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From: pontius@twonky.btv.ibm.com (Dale Pontius)
Subject: Re: binding thickness indicator, was Re: GNAT, OS/2, Libraries
Date: 1996/04/12
Message-ID: <4km8oa$151g@mdnews.btv.ibm.com>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 147171079
references: <4kjaib$bhc@news2.delphi.com>
organization: IBM Microelectronics Division
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-04-12T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <4kjaib$bhc@news2.delphi.com>,
        tmoran@bix.com writes:
>I propose we use something analogous to house insulation 'R-values'
>for indicating the thickness of a binding.  R1 would be the thinnest
>possible, a la single pane window glass, like Tore's example of
>interfacing to a C routine.  R50 would indicate such thickness and
>insulation that, say, code using an R50 windowing GUI binding would be
>portable across Mac, Windows, OS/2, and X-Windows.  R5 might be the
>Ada flavor he mentions (type and range checked parameters, raise
>exception instead of returning success/fail flag, etc) , but pretty
>much still tied to the particular design, style, and widget offerings
>of a particular system.  Clearly not an exact measurement, but
>somewhat more specific than thick/thin.

But if you've got R50 bindings, make sure you don't install new
carpet (super-duper GUI function) unless it summertime (running
on a fast box) and you can keep the windows open. (a really fast
box) Otherwise you get 'sick building syndrome'. (super-duper
slow performance)

But seriously, folks, there was talk a month or so about Fresco,
which was capable of attacking the same problem. (and more) But
there were remarks that Fresco is slow even on a fast box.

Thick GUI bindings may well carry a rather sticky performance
penalty. (OK, OK, it is Friday, after all!) Look and see a trend
of more portable cross-platform APIs being added to various OS's.
OpenGL and Java are two examples. It turns out that right on the
tails of OpenDoc is coming a Framework spec. OpenDoc says nothing
about user interface, but the Framework spec will.

Another year or so and the thick/thin GUI issue may become less
important, as new native cross-platform APIs get added to current
OS offerings.

Dale Pontius
(NOT speaking for IBM)