Re: Ada95 for Windows 95 Reviewers Wanted

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

In a previous article I wrote:
>>OTOH, if RR's bindings are "good" or even "half-way good", they could
>>and possibly should serve as an interim defacto standard.

In article <dewar.827847069@schonberg>, Robert Dewar <dewar@cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
>I actually think that by FAR the mor important issue is to have a relatively
>widely implemented thin binding. This is what tool vendors need, Relatively
>few programs these days are written by making direct calls to the X or
>windows interface, instead GUI's are built with high level tools. It is
>these tools that need porting to Ada, and for that purpose a well designed,
>universally implemented thin binding is what is needed. The intermetrics
>bindings are intended as a candidate for this purpose.

I won't disagree that thin bindings may be more important than thick
ones (especially when GUI builder tools are involved), but that's not
what RR have produced!

Presumably RR think that there is a demand for thick bindings.  And
assuming that there is a demand, it makes sense that that demand is
filled by one (defacto) standard, not a number of non-standards.

Actually, there's another point that RR and other vendors should
consider.  If multiple thick X11 bindings emerge without any sign of a
standard, Ada users may be more likely to use the standardised thin
bindings and / or GUI builder tools.  Thus, lack of standardisation
may in fact tend to REDUCE the thick binding vendors' market share.

Anyhow, this is all speculation (on my part anyway).

-- Steve