Re: Hypertext Ada

[chuck@WOOGLIN.SCC.COM (Charles Williams)]

In reply to Bob Munck's thoughts on Hypertext Ada, it appears to me that what
Mr. Munck wants is a *smart* Ada editor that allows you to find references of
anything in the compilation unit with or without full dot notation (with a few
other niceties that I'll address later.)

He is also right when he says that the technology is available today, but it
involves not only setting our sights above a vt-100, but also setting our
sights above a PC and even a VAX. What Mr. Munck really wants is a Rational!!!

Before everybody jumps on my back and starts screaming about the price of the
system, I contend that if you all opened your eyes and looked at the entire
life cycle costs for a large (on the order of 100K's of SLOC) project that
used a VAX (or something similar) versus a Rational, you would see that the
Rational has much lower life cycle costs and many more benifits.

As far as pictures and other graphic notation goes, what is really needed is
the ability to integrate graphic design tools such as IDE and Cadre with the
Ada environment that one is using. This integration should ultimately give the
user the ability to select a piece of an Ada compilation unit, execute a 
command (via mouse or key binding, etc.) and be able to view the graphic or
icon that corresponds to the selected fragment. What is needed for this is
also much more than a vt-100!! This requires some kind of bit-mapped workstation
(i.e. Mac's, Sun's, etc.).

As far as the Ada 9X effort goes, I don't think that media storage requests
have anything to do with the Ada language. If you want to see something like
Hypertext Ada, you should try and find a vendor who would develop it. The Ada
9X effort is to revise the Ada Language Reference Manual, and to my knowledge
the Ada LRM says nothing about how Ada source code has to be stored.

Chuck Williams
Contel Federal Systems

Disclaimer: I do not work for Rational, nor do I receive any compensation from
	    them but, I am Chairman of the Rational Users' Group!!