Re: Assembler in Ada?

["news.oxy.com" <Vladimir_Olensky@oxy.com>]

robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com wrote in message
<78igfq$32g$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...


>>>The only time we duplicate information in the GCC manual
>>>(which serious GNAT users should have a copy of) is for
>>>commonly used features.

>> This passage can be easily understood  that the public
>> distribution of GNAT is not intended for serious GNAT
>> users, as it does not include GCC manual.

>In fact the public distribution of GNAT is intended
>primarily for student use, and it seems inappropriate
>to include the gcc manual, since this will be of use
>only to a very small fraction of advanced users who can
>perfectly well go and get the GCC manual for themselves


> ... But indeed the documentation supplied with
>GNAT is far from complete for most users. In particular,
>we make no attempt at all to provide informal documentation
>on how to use Ada 95, and that of course is something most
>users will need.


I have the impression that there are a lot of users of GNAT that are not
students but much more advanced users as well as people (in non military
areas) that want to experiment with Ada and consider public releases of Ada
as some initial stage in evaluating different aspects and approaches
(including choice of compiler systems and tools) to the design of their
systems (hard/soft). As result of such evaluation they may or may not choose
Ada as their primary platform for system development. If they choose GNAT
for that then they will buy commercial support from ACT for their
development.
I think that ACT should do whatever possible to help making such decisions.
Making all the valuable Ada information easily available is one of the ways
to do this. People should spend less time trying to find information that
they need.
There are several ways to do this. One of them is include that in
distribution and provide several installation options, so that those who
want, can install additional documents. Your GNAT 3.11p (my
congratulations!!! - all users seem to be very happy !!!) is about 18 MB so
+- (1-2)Mb does not make big difference. This is a standard approach (e.g.
OA special edition can be install with or without additional components) for
systems distributions.
The other approach is to make several links from your site. Not only for
students to get access to public version of GNAT but also for more advanced
users so that they could spend less time finding specific information and
Ada tools that they may need (as a matter of fact you already have links to
a variety of Ada tools).
Anyway it is ACT decision how to address that issues. So I hope ACT will do
their best to make Ada users happy.



>> Hope to discuss more general things later. As a matter of
>> fact this one (assembler , not nuclear submarine)  was
>> not very big issue. There are some others that are of
>> much great importance for Ada future.
>
>I would prefer to keep the discussion more focussed on
>technical issues relating to Ada.


This is OK but future of Ada depends not only on the quality of the language
itself and it's technical issues.
If nothing extraordinary will be done to improve situation in the near
future (easy to use RAD environment - "Ada Delphi") then it will be very
difficult for Ada to cross the boundaries of it's living domain. Other much
less perfect languages with great commercial support that have a lot more
easy to use development tools just won't allow Ada to occupy their place.
This is giants battle and it is not a fact that most perfect creatures will
win (Ada is perfect but small). There are a lot of other things that
interfere this battle and can change it's result.
I desperately want Ada to win that battle but I see how many things it does
not have for that. A lot depends from the right approach taken by the Ada
Companies, in particular by ACT. Much less depends on Ada enthusiasts.
I have a feeling that many people think that it is enough just to be the
perfect language alone to win that battle but this is a greatest mistake
I've ever seen.
For most users the most decisive factor is availability of very easy to use
RAD tools based on "HOT" language to build their applications. A lot of them
are not professional programmers, rather occasional programmers.
Future will show who was right and who was wrong.
Anyway this topic is being well discussed in the thread "how to make Ada
more popular" but it is amazing that there are almost no comments from major
Ada companies as if this is not there concern.


>By the way, I appreciate that you may have more difficulty
>downloading from your location than some others.

As a matter of fact the easiest way to obtain up-to-date information in
Russia is download it from the Internet.
You won't find here books that are not "HOT" which you can find on US
market. Ada here is not "HOT" Only very limited number of people that know
what is Ada.




Regards,
Vladimir Olensky
(vladimir_olensky@yahoo.com)
(Vladimir_Olensky@oxy.com)
Telecommunication specialist,
Occidental C.I.S. Service, Inc. ( www.oxy.com )
Moscow,
Russia.