities considerably. It recognizes the symbiotic relationship
between the writer and the value-added user by exchanging free
(monetary-free) use of the software for wider circulation. And you still
have source available for all the stuff circulating this way.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:miY57.932$ar1.3812@www.newsranger.com...
>
> They tried to do just that right after the term was coined. However,
apparently
> OpenSource is too generic of a term to trademark. But this is as close to
> official as you can get. You aren't really OpenSource unless you conform t
o that
> defintion, and saying you are is just going to bring down a whole lot of
heat on
> yourself (as several companies have already found out).
>

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Ted Dennison]

In article <9j9qer$aek$1@nh.pace.co.uk>, Marin David Condic says...
>
>Well then, lets coin whatever different terms we like for it - just so we
>don't run afoul of the OpenSource Cops. :-)
..
>If we can't call this OpenSource, then let's call it AvailableSource.

How about "SharedSource"? That's the term Microsoft is using. :-)

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

[GianLuigi Piacentini]

Why not porting Ada to some popular microprocessor for 'small' embedded
systems - after all is what Ada was created for.  This marker is 99.9%
C, and there are a ** LOT ** of such systems all around.
Being in this busines since last year, I searched for Ada on such small
micros (8 to 16 bits) and found only C (The Lego I saw mentioned in some
posting here some time ago seems more didactical than a production-grade
system).  Anyway development is done on PC, and only the executable code
is downloaded into the micro, so it does not seem to be any restriction
on the compiler complexity.

So why not ?

Gigi Piacentini

Re: emacs Else and ada-mode

[Stephen Leake]

Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com> writes:

> >if {conditional} then
> 
> Well...I'm all over that like ugly on an ape then. :-) 
> 
> I really became enamored of LSE templates while I was doing VMS work. The nifty
> thing is that you can go in and modify the templates so that it automaticly adds
> the appropriate file and subprogram headers that your current project's coding
> standards require. That saves *so* much typing (even if most of is was
> cut-and-paste).
> 
> Hmmm. I wonder how much work it would be to integrate with Ada-mode's auto
> package body stub creation....

Not hard, unless you are using gnatstub to do the bodies. Just rewrite
ada-gen-treat-proc, and put in the placeholders you want. They are
just text strings; no properties or anything.

Changing gnatstub is also possible, since you have the source. But I
haven't looked at it. One stated requirement on the current gnatstub
is that the generated code actually compile; adding templates would
make it not compile. 

DEC Ada had a flag that said "recognize templates, and treat them as
errors". That way, you could check for other syntax errors, but not
generate bogus object code. Adding that to GNAT might be a good idea,
but I never actually used it in DEC Ada.

-- 
-- Stephe

Re: emacs Else and ada-mode

[Marc A. Criley]

Stephen Leake wrote:
> 
> 
> DEC Ada had a flag that said "recognize templates, and treat them as
> errors". That way, you could check for other syntax errors, but not
> generate bogus object code. Adding that to GNAT might be a good idea,
> but I never actually used it in DEC Ada.

GNAT does have something somewhat along those lines the "Stubbed"
convention, for pragma Convention().

From the GNAT RM:

Stubbed 
     Stubbed is a special convention used to indicate that the body of
the subprogram will be entirely ignored. Any call to the subprogram is
converted into a raise of the Program_Error exception. If a pragma
Import specifies convention stubbed then no body need be present at all.
This convention is useful during development for the inclusion of
subprograms whose body has not yet been written. 

Marc A. Criley
Senior Staff Engineer
Quadrus Corporation
www.quadruscorp.com