Re: Ada Component Registry proposal

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

Well, that's something. ACT is probably the most active in enhancing 
their Ada product - I don't know what the other vendors are up to or if 
they anticipate making any significant enhancements to their compiler at 
all. If ACT were driving it and it was available for other vendors to 
adopt, that might be a suitable way to go.

It might be a good idea to get a read on the relative interest of other 
vendors and some fix on how actively they are developing their compiler. 
That's where the ARG could be useful - if a vendor has a representative 
on the ARG, they are probably interested in Ada's future, have some 
willingness to extend their Ada product and could be asked to comment on 
  the interest in a library. If they don't have a representative on the 
ARG, then its a good bet they aren't terribly interested in any future 
enhancements to their Ada compiler - if they don't care enough about 
major syntactic/semantic changes to Ada, then they almost certainly 
won't care about a relatively lesser thing like a library.

One other thing the ARG would be good for - comment on what is already 
planned or likely to be planned for the next issue of Ada. I had heard 
talk of a file system interface package and probably some additional 
things, but I don't know that there is a current plan to have any sort 
of containers. They might conceivably comment on two other issues: 1) If 
Ada were to get a CAL, what should the first area(s) of priority be? 
(Containers? Math? Network? OS?...) 2) Are there any criteria they would 
find important in ultimately accepting or rejecting a CAL as being "part 
of Ada"? (Style issues? Domain issues? Platform issues? - Basically what 
sorts of things might get the CAL shot down and rejected.)

Since we have an ARG member (or two, or three...) listening in - maybe 
there's some comment? Say something to me off line if you'd prefer to 
discuss it out of the public eye. (See my return address in the .SIG)

MDC

Stephane Richard wrote:
> Well I talked to ACT quickly, I'm still waiting for a phone call which it
> looks like I'll have to remind them of it seems :-).  But nonetheless, they
> did recognize the effort, they do follow c.l.a. pretty good, now to wait for
> em to say something.  but I need to talk to that dude first.  Guess at the
> time it was too early to pronounce themselves but they didn't categorically
> reject it either (so far).  Maybe all they are waiting for is something to
> look at (hence what Robert is doing) so they can see how it is planned to
> work, give them a basis of an idea of what it might look like and as Robert
> said how easily usable it is as far as concepts goes.
> 
> I'll get in touch with them again monday probably.
> 


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Marin David Condic
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     "So if I understand 'The Matrix Reloaded' correctly, the Matrix is
     basically a Microsoft operating system - it runs for a while and
     then crashes and reboots. By design, no less. Neo is just a
     memory leak that's too hard to fix, so they left him in... The
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         --  Marin D. Condic
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