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: 103376,1116ece181be1aea X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-10-05 07:41:14 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news2.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!cyclone.bc.net!sjc70.webusenet.com!news.webusenet.com!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3F802D6C.2010705@noplace.com> From: Marin David Condic User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 (OEM-HPQ-PRS1C03) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Is the Writing on the Wall for Ada? References: <3F7E01EB.8090400@noplace.com> <3F7EC895.8010507@noplace.com> <9JAfb.6590$QH3.498@newsfep4-winn.server.ntli.net> <3F7F432A.2070108@noplace.com> <94Ifb.5837$RU4.57065@newsfep4-glfd.server.ntli.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Sun, 05 Oct 2003 14:41:14 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.165.24.227 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net 1065364874 209.165.24.227 (Sun, 05 Oct 2003 07:41:14 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 05 Oct 2003 07:41:14 PDT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:260 Date: 2003-10-05T14:41:14+00:00 List-Id: Sorry. I misunderstood you to be suggesting it be put in the standard. With that: Q: "who wants a std lib" A: I do. And I lobby all the time in my workplace to implement things in Ada and have succeeded in some areas. I'd get more success if I had more to offer. Q: "and what they want of one" A: Just a short list off the top of my head: 1) Containers (probably on the way within the standard, but possibly we might find some things not covered...) 2) Math/Statistics - Vectors, Matrices, Big number math, Symbolic algebra, Stats functions on data sets (could be integrated with Containers *if* someone is smart enough to have containers of objects where the objects are defined as needing math operators. I did this in my personal library by defining classes called Ordinal and Scalar and variants of my containers that could only have something inherited from Ordinal or Scalar. You can then implement quite a bit of statistical stuff as functions on the container.) Any other specialty branches of Math that we see hanging around in popular Fortran or C (or even other Ada) libraries somewhere. 3) Related to Math: Encryption/Decryption, Compression/Decompression of streams. 4) Control Laws operations (a specialty for *my* specific field) Things like lead/lag filters, univariate/bivariate maps, rate and range limits, etc. This probably wouldn't appeal to huge masses of people, but it would sure make it easier for me to sell it locally - especially to my modelers where I have been having some success because our controls are built in Ada. 5) OS Interfacing - file systems, network communication, .ZIP files, various file formats (.wav, .mpg, etc), hardware (graphics cards, sound cards, communication ports, printers) etc. 6) Internet communication - FTP, e-mail, etc. 7) Database interface (maybe even a database itself?) - Some standard means of connecting to things like MySQL or Oracle - TBD what that means. 8) XML Document Object Model (one that uses tagged records, please.) 9) Desktop apps - The low-level, portable parts of various desktop apps - address book, calendar, spreadsheet, etc. 10) GUI interface - difficult to make portable, but possible. And those are just a quick list of things I can think of without any real research. I don't think it would be a big job to start sifting through the various libraries that already exist in Ada to come up with a list of topics. You could also examine what things other popular libraries out there are providing (things that come with languages like Java and MSVC++ as well as "add-on" libraries people are peddling for use in more specialized problem domains.) There's two sources of info. Add in a little brainstorming and you'd likely have a list as long as your arm. Once you've got a list, you just have to assign some relative level of importance to each item, sort them and get started with whatever pops up on top. (Probably containers and math, but we might see some surprising things if we conducted a poll) Ideas are the easy part. The hard part is getting some kind of official acceptance of the ideas and getting an implementation everyone can be reasonably happy with. (or at least equally miserable with.) Dive in there and list a few of your favorite library branches. Maybe we can assign them Dewey Decimal numbers. :-) MDC chris wrote: > > I wasn't saying we put it in the ARM, far from it! As you point out > it's too long to wait between revisions. The world changes much quicker > than that. 10 year revisions are ok for something like a language > standard. I was simply asking who wants a std lib, and what they want > of one. > -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic I work for: http://www.belcan.com/ My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/NSFrames.htm Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g "All reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for." --Logan Pearsall Smith ======================================================================