Re: Graphical user interface in Unix?

[nabbasi@earthlink.net]

In article <6prknm$a49$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Jorgen.Pettersson@saab.se says...
>
>Hello,
>I am a project manager for a project developing an Ada95-application
>and I am trying to find the best alternative to connect a graphical
>user interface to the Ada95-application.
>
>I would appreciate if someone could share their experience with me
>in this area.
>
 
ok, it depends how advacned the use interface is. for light/thin user interface,
such as forms, data entry, and things like that, I suggest using 
HTML/browser for this, and a simple perl/shell CGI to call the Ada program with 
the post data. writing user interfaces in HTML is simple, the client 
can run any where. you could even write the whole Ada application as 
a CGI, or write the Ada app as a server-side plug-in. (assuming you 
can build Ada apps as a DLL or shared images) or you can 
also write out-of-process Ada stand alone app as a server side app also, 
talks to browser client. many different ways you can design things here. you
could even use corba to have you ada app talk to the browser client using
iiop nowadays. (a number of web server now have corba support build in).

For interfactive user interface this might nor work well, so you can try TASH,
the tcl/tk Ada package. this allows you to write the GUI in the tcl/tk
binding, so it is in Ada as well as the application in Ada.

or you could use Java AWT, now that there are Ada bindings to all 1.1+ java
classes. do you want the GUI and the body of the application be in one
address space? 

it really depends how complicated the user interface is, and what the target
platforms are, etc..  the simplist is HTML forms. trivial to write and have
it work.

off course if all failes, you could use write it in X  using some of the
Ada X bindings. 

Nasser