Re: Ada95 for Windows 95 Reviewers Wanted

[mg@asp.camb.inmet.com (Mitch Gart)]

Ian Goldberg (Ian@RRSOFTWARE.COM) wrote:
: Product Reviewers Needed

: R.R. Software is in the process of building an Ada 95 package for =
: Windows 95 that will contain a "thick", object-oriented Windows binding =
: and a GUI application builder.

(snip)

As you probably know Intermetrics and Labtek produced Win32Ada,
a thin Ada 95 binding to the Win32 API.  Due to legal complications 
with Microsoft it took a while to get this released but now is 
finally released and available on the Web, see a separate 
announcement I am about to post.

Win32Ada is thin but full, covering all the Win32 API, over 70K 
lines of Ada just in the package specs.  I think a thin binding is 
useful partly in its own right and partly as a basis for future 
thick bindings.  It sounds like R.R. is now producing a thick binding.

I think the best thing would be to have an underlying thin layer
that gives direct access to everything in the system, probably
not with the best Ada style, and then one or more higher level 
bindings to selected areas, for example OLE, which are more 
limited in scope but more carefully crafted to give the best
possible interface to Ada 95 programmers.

I don't know how far along you are in your implementation but
I hope you will consider using Win32Ada as an underlying layer 
and making your higher level thick bindings compatible with this.

- Mitch Gart