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: 11232c,877ba3d67e73c6c3 X-Google-Attributes: gid11232c,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,ac39a12d5faf5b14 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-04-18 14:41:14 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,misc.misc Subject: Re: Rant! (was) Development process in the Ada community Date: 18 Apr 2002 14:41:14 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: <4519e058.0204181341.5a451aa7@posting.google.com> References: <3CB46975.90408@snafu.de> <3CBC5281.1040202@snafu.de> <3CBDAAA9.5050302@snafu.de> <555f76f7dd67c7f1678e027353d1a6a1.48257@mygate.mailgate.org> <3CBDE85F.9ACFD30@san.rr.com> <3CBE0457.6E7B82A8@san.rr.com> <75e7bccb730eda7db554601b66ba9814.48257@mygate.mailgate.org> <4519e058.0204180554.67fb8343@posting.google.com> <5b41d17f3dcf632de26b5ef06daf0650.48257@mygate.mailgate.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: 65.115.221.98 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1019166074 29294 127.0.0.1 (18 Apr 2002 21:41:14 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 18 Apr 2002 21:41:14 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:22754 misc.misc:6621 Date: 2002-04-18T21:41:14+00:00 List-Id: "Kent Paul Dolan" wrote in message news:<5b41d17f3dcf632de26b5ef06daf0650.48257@mygate.mailgate.org>... > "Ted Dennison" wrote: > > For the IOS, you really need to build everything > > with a GUI builder. If any Ada is there, it will only be glue code (or > > in some cases, generated by the GUI builder). > > Doesn't this become a self fulfilling prophesy? "Ada doesn't do > graphics well (yet) so we don't do the graphics in Ada (ever). Nobody is > doing graphic in Ada (yet), so it isn't important for Ada to have strong > graphics capabilities (ever)." The issue with IOS's has nothing to do with Ada or any other programming language. The issue is that IOS's are so complicated (often hundreds of different screens of controls), that you *have* to develop the graphics with a GUI builder. You need the instant visual feedback for what you are creating. Trying to draw controls and adjust stuff like button sizing and placement numericly with a compile in the middle of every viewing would just be insane. As for GUI's in general, I don't think we are in nearly as bad a situation as we used to be in. Ada's always been easy to integrate with UIL, which opens up the world of UIL (Motif) GUI builders for easy Ada use. GTKAda is quite complete, and can do about anything a GUI author needs as long as long as they can accept its look&feel. Better Win32 GUI support might be nice, but that wouldn't help non-Windows Ada users much. It might be nice in an abstract sense to have a standard Ada GUI that isn't quite as industrial-strength as GTK+. But I think defining the ideal standard GUI with total agreement from the Ada community would be incredibly difficult; much moreso than a component library. In my book an ideal GUI would be its own separate language with its own compiler anyway. Motif had such a thing (UIL), and its compiler would regularly catch GUI definition errors that would have gone undetected in Ada code. That kind of thing is why we like Ada for non-GUI code, right? -- T.E.D. Home - mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison) Homepage - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html