Re: Ada for the Mac

Re: Ada for the Mac

[Marin David Condic, 407.796.8997, M/S 731-93]

Bob Kitzberger <rlk@RATIONAL.COM> writes:
>From the Wall Street Journal, Sept 5:
>
>> The result: Corporate users are dumping the Mac in droves. In March,
>> Northern Telecom Ltd. said it would replace 30,000 Macs with "Wintel"
>> machines, computers equipped with Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating
>> system and Intel Corp. microprocessors. Eli Lilly & Co. is weeding out
>> 7,000 Macs.  Ernst & Young will purge about 2,000 Macs by the fall,
>> and Monsanto Co. will drop that many within a year. Numerous others,
>> including big users like Pacific Telesis Group and KPMG Peat Marwick,
>> are now reviewing their buying plans.
>
>   :-(  Sigh.
>

    Yes, but Apple wrote their own obituary on this one: "Been There,
    Done That."

    I used to be a Mac adherent because, in spite of all the problems
    with being a "non-conformist", I was getting an OS that was
    significantly *better* than anything Bill Gates had to sell. (All
    that crap piled on top of MS-DOS to try to make it more
    "Mac-like?")

    Once Windows progressed into a "real" operating system (By this, I
    mean WinNT, not Win95. Although Win95 comes close) it was
    impossible to justify continuing to "spit into the wind" just to
    own a Mac. What's the advantage? Apparently nothing, because as
    Apple says: "Been There, Done That." (id est, "There is no
    difference...)

    I still think that System 7 is more "orthogonal" and WinNT is very
    "organic", so I'd prefer that WinNT had taken the approach of
    truly being a "blank sheet" and not try so hard to be compatible
    with everything that went before. (Single characters for disk
    drive names? C'mon! It's ugly and doesn't have to be this way.)

    And there are/will be more Ada95 compilers to run on WinNT than on
    S-7.

    Now if Apple were to smarten-up and quit trying to play the
    "proprietary" game of getting 100% of an ever shrinking pie (and
    try to make money by *earning* it rather than *litigating* for
    it!) maybe they could get a silk purse out of this sow's ear. A)
    Make S-7 available on non-proprietary hardware and/or B) Port WinNT to
    the Mac and open up the box so other companies can play too.

    MDC

Marin David Condic, Senior Computer Engineer    ATT:        407.796.8997
M/S 731-96                                      Technet:    796.8997
Pratt & Whitney, GESP                           Fax:        407.796.4669
P.O. Box 109600                                 Internet:   CONDICMA@PWFL.COM
West Palm Beach, FL 33410-9600                  Internet:   CONDIC@FLINET.COM
===============================================================================
   "The first guy that rats gets a bellyful of slugs in the head.
    Understand?"

        --  Joey Glimco, trade unionist
===============================================================================

Re: Ada for the Mac

[Michael Feldman]

In article <96090616180073@psavax.pwfl.com>,
Marin David Condic, 407.796.8997, M/S 731-93 <condicma@PWFL.COM> wrote:

[snip]

>    Now if Apple were to smarten-up and quit trying to play the
>    "proprietary" game of getting 100% of an ever shrinking pie (and
>    try to make money by *earning* it rather than *litigating* for
>    it!) maybe they could get a silk purse out of this sow's ear. A)
>    Make S-7 available on non-proprietary hardware and/or B) Port WinNT to
>    the Mac and open up the box so other companies can play too.

I think it's been a long time since you've opened a Mac periodical
or looked at a Mac newsgroup. You really ought to bring yourself up
to date on the current state of Mac clones, or rather, non-Apple-made
computers running MacOS. You'd be interested to discover that even
IBM is on the list of current (or nearly) clone makers.

Mike Feldman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael B. Feldman -  chair, SIGAda Education Working Group
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) 
http://www.seas.gwu.edu/faculty/mfeldman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
       Pork is all that money the government gives the other guys.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WWW: http://lglwww.epfl.ch/Ada/ or http://info.acm.org/sigada/education
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ada for the Mac

[Brent Barker]

I'm looking for an ADA compiler for the Mac/PowerMac.
Please let me know if you know where I might download a copy.

Thanks,
     Brent

bbarker@weber.campus.mci.net

Re: Ada for the Mac

[Greg Bond]

Brent Barker wrote:
> 
> I'm looking for an ADA compiler for the Mac/PowerMac.
> Please let me know if you know where I might download a copy.

Check out the GNAT-Mac web site: http://www.netway.net/macada/
--
* Greg Bond                         * Dept. of Electrical Eng.  
* email: bond@ee.ubc.ca             * Univ. of British Columbia      
* voice: (604) 822 0899             * 2356 Main Mall                 
* fax:   (604) 822 5949             * Vancouver, BC              
* web: http://www.ee.ubc.ca/~bond   * Canada, V6T 1Z4

RE: Ada for the Mac

[Kenneth Mays]

If you are interested in Ada for the Macintosh computer, then check out:
EVB Software Engineering, Inc.
5303 Spectrum Drive, Ste. G
Frederick, MD 21701
(301) 695-6960

Product supported: TeleSoft Ada Compiler

Here is a small taste of products they made:

1.) Ada binding to Posix
2.) Ada binding to Macintosh Toolbox
3.) Ada binding to X-window Systems
4.) Ada Binding to X.25


Also, AlSys Inc. and Meridian Software Systems make
Ada programming environments for the Mac. These are commercial 
products...otherwise there SHOULD be a version of GNAT if you want it 
on the net at cs.nyu.edu (http://www.gnat.com).

Ken Mays, MIS/Ada95 Researcher
Computer Science and Engineering

Re: Ada for the Mac

[Robert Dewar]

Kenneth Mayes said

"Also, AlSys Inc. and Meridian Software Systems make
Ada programming environments for the Mac. These are commercial
products...otherwise there SHOULD be a version of GNAT if you want it
on the net at cs.nyu.edu (http://www.gnat.com)."

There is indeed a commercial version of GNAT for the Mac which is fully
supported by Ada Core Technologies, running under MachTen. For more
information send mail to support@gnat.com.

Re: Ada for the Mac

[Ed Falis]

We (Alsys/Thomson) haven't sold a Mac compiler in a very long time.
-- 
Ed Falis	
Thomson Software   falis@thomsoft.com	(617) 221-7341
========================================================

Re: Ada for the Mac

[Bob Kitzberger]

Ed Falis (falis@thomsoft.com) wrote:
: We (Alsys/Thomson) haven't sold a Mac compiler in a very long time.

From the Wall Street Journal, Sept 5:

> The result: Corporate users are dumping the Mac in droves. In March,
> Northern Telecom Ltd. said it would replace 30,000 Macs with "Wintel"
> machines, computers equipped with Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating
> system and Intel Corp. microprocessors. Eli Lilly & Co. is weeding out
> 7,000 Macs.  Ernst & Young will purge about 2,000 Macs by the fall,
> and Monsanto Co. will drop that many within a year. Numerous others,
> including big users like Pacific Telesis Group and KPMG Peat Marwick,
> are now reviewing their buying plans.

   :-(  Sigh. 



Bob Kitzberger	      Rational Software Corporation       rlk@rational.com
http://www.rational.com http://www.rational.com/pst/products/testmate.html

Re: Ada for the Mac

[full]

In article <50nve2$s97@rational.rational.com>
rlk@rational.com (Bob Kitzberger) writes:

> From the Wall Street Journal, Sept 5:

This is the same wall street journal who in july printed an article in
front of newpaper (though not on front page) big article about how
apples sales were way down from same quarter previous year.  the next
day or so they printed a retraction in small print way back in the
paper because in fact apples sales were in fact up a bit not down!  

the point being the WSJ is not a credible source of info on apple
computer as they have printed a number of factually misleading articles
in the last few months.  yes there are companies that are changing to
wintel, there are also a lot of companies changing their minds on this
and you don't see this printed do you?? for instance northrup and
Lockhead both made large purchases of powermacs you didnt hear the WSJ
reporting that did you??

>Marin David Condic
> Now if Apple were to smarten-up and quit trying to play the
>    "proprietary" game of getting 100% of an ever shrinking pie (and
>    try to make money by *earning* it rather than *litigating* for
>    it!) maybe they could get a silk purse out of this sow's ear. A)
>    Make S-7 available on non-proprietary hardware and/or B) Port WinNT to
>    the Mac and open up the box so other companies can play too.

they havent been playing that game for some times perhaps you should be
updating your knowledge base.  Apples clone efforts are doing very well
lately.  Motorola for instance will start selling mac clones in the
next few days, it will be interesting to see if the WSJ reports that!

jim

Re: Ada for the Mac

[Arthur Evans Jr]

In article <322ED21A.678@thomsoft.com>, Ed Falis <falis@thomsoft.com> wrote:

> We (Alsys/Thomson) haven't sold a Mac compiler in a very long time.
> -- 
> Ed Falis        
> Thomson Software   falis@thomsoft.com   (617) 221-7341
> ========================================================

While this statement is undoubtedly true, it is quite misleading to the
extent that it seems to imply something about the Mac market.  In fact,
all it says is something about the Alsys product line.

Alsys developed their Ada-83 compiler under System 6 (that is, version 6
of the MacOS).  When Apple came out with System 7 some five years ago,
Alsys elected not to upgrade their product so that it would run under
System 7.  I and others pointed out in this forum that their failure to
do so was, in effect, an announcement that they were abandoning the
product line.  To my knowledge, Alsys has never denied that claim.

So it's not surprising that they haven't sold any compilers.  They don't
offer a product that anyone could possibly want.

I'll be happy to learn that I'm wrong about this.  Ed Falis can readily
refute my claim by telling us all about their Ada-95 compiler for the
PowerMac platform.  But I won't hold my breath...

Art Evans

Arthur Evans Jr, PhD        Phone: 412-963-0839
Ada Consulting              FAX:   412-963-0927
461 Fairview Road
Pittsburgh PA  15238-1933
evans@evans.pgh.pa.us

RE: Ada for the Mac

[Neil O'Brien]

On Sunday, September 08, 1996, Arthur Evans Jr wrote...
> In article <322ED21A.678@thomsoft.com>, Ed Falis <falis@thomsoft.com>
wrote:
> 
> > We (Alsys/Thomson) haven't sold a Mac compiler in a very long time.
> > -- 
> > Ed Falis        
> > Thomson Software   falis@thomsoft.com   (617) 221-7341
> > ========================================================
> 
> While this statement is undoubtedly true, it is quite misleading to the
> extent that it seems to imply something about the Mac market.  In fact,
> all it says is something about the Alsys product line.
> 
> Alsys developed their Ada-83 compiler under System 6 (that is, version 6
> of the MacOS).  When Apple came out with System 7 some five years ago,
> Alsys elected not to upgrade their product so that it would run under
> System 7.  I and others pointed out in this forum that their failure to
> do so was, in effect, an announcement that they were abandoning the
> product line.  To my knowledge, Alsys has never denied that claim.
> 
> So it's not surprising that they haven't sold any compilers.  They don't
> offer a product that anyone could possibly want.
> 
> I'll be happy to learn that I'm wrong about this.  Ed Falis can readily
> refute my claim by telling us all about their Ada-95 compiler for the
> PowerMac platform.  But I won't hold my breath...
> 
> Art Evans
> 
> Arthur Evans Jr, PhD        Phone: 412-963-0839
> Ada Consulting              FAX:   412-963-0927
> 461 Fairview Road
> Pittsburgh PA  15238-1933
> evans@evans.pgh.pa.us
> 


Market forces, the original compiler was bought in too small a quantity to
justify upgrading to System 7. As for the new technology, it would be a
whole new development to put ObjectAda onto PowerMac no doubt if we
thought there was adequate market to support the development and
maintenance of this we would develop it.

You sort of answered your own statement, we never upgraded because it was
originally a product too few customers wanted. A perception (valid or not)
is that the mac is not a serious development platform for embedded systems
(and markets where Ada / Ada95 is generally strong), whilst that
perception continues I doubt if any vendor is willing to swallow the
development costs in the hope a market would be able to pay back these
development costs and support future upgrades.

If an investor was willing to pay for porting costs I'm sure we would do
it but then those costs wouldn't be cheap and I can't see that investment
being made unless a large government funded project comes along that
mandates Ada95 on a PowerPC and the investor knows they will land that
contract.

Of course I'm only a support engineer (who used to support the mac product
many moons ago) and thus don't speak for the company officially but the
above would be my "educated guestimate" of the situation.

--

=========================================================
Neil O'Brien			obrien@east.thomsoft.com
Customer Support		(617) 221 7320
Thomson Software Products


They're the wrong trousers Grommit, and they've gone wrong!

Re: Ada for the Mac

[Robert Dewar]

Neil O'Brien says

"You sort of answered your own statement, we never upgraded because it was
originally a product too few customers wanted. A perception (valid or not)
is that the mac is not a serious development platform for embedded systems
(and markets where Ada / Ada95 is generally strong), whilst that
perception continues I doubt if any vendor is willing to swallow the
development costs in the hope a market would be able to pay back these
development costs and support future upgrades.
"

Neil may speak for Tompson, but he should not speak for "any vendor".

Ada Core Technologies will be fully supporting GNAT on the Mac Power PC
platform, using MachTen as the development environment (rather than
MPW as had been used by Mac Ada compilers in the past -- Machten provides
a familiar Unix environment). Applications can be generated to either
run under Machten, which is fully integrated with System 7, or under
System 7 directly.

Like other GNAT compilers, and unlike other available Ada 95 technology,
the GNAT compiler for the Mac is a full language compiler including support
for all special needs annexes, and all the familiar GNAT tools are also
available.

I certainly can't speak for Tompson's customer base, but we already have
serious commercial interest in support for this port.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

Re: Ada for the Mac

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <dewar.842363129@schonberg>, dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
> Neil O'Brien says
> 
> "You sort of answered your own statement, we never upgraded because it was
> originally a product too few customers wanted. A perception (valid or not)
> is that the mac is not a serious development platform for embedded systems
> (and markets where Ada / Ada95 is generally strong), whilst that
> perception continues I doubt if any vendor is willing to swallow the
> development costs in the hope a market would be able to pay back these
> development costs and support future upgrades.
> "
> 
> Neil may speak for Tompson, but he should not speak for "any vendor".
> 
> Ada Core Technologies will be fully supporting GNAT on the Mac Power PC
> platform, using MachTen as the development environment (rather than
> MPW as had been used by Mac Ada compilers in the past -- Machten provides
> a familiar Unix environment). Applications can be generated to either
> run under Machten, which is fully integrated with System 7, or under
> System 7 directly.

But ACT has the advantage of not having to swallow "development costs",
which both means that Neil's doubts remain unchallenged and means that
we have a method to get supported Ada for at least one of the two MacOS
platforms.

If Ada on MacOS were wildly successful, I would hope someone like
ThomSoft (or whatever they are called by they) could see their way
to developing a Macintosh Ada which did _not_ look like Unix to the
developer.

Larry Kilgallen
Much more familiar with MacOS than Unix

Re: Ada for the Mac

[Robert Dewar]

Larry said

"Larry Kilgallen
Much more familiar with MacOS than Unix"

That would be a more interesting signature if it said "much more familiar
with MPW than Unix". We don't consider a development system without a
reasonable command language to be viable for serious development. Note
that previous Ada compilers for the Mac have taken the same view, but
have used MPW instead of Unix.

Re: Ada for the Mac

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <dewar.842401820@schonberg>, dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
> Larry said
> 
> "Larry Kilgallen
> Much more familiar with MacOS than Unix"
> 
> That would be a more interesting signature if it said "much more familiar
> with MPW than Unix". We don't consider a development system without a
> reasonable command language to be viable for serious development. Note
> that previous Ada compilers for the Mac have taken the same view, but
> have used MPW instead of Unix.

No, I have kept away from MPW, so I do not favor it over MachTen.
Think Pascal, however, seems to be able to do anything one wants
in the way of Macintosh development (code resources, drivers, etc.),
so long as one restricts one's desires to those aspects of MacOS
which existed before PowerPC (no Universal headers, etc.) whenever
Symantec stopped adding features.

IDE-based compilation is quite viable on Macintosh, but the current
commercial IDE offerings just use the wrong languages.

I think Jim expressed good MacOS goals in a post which was almost
simultaneous with Robert's although I realize that by concentrating
on MacOS, Jim gets to dream in greater depth, while Robert must deal
with folks like me who pester for VAX/VMS before Alpha VMS is out the
door :-).

Responding to Jim's request for help, I certainly realize these
things do not happen without contributed effort, and I am on the
lookout for something I might be able to add efficiently.

Larry Kilgallen

Re: Ada for the Mac

[Robert Dewar]

Larry said

"But ACT has the advantage of not having to swallow "development costs",
which both means that Neil's doubts remain unchallenged and means that
we have a method to get supported Ada for at least one of the two MacOS
platforms.
"

very interesting, you must know something I do not. It is true that the ATIP-P
is fronting some of the funds for the Mac development, but (a) this is only
partial support, and (b), there is substantial cost sharing in the form of
delivered goods. You should check the contract before making unsupported
statements like this.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

Re: Ada for the Mac

[full]

In article <1996Sep10.124132.1@eisner>
kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen) writes:

> If Ada on MacOS were wildly successful, I would hope someone like
> ThomSoft (or whatever they are called by they) could see their way
> to developing a Macintosh Ada which did _not_ look like Unix to the
> developer.

Larry, 

the really nice thing about machten is that you can mix unix and macos
elements to suit yourself.  for example i am working on version of
gnatmake that looks a lot like mpw's commando dialogs by building a
macos interface to a unix app (gnatmake).  when i get it done i am not
sure what the difference in look would be between a mpw Ada compiler
and a Machten unix compiler.  

if you want it to look like codewarrior and have a project manager etc,
thats real doable as well.  There exists software for machten (the
author has offered to make the source frealy available) that allows you
to mix apple events and unix remote procedure calls so you can control
unix apps from apple script applications like codewarriors toolserver
interface.  with more work you can write a codewarrior type IDE that
controls the gnat compiler.  its not the platform of the compiler thats
important its how much work is put into developing the IDE. 

if you want it to look like MPW or codewarrior start coding ;-) 
Seriously i will be happy to help anyone who wants to give this a try!

best jim

RE: Ada for the Mac

[Neil O'Brien]

On Tuesday, September 10, 1996, Robert Dewar wrote...
> Neil O'Brien says
> 
> "You sort of answered your own statement, we never upgraded because it
was
> originally a product too few customers wanted. A perception (valid or
not)
> is that the mac is not a serious development platform for embedded
systems
> (and markets where Ada / Ada95 is generally strong), whilst that
> perception continues I doubt if any vendor is willing to swallow the
> development costs in the hope a market would be able to pay back these
> development costs and support future upgrades.
> "
> 
> Neil may speak for Tompson, but he should not speak for "any vendor".
> 
> Ada Core Technologies will be fully supporting GNAT on the Mac Power PC
> platform, using MachTen as the development environment (rather than
> MPW as had been used by Mac Ada compilers in the past -- Machten
provides
> a familiar Unix environment). Applications can be generated to either
> run under Machten, which is fully integrated with System 7, or under
> System 7 directly.
> 
> Like other GNAT compilers, and unlike other available Ada 95 technology,
> the GNAT compiler for the Mac is a full language compiler including
support
> for all special needs annexes, and all the familiar GNAT tools are also
> available.
> 
> I certainly can't speak for Tompson's customer base, but we already have
> serious commercial interest in support for this port.
> 
> Robert Dewar
> Ada Core Technologies
> 
>

I never claimed to speak for any vendor much less Thomson (that's with an
"h" and without the "p" Robert :-)) although I have to admit that I was
not considering ACT when I should have, certainly with GNAT paving the way
it would not be inconceivable for others to follow given the way GNAT has
led into Ada/Ada95 for other markets - NOTE, this is my opinion and not in
any way to be considered as an official view or statement of intent by TSP
to do so.

I still stand by my original statement though that 

"whilst that perception continues I doubt if any vendor is willing to
swallow the development costs in the hope a market would be able to pay
back these development costs and support future upgrades." 

obviously you feel the market is there and will risk the investment in
development costs which is more than just a "hope" - ie you wouldn't have
done this without feeling the market will more than pay back the costs?
correct? therefore my statement was not wrong just not quite as clear as
it should have been.


--

=========================================================
Neil O'Brien			obrien@east.thomsoft.com
Customer Support		(617) 221 7320
Thomson Software Products


They're the wrong trousers Grommit, and they've gone wrong!

Re: Ada for the Mac

[Scott Stallcup]

Neil O'Brien wrote:
> 
> Market forces, the original compiler was bought in too small a quantity to
> justify upgrading to System 7. 
> 
> ... we never upgraded because it was originally a product too few customers
> wanted. ... 
>

 I used the Alsys Mac Ada 83 compiler about 5 years ago (when Alsys 
 claimed to support it).  

 The compiler was full of bugs.  I reported several bugs and sent 
 them small simple example code which showed the bugs.  They never
 fixed any of them.   

 They never advertised the product in any of the Macintosh publications,
 developer magazines, etc. 

 I found that many of the Alsys user support and sales people didn't 
 even know that Alsys sold a Mac compiler.


   The Alsys Mac compiler failed because Alsys didn't market 
   and support the product !

---------------------------------
Scott Stallcup
Space Telescope Science Institute

Re: Ada for the Mac

[Michael Feldman]

In article <322ED21A.678@thomsoft.com>, Ed Falis  <falis@thomsoft.com> wrote:
>We (Alsys/Thomson) haven't sold a Mac compiler in a very long time.

That's not too surprising, because you haven't _offered_ a Mac
compiler in a very long time. A company can't sell what it doesn't
choose to offer.:-)

Mike Feldman