Ada Component Registry proposal

["Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@comcast.net>]

I put together an XML DOCTYPE for a Ada Component Registry, and tried it 
out on GNADE. If anyone who understands XML would like to look at it and 
criticize, I'll send you a copy.  But right now I consider it too 
preliminary to let loose in the wild.  I'll probably have a much better 
worked out version by the end of next week.  (Oops! Mental note to self, 
the registry itself needs a version number. ;-)

I picked GNADE as a test case though, expecting it to be a decent stress 
test.  Boy was it!  For me as well as the XML grammer.  I'd like to 
comment on a few things that I found and what they mean for a formal 
registry, or for the Common Ada Library.

One of the things that the registry does is makes the Zip or tar or 
whatever file that you can download more accessable.  Much more 
accessable.  Amazingly more accessable.  GNADE as delivered has over a 
dozen directories and if you actually compile it, creates a few more. 
(And just to confuse you puts some stuff into existing directories 
outside the GNADE structure.)  With the registry, you can look and see 
that most of the source files are children of GNU.DB, and that package 
declaration can be found in


-- 
                                                     Robert I. Eachus

"Quality is the Buddha. Quality is scientific reality. Quality is the 
goal of Art. It remains to work these concepts into a practical, 
down-to-earth context, and for this there is nothing more practical or 
down-to-earth than what I have been talking about all along...the repair 
of an old motorcycle."  -- from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle 
Maintenance by Robert Pirsig