Re: Ada and Mesa

[James E. Hopper <jhopper@erinet.com>]

>- The language should be standardised
>- There should be threads
>- Object-oriented programming

you agree with these three i would like to add my assurances they are all
fine.

>- Portability

we develop our radar simulator using gnat on sgi.  i just got done
recompiling it on the gnat compielr i ported to the macintosh.  it took 15
minutes to compiler thats it! You cant ask for more portable than that (or
two more different systems).  we have also used gnat code interchangably
on
sun as well.

>- Libraries for graphics-programming available.
lets see on sgi and mac i have macOS [mac only], opengl, X, and Motif i
have also seen
mention that someone has a phigs binding.  there are a couple of tools for
doing bindings pretty automagically. one is free on Intermetrics home page
(c2ada, see home of the brave ada programmers), the other is in beta at
sgi. c2ada was used to do the bindings to x and motif as well as a
microsoft NT binding.  we have used the sgi tool (well tom quiggle at sgi
did it for us actually) to do bindings to a gui
generator called xforms (took 30 minutes to get the bindings back and they
compiled and ran first time).  in additon i am working with a partner who
is
doing the mac OS bindings and its really very straightforward to do even
by 
hand [though we starte with the output of the sgi tool on these as well].

as to the question of commercial development our radar sim is a commercial
software package that we license to vendors of flight trainers its done
using
gnat and our company lawyers had no trouble with the gpl nor did our first
customer for the new ada95 version of our tools in austraila.

best jim

"An ancient eastern proverb says: I complained because I had no shoes;
then I met a man who had no feet. For the 90's: I complained because I
had no PowerMac; then I met a man who used Windows."--Cloyce Sutton