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From: "Joe Wisniewski" <wisniew@acm.org>
Subject: Re: Elimination of "use" clauses
Date: 1999/07/03
Message-ID: <931016222.255.99@news.remarQ.com>#1/1
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Date: 1999-07-03T00:00:00+00:00
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Ed Falis wrote in message <7lj9lb$mos$1@nnrp1.deja.com>...
>In article <7lh74s$v36$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
>  Robert Dewar <dewar@gnat.com> wrote:
>
>
>> I don't know of a dotification tool, but it seems strange to
>> claim that it is difficult and time-consuming to find out
>> which package a procedure is from. That sounds like you are
>> not using appropriate tools. Try using the EMACS interface
>> to GNAT, and you can immediately go from any identifier to
>> the declaration (and the proper package in which this
>> declaration appears). This is actually much more useful in
>> reading code, since you immediately find out not only what
>> package the identifier is in, but you go to the declaration
>> which shows you the details of what the identifier means.
>>
>> There are other tools that have this same capability. This
>> seems pretty important functionality. There is also the gnatfind
>> utility available with GNAT for providing this same kind of
>> information in command line mode.
>
>I have to agree (strongly) with this comment.  There's little reason these
>days not to use such a browsing capability.  This allows you to take
>advantage of the benefit of use clauses:  uncluttering the source text so
you
>can easily understand it logic and structure.  With resolution of
references
>a click or two away, there's little excuse for long dotted-notation
>references.
>

   Just a rambling thought or two ....

    Yes and no.Too many organizations still do reviews off of hard-copy.
Yes,
    they should and eventually will do the reviews on line, get comments to
the
    author on line, etc.  In these cases, the author is going to be told to
get
    rid of the use clauses anyway. So, in practice, it is going to be a
while before
    use clauses are accepted.

    Joe
>- Ed Falis
>Aonix
>
>
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