Does anyone have Meridian for windows?? if so help please.

Does anyone have Meridian for windows?? if so help please.

[Michael W. Hall]

A friend of mine gave me an Ada compiler called "Meridian compiler for 
windows version 2.0" it came with a book he used in college. He only had 
the disks, but not the book. So I called meridian looking for 
documentation and was told to call mcgraw hill and then some other 
company after that who now sells the book. I made such a fuss over it, 
they ended up sending me a dos version and its documentation for free, 
telling me that the windows version was no longer distributed or 
supported. 

So now I'm back where I began looking for documentation on the windows 
version. Does anyone have this documentation? Please email me if you do.
I would like to get a copy if possible.
If not can someone give me some istructions on programming ada in 
windows. it seems that things such as text_io are done differently and I 
do not seem to know what I am doing as far as getting things to come up 
in a window.

Thanks,
Michael Hall
mhall59@us.net

Re: Does anyone have Meridian for windows?? if so help please.

[Michael Feldman]

In article <527ie9$4ol@news.us.net>, Michael W. Hall <mhall59@us.net> wrote:
>A friend of mine gave me an Ada compiler called "Meridian compiler for 
>windows version 2.0" it came with a book he used in college. He only had 
>the disks, but not the book. So I called meridian looking for 
>documentation and was told to call mcgraw hill and then some other 
>company after that who now sells the book. I made such a fuss over it, 
>they ended up sending me a dos version and its documentation for free, 
>telling me that the windows version was no longer distributed or 
>supported. 

When Meridian was purchased by Verdix, which then merged with Rational,
this product disappeared from the product line. See below.
>
>So now I'm back where I began looking for documentation on the windows 
>version. Does anyone have this documentation? Please email me if you do.
>I would like to get a copy if possible.
>If not can someone give me some istructions on programming ada in 
>windows. it seems that things such as text_io are done differently and I 
>do not seem to know what I am doing as far as getting things to come up 
>in a window.

Programming for Windows is different from programming for ordinary
console IO. With that particular compiler, you need to "with" a package
called WinCon (Windows Console) which does reasonably OK Text_IO.

I think you're better off going over to Ada 95, though, where there are
several compilers that are actively being developed and supported.
One is GNAT, which is _free_; if you want to write real Windows (95/NT)
programs, you'll need the $50. GNAT CD from LabTek, which includes licensed
copies of the necessary Microsoft libraries. See www.gnat.com for details.

Another way to go is the Personal Edition of ObjectAda from Thomson
Software, which has a very "visual" IDE and has all you need to
construct windows apps (or console apps via Text_IO). Commercial
price is, I think, $99. There's a somewhat more expensive version that 
also includes a Java byte code back end. 

Pretty good blurbs and links for all of these is at 
http://www.acm.org/sigada/education. Only the educational prices
are shown, but the features lists are correct. Further info might
be available at www.thomsoft.com; in any case, that page gives
phone and e-mail contacts.

It's too bad Rational deep-sixed all its "low-end" compilers, but that
was their business choice. In any event, Ada 95 stuff is very good and
getting better, and the price is right.

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
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       Pork is all that money the government gives the other guys.
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WWW: http://lglwww.epfl.ch/Ada/ or http://info.acm.org/sigada/education
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