Re: thick? thin? binding

[tmoran@acm.org]

> I read through 1 and a half Ada book and still doesnt catch what "thick" or
> "thin" binding mean
It's an informal term, originally referring to the thickness of the docs
for the binding.  For instance, a binding to Windows that just has the
pragma Import specifications for the various function calls, and let's you
go to some book on C calls in Windows for information, would be thin.  A
somewhat thicker binding would use Ada types and type checking, perhaps
raise an exception on error instead of returning a code, etc.  It would
need some documentation of its own, but not too much.  A thick binding
would look like Ada, not C, perhaps use Ada tasking and OO instead of the
message loop and case statement, use controlled types to help ensure
things get properly destroyed with all the right Windows calls, etc.  An
extremely thick binding would hide even the fact you were running on
Windows rather than Unix.  See the "Thin vs Thick" section in the paper
www.rrsoftware.com/prodinfo/triadapaper/triada.html