From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,ffe4fb1477fe67e6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news3.google.com!proxad.net!213.200.89.82.MISMATCH!tiscali!newsfeed1.ip.tiscali.net!news.cid.net!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: "Alex R. Mosteo" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Newbie Needs Ada Advice Date: Tue, 08 May 2007 21:28:04 +0300 Message-ID: <5abtplF2n3855U1@mid.individual.net> References: <1178212418.538270.283700@c35g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> <1178635220.859690.3310@y80g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit X-Trace: individual.net zGXhFI13N3MoBL0douBqJwi4WY7zmmcIl6q104o3CL9Feiyrk= User-Agent: KNode/0.10.4 Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:15650 Date: 2007-05-08T21:28:04+03:00 List-Id: ezkcdude wrote: > One idea I have, and I'd love to hear advice or comments, is to use > Ada as the "engine" for my program, and somehow use Java to create the > GUI and deal with images. Does this seem like a possibility? > -evan I've done this, or something similar. My core was a stand-alone Ada program, with SOAP web services (again, thanks to AWS) for feedback/command. Any compliant soap client could interact with my core, and in fact I had a java one. If you want to have a single executable, I don't know how to link with java... unless you use gjc I suppose (or jgnat, but I understand is heavily outdated and unmaintained). But then, you can easily go the Ada+C+C++ way. Calling Ada from C/C++ is easy; C from Ada likewise. C++ is a bigger problem that I usually avoid with a simple C gluing layer. Then, all the myriads of libraries in C/C++ are there for you, and you can program the part you deem necessary in Ada (if any, of course). As an example: my current project uses a core in Ada, that interfaces with a robotic library for both control and simulation that has a C API. Furthermore, I must exchange data using YARP (a C++ library) with some modules programmed by colleagues, and I do this with just a simple C++ file with extern "C" exports for calling from Ada. In truth, there's some overhead in going mixed-language. But once you define interfaces and stick to them, the rest is piece of cake. But if your non-Ada concern is a good GUI, maybe you should take a look a the Ada bindings first. Maybe GtkAda is your deal (though if you're an Ada newcomer I don't think so :) or one of the others is... I don't really know how people build the amazing GUIs I see in my KDE desktop. Which tools are out there? KDevelop? Some Qt builder? Glade doesn't impress me much, I think I'm also missing something in the Gtk+ side. As the bottom line of my personal current oppinion: if I were to build a good GUI for my Ada code, I'd use whatever toolkit I liked best, in its native language, and glue it to Ada via C exports.