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From: emery%aries@MITRE-BEDFORD.ARPA (David Emery)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Ada Bindings BoF Session at Princeton SIGAda
Message-ID: <8808051312.AA03704@aries>
Date: 5 Aug 88 13:12:59 GMT
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Organization: The Internet
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

There will be a Birds of a Feather Session at the Princeton ACM SIGAda
meeting on the topic of Ada language bindings.  The idea is for developers
and users of Ada bindings to systems such as POSIX, X Windows, GKS, SQL to
get together and discuss bindings.  The session is scheduled for Wednesday
afternoon.

Here's a list of topics for discussion: (this list is not inclusive...)
	1.  organization of the Ada binding, particularly package structure 
		(e.g. 1 library unit with nested packages 
		 versus a collection of library packages)
	2.  documentation of the binding
		(how much in Ada comments, and how much in accompanying 
		 text?)
	3.  error handling and exceptions
		(should Ada exceptions be used?  should error codes be used?
		 should the binding support both exceptions and error codes?)
	4.  support for multiple threads
		(should the binding support multitasking if the underlying
		 system does not?  how far should the Ada binding go in
		 supporting Ada tasks?)
	5.  visibility of underlying types and objects
		(if the underlying system says that a given type or object is
		 for instance, a 32 bit integer, should the Ada binding
		 hide this dependency or should the Ada binding make this
		 dependency explicit?)
	6.  portability of bindings
		(what has been the experience porting Ada bindings?)
	7.  usability of bindings
		(what feedback can we get from users?)


The bindings that I know about are:
	GKS (and PHIGS)
	POSIX
	X Windows
	SQL

If there are other bindings, please let me know.  
I'm actively soliciting speakers to talk about their work, please contact me
if you would like to talk about developing or using a binding.  I hope to put
together a list of speakers before the meeting.  

				dave emery
				emery@mitre-bedford.arpa