From: robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com
Subject: Re: Getting GNAT to issue ARM error messages
Date: 1999/02/09
Date: 1999-02-09T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <79oj1f$e8p$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: F6tqMF.Lz7@syd.csa.com.au
In article <F6tqMF.Lz7@syd.csa.com.au>,
davidp!nospam!@!nospam!syd.csa.com.au wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> Can anybody tell me if/how it is possible to make the
> GNAT Ada compiler issue references to the Ada Reference
> Manual rather than, or in addition to, the regular error
> messages issued by the compiler ?
> I know that other Ada compilers such as Vertix and VADS
> can do this
Actually the latter are the wrong comparison points, since
these are Ada 83 compilers, and in our view the situation
with Ada 95 is quite different from Ada 83.
We only give Ada 95 RM references in rare cases where they
are actually helpful. In our experience, most of the time
if a well thought out error message is not clear to a user,
then they probably do not have the level of knowledge
necessary to benefit from going to the reference manual.
We prefer to work on making the error messages as clear as
possible to someone who is NOT a language expert and NOT
comfortable reading the reference manual. That is the goal.
If there are very specific instances where you think an RM
reference would be helpful, by all means point them out,
but we definitely think that giving RM references on all
error messages is useless and annoying:
a := xyz;
|
xyz is undefined
is about as clear as you can get, putting in an RM
reference to the rather complicated section of the
RM that talks about declaring entities and when they
are visible is unlikely to help anyone!
Generally people have found GNAT error messages to be
very clear -- we certainly put a lot of effort into
achieving this goal, and we know lots of people who
have chosen GNAT for education and other uses of Ada
because of its clear messages.
We do NOT think that adding RM references would help in
the goal of continued improvement of GNAT messages.
This is actually an old thread, discussed before.
One point here is that if you are used to an Ada 83
compiler, the comparison is a bit of an apples and oranges
one, since the Ada 95 RM, in a (successful) attempt to be
more precise is definitely much less accessible than the
Ada 83 RM to a novice reader.
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~1999-02-09 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 35+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1999-02-08 0:00 Getting GNAT to issue ARM error messages David Peterson
1999-02-09 0:00 ` robert_dewar [this message]
1999-02-10 0:00 ` David Peterson
1999-02-10 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
1999-02-12 0:00 ` dewar
1999-02-12 0:00 ` Tucker Taft
1999-02-13 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-13 0:00 ` bill
1999-02-14 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-14 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-15 0:00 ` dewar
1999-02-15 0:00 ` Ehud Lamm
1999-02-16 0:00 ` steve quinlan
1999-02-17 0:00 ` dewar
1999-02-17 0:00 ` steve quinlan
1999-02-18 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-19 0:00 ` Simon Wright
1999-02-17 0:00 ` Steve Whalen
1999-02-17 0:00 ` Pascal Obry
1999-02-17 0:00 ` Jean-Pierre Rosen
1999-02-18 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-18 0:00 ` Keith Thompson
1999-02-18 0:00 ` David Brown
1999-02-18 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-18 0:00 ` dennison
1999-02-23 0:00 ` Chris Morgan
1999-02-15 0:00 ` Jerry van Dijk
1999-02-16 0:00 ` dennison
1999-02-18 0:00 ` Alexy V Khrabrov
1999-02-14 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-02-10 0:00 ` dewar
1999-02-10 0:00 ` Tom Moran
1999-04-20 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1999-04-20 0:00 ` Ehud Lamm
1999-04-20 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
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