Re: Ada95 for Windows 95 Reviewers Wanted

[griest-tom@cs.yale.edu (Tom Griest)]

With respect to RR's thick windows bindings two questions come to mind:

   1) are they built on some commonly available thin binding (or can
      they be moved to such a binding fairly easily)

   2) are the think bindings proprietary?

The "open-ness" issue is important for the users because they don't want to
be locked into any one vendor if they don't have to.  The ability to use
a common thin binding is also important because it is impossible to keep
the thick binding in perfect sync with all the new stuff MS is coming out
with.  The thin binding can cover all the APIs, whereas the thick binding
can make life easier for those writing code to the APIs directly.

BTW, it would be a big mistake to assume that the set of Microsoft
APIs are primarily for GUI development.  This is simply not the case.
Most of them have to do with other things like networking, mail,
object access, URLs, device access, file management, process management,
internationalization, loading dlls, manipulating the registry,  etc., etc. 
and a bazillion other things.  There really are no high level tools that 
handle the middleware necessary to combine all these services.  So,
people will be acessing the APIs directly for some time to come.  
Furthermore, new APIs crop up every quarter.  At a minimum there is a 
lag between when the APIs come out, and when 4gl tools will incorporate 
them.

I would encourage RR to make their thick binding public.  RR should
probably maintain control over it for the time being while
"suggestions" are considered.  If at some time they decide to stop
"managing" the effort, or there is widespread need for an alternate
thick binding, it would seem that the SIGAda Ada Bindings Working Group 
(Windows subgroup) should pick up the process.

-Tom Griest
LabTek Corp.