From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,fef3ad775ef4b0b7 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII Path: g2news1.google.com!postnews.google.com!e38g2000prn.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: Ludovic Brenta Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada for 1st year students Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2008 10:06:51 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <8905e0da-08c8-4cfd-9731-9eaa21d43fcd@e38g2000prn.googlegroups.com> References: <60e0c5f0-1e17-4add-b21e-b1ef622d5233@v13g2000pro.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 94.108.192.43 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: posting.google.com 1223572011 12773 127.0.0.1 (9 Oct 2008 17:06:51 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2008 17:06:51 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: e38g2000prn.googlegroups.com; posting-host=94.108.192.43; posting-account=pcLQNgkAAAD9TrXkhkIgiY6-MDtJjIlC User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.8.1.16) Gecko/20080702 Iceape/1.1.11 (Debian-1.1.11-1),gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:2292 Date: 2008-10-09T10:06:51-07:00 List-Id: Amado writes: > Dear Fellow Adaists: > > I have been blessed with the oportunity to teach Ada to 1st year > students of a licenciate programme of informatics engineering at > Universidade Lus=F3fona do Porto. Great news. Congratulations and I hope you enjoy it. > I seek advice from the vast wisdom in this forum, on: > > (1) Textbooks. In Portuguese (Brazilian translation fine) or English. > Must be introductory, i.e. for students sans prior knowledge of > programming in any language. Should be small or cheap (or both). The > vendor should be prompt. John English, "Ada 95: The Craft of Object-Oriented Programming", 1997; available free of charge at http://www.it.bton.ac.uk/staff/je/adacraf= t/ The wikibook at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/; this is not really a textbook but can be a good complement to the above. > (2) Compilers. Must be free (as in free beer) or very low cost > (perhaps an educational license) and install out-of-the box on Windows > or Linux (or both, preferably). Must support Latin-1, preferably > Unicode. The vendor should be prompt. GNAT GPL Edition from http://libre.adacore.com, or call for tenders from the vendors listed at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/Ins= talling Most GNU/Linux distributions already contain GNAT from the Free Software Foundation. > (3) IDE or text editor. Same requirements as above. GNAT GPL Edition and Debian both come with the GNAT Programming Studio. > (4) Graphic or GUI library. (I want to be able to produce graphical > output, not just the same old text output on a teletype-like window.) > Same requirements as above, plus: a simple or small API, eventually at > the cost of possibilities (e.g. may be limited to a single window, of > a single fixed size, limited number of colors). Should have some > support for input, e.g. textboxes, buttons, mouse input. Should use a > simple fragment of Ada, viz. excluding OOP. Should support printing, > or exporting to PDF or some such, or clipboard copying onto a "office" > document, or any combination of the above. Support for a picture > format would be a plus (PNG, JPEG...) For the GUI I would rule out both GtkAda and QtAda; not because they are "bad" but because there are simpler alternatives for simple programs. These alternatives are: JEWL (John English's Window Library), comes with the aforementioned text book; see http://www.cmis.brighton.ac.uk/staff/je/jewl/. Unfortunately, does not support X11. TextTools, a text-mode library for doing windows, buttons, scroll bars etc; portable on multiple operating systems, and incidentally available as part of Debian. See http://www.pegasoft.ca/tt.html > I have knowledge, in various degrees, of various items in each > category, but I will not name any at this moment, to avert > prejudice ;-) I have a prejudice against proprietary software, so I don't name names, but there is a vendor in Madison, Wisconsin, who might be able to help if you don't need compatibility with POSIX :) -- Ludovic Brenta.