Re: Clear Screen

[geert@fozzie.sun3.iaf.nl (Geert Bosch)]

Robert Dewar (dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu) wrote:
  "This is the second person to write Character'Val(27) rather than the
   much clearer Ascii.ESC! "

Maybe you could explain why the perfectly reasonable and standard use
of Ascii.ESC, Ascii.TAB etc has been declared obsolete?

Using Latin_1 requires withing Ada.Characters.Latin_1 and using or
renaming it or its parent in every module that wants to use one of the
standard and well-known Ascii values. This makes it harder/more work
to use the constants, so novice users (the majority) will be unlikely to 
use Latin_1 when they just need that @$#%^& value for a horizontal tab,
linefeed or escape.

In many cases it is better to use the Standard.Ascii package than
the Ada.Characters.Latin_1 package anyway. When I want to use ANSI
escape sequences like the clear screen in the example, I just 
want to use the named ASCII characters, since I cannot assume the 
terminal uses the Latin-1 character set.

Also when I write Ascii.LF everybody knows what I mean, but when I
write Ada.Characters.Latin_1.LF it might not be clear I'm just using
the Ascii linefeed character. IMHO using Latin_1 on a system that 
doesn't support Latin_1 makes no sense.

Regards,
   Geert
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