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: 103376,714a8558b02b32bb X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2004-01-22 05:26:43 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news2.google.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newshub.sdsu.edu!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net.POSTED!d9c68f36!not-for-mail Message-ID: <400FCF8F.3090701@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: GUI was Re: why Ada is so unpopular ? References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 13:26:42 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 165.247.68.244 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net 1074778002 165.247.68.244 (Thu, 22 Jan 2004 05:26:42 PST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 05:26:42 PST Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:4643 Date: 2004-01-22T13:26:42+00:00 List-Id: You won't get any argument from me. This was part of the point I was trying to make in the paper I sent to Ada Letters a while back. A *well integrated* library would be a really attractive thing to a developer. (This is why you don't want to simply glom onto some bag of stuff you harvested off the internet - its not *integrated*.) Imagine something like this: Suppose Ada had a container library, a GUI library, an XML library and a statistics library all well integrated with each other. When the GUI needs a list of something - menus, etc. - it uses a list from the container library. When an XML document is sucked up into a tree, the tree is based on the container library. The statistics library might be defined as working on a dataset specified as an XML tree - again using the container library. Further, when the statistics library wants to display some output or store some resultant data it uses the GUI library and the XML library respectively. The GUI library could make use of XML as well for purposes of specifying the display or particular forms of output. (Dr. Leif's SVG example, for instance.) Along comes some developer who needs to collect and process some kind of statistical data - lets say network analysis stuff. With Ada and its conventional library, he just needs to accumulate his data from somewhere, put it into an appropriate XML document and - BAM! - he's 99% done. The rest is just gluing together tools he automagically gets by virtue of using Ada and they all have a consistent, well integrated interface so its easy to learn and use. Try doing *that* with some other language. ;-) MDC amado.alves wrote:> > Absolutely. This is a fascinating issue. I thought about it when I wrote here before, but kept silent. But now that you've touched it, I'll add a bit. A *lot* of Ada libraries, including already standard ones (e.g. ASIS) and upcoming standard (e.g. Directory_Operations), deal with a lot of data structures, and so they should be using the standard for that (Ada.Containers, also upcoming, AI-302). The result would be clearly a good thing, more cohesion both in the standard and in applications. This is motivation number 1 for Ada.Containers in my paper in Ada-Europe 2004 (about persistent containers, but touching the general issue in passing). -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic I work for: http://www.belcan.com/ My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/NSFrames.htm Send Replies To: m o d c @ a m o g c n i c . r "Face it ladies, its not the dress that makes you look fat. Its the FAT that makes you look fat." -- Al Bundy ======================================================================