Re: Ada95 for Windows 95 Reviewers Wanted

[crawley@dstc.edu.au (Stephen Crawley)]

In article <DoMsF5.5py.0.-s@inmet.camb.inmet.com>,
Mitch Gart <mg@asp.camb.inmet.com> wrote:
>Ian Goldberg (Ian@RRSOFTWARE.COM) wrote:
>: Product Reviewers Needed
>
>: R.R. Software is in the process of building an Ada 95 package for =
>: Windows 95 that will contain a "thick", object-oriented Windows binding =
>: and a GUI application builder.
>
>I think the best thing would be to have an underlying thin layer
>that gives direct access to everything in the system, probably
>not with the best Ada style, and then one or more higher level 
>bindings to selected areas, for example OLE, which are more 
>limited in scope but more carefully crafted to give the best
>possible interface to Ada 95 programmers.
>
>I don't know how far along you are in your implementation but
>I hope you will consider using Win32Ada as an underlying layer 
>and making your higher level thick bindings compatible with this.

Further to this, I would like to make a plea for R.R. Software to
consider placing the package specs for their bindings into the public
domain >>as soon as possible<<, and for other suppliers to consider
adopting the specs as an interim (defacto) standard for Windows 95
thick bindings.

I'm in no position to judge whether or not RR's bindings are of good
quality, but I think that my point is a valid one anyway.  The Ada
user community would not be well served by having lots of mutually
incompatible W95 binding products.  I would hope that the Ada
community is now mature enough to strongly resist such a trend!

-- Steve