From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,2d69f4a8070dd707 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-05-31 18:35:35 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!syros.belnet.be!news.belnet.be!news-hub.siol.net!feed.cgocable.net!read1.cgocable.net.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3ED806D3.5030001@cogeco.ca> From: "Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada.Networks.Sockets hierarchy for standardization? (sf: ada0y-net-std) References: <3ED83712.8090905@cogeco.ca> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 21:35:15 -0400 NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.150.168.167 X-Complaints-To: abuse@cogeco.ca X-Trace: read1.cgocable.net 1054431624 24.150.168.167 (Sat, 31 May 2003 21:40:24 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 31 May 2003 21:40:24 EDT Organization: Cogeco Cable Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:38259 Date: 2003-05-30T21:35:15-04:00 List-Id: Michael Erdmann wrote: > Warren W. Gay VE3WWG wrote: >> For discussion: I have thrown together this evening >> a more formalized view of some "chicken scratching" I did on my >> train commute home this evening. The diagram is available at my >> web site (see PDF link further on). > > I like it. But may be the names services should be put under > Services. ... > Michael While it is too soon to judge general interest in this project, based upon the pulse of other Ada socket articles in this newsgroup, I think it is time _something_ was _started_ in this vein. Funding would be nice, but I don't think we can wait for it. The clock is ticking. Rather than lose precious time on this, since defining standards and reference implementations can require considerable effort, I have taken some initiative and registered a request at sourcforge for an ada0Y-net-std project to be created there. The website indicates that they need 2 business days to review and to respond to the request. If all goes well, I hope to have a project started there by next Wednesday (June 4th). There we can hold discussions, and more easily post and revise documents, and later code. They also provide NNTP access, though I don't know how well it works yet. If it works well, this would give us our own private newsgroup in which to hold project discussions in. Alternatively, I suppose an email list is ok, but I prefer a newsgroup approach, if possible. This is not to say that no input will be solicited from comp.lang.ada. Au contrare! However, to reach consensus, you pretty much have to narrow the list of participants, or your discussion will become a free-for-all. Meetings with many people take longer and usually accomplish less. I don't believe that there is much time for us to waste (if Ada0Y means 2005, then there is little time waste). The way I see things happening, is that a summary will be posted here in comp.lang.ada periodically. Interested participants can then come back to the forge's NNTP server and review past discussions and post their comments and contributions. I will be looking for volunteers for various things. I can volunteer my some of my own time on various things and code, but depending upon when the submission deadline is, I'll probably need other people to contribute code and documents as well. Can anyone state when our ARG submission deadline is? Randy? For this project to be successful, this project must have someone to run with this once we have a reference implementation and document (I don't think I'm the best person for that job). At a minimum, we need the document to submit (the reference implementation is to simply help us flush out the problems). So I need someone to work with the ARG: preferably someone more knowledgeable about that standards process and perhaps does Ada as their day job (I am just an Ada hobbiest, after all). By taking this initiative, I am not necessarily presuming that I should be the "moderator" or "organizer" of this effort. I would gladly hand it over to someone else, if they will take the reins and lead this horse to success. I am just assuming that nobody really wants to take the time to do this, and so I'll contribute what I can to this process and at least get things going. If no one steps up to the plate, then I am willing to take this as far as I am able to. I am really hoping however, that I can get at least one volunteer to eventually write up the necessary documentation to submit to the ARG, in the language and preciseness that they need. There are already some socket bindings out there, in different forms. I would be interested in hearing if any of these copyright owners would be willing to allow portions of those packages to be spliced into a new framework, for inclusion into the reference implementation. This project aims to provide a GNAT reference implementation, to help work out problems. I have registered the sourceforge project to use the LGPL license, but I suspect that this also needs to be further discussed and revised (a license selection was required to make the application for a hosted project). If you can contribute existing code, then please indicate what your copyright requirements/restrictions are. In the worst case of failure, we may just end up with another non-standard sockets library (or even worse I guess, it might remain unfinished). But I _want_ this to succeed and I think there is enough interest generally that this _can_ work. It is my personal opinion that an Ada without standard socket library support will cause the language to wither and die, for general purpose computing uses. Networking today is nearly as important as doing Text_IO. Your thoughts? If you are interested in this project, please indicate what you can contribute, and capacity/when/how-much if applicable. If you feel that this is a "bad idea" or the wrong approach, then don't be afraid to speak your mind. I'd rather find out now, rather than face failure a year from now (but state concrete reasons, rather than "I don't like it" etc.) -- Warren W. Gay VE3WWG http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg