Re: Learning Windows 95 programming with Ada?

["Pascal Obry" <pascal.obry@der.edfgdf.fr>]

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Al Christians a �crit dans le message <34833E36.5C47@easystreet.com>...
>Pascal Obry wrote:
>> Or learn Tk/Tcl for the GUI and use GNAT for the core
>> of your project.
>> I find Tk/Tcl much more a productive tool than a GUI builder !
>>
>> Pascal.
>>
>
>
>Do you see any use for the GUI builders that work with Tk/Tcl?
>(Visual Tcl or SpecTcl)
>

It is very usefull to make quick applications but you must distribute
the Tcl sources of your application to your client. The only fix here
would be to translate the Tcl sources in C (tcl2c) but I have no
experiences with that.

And anyway Tk/Tcl is a so hight-level language for GUI that coding
directly in Tk/Tcl is not a problem for productivity. But I think that
a GUI builder like SpecTcl or VisualTcl is very good to make quick
prototype to show something to a client.

>Do you have Ada working with any of the enhancements to Tcl
>that are freely available (Tix, any of the OO extensions, SWIG,
>plus patches, megawidgets, or whatnot)?
>

No. Only with plus patches because it is genuine Tk/Tcl with less bugs.

>Can you offer any more info on how you have done this and how well
>it works?
>

It works very well. The first time I try Tk/Tck with Ada was by passing
messages
between Ada and Tcl. The Tcl script open the executable (pipe mode) and
read/write the standard input/output to exchange messages. This works fine
be suffer of some problems :
    - you must provide the Tcl sources.
    - it is cumbersome if you want to handle many callbacks.
    - not very elegant anyway

The best way it to embed the Tcl/Tk interface into your application. For
this
you can use the TASH binding. It is not complete but you can extend it very
easyly. It makes a "standalone" executable from the point of view of your
application, the people who want to use it must still have Tk/Tcl installed
into
the system.

The very important point about Tk/Tcl is that it is plateform independant.
The very same application will run under Windows 95/NT or UNIX (and
should also run under Machintosh but I have not experiences with this).

Ada is very portable, Tk/Tcl too - both in the same application bring us
with a very powerfull cross-plateform development environment. No
it's not a dream, it's reallity !

>TIA
>
>Al

Hope this helps,
Pascal.

PS : I don't work for Sun :-)

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