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From: Mark Taube {90518} <mmt@swlrap.msd.ray.com>
Subject: ADA COMMON ENVIRONMENT (comments)
Date: 1996/10/21
Message-ID: <Pine.ULT.3.91.961021072343.3261X-100000@swlrap.msd.ray.com>#1/1
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organization: Raytheon Company
content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
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newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-10-21T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>



 
>The Ada Common Environment Working Group of the Ada Resource Association
>is accepting candidates for adoption as "Ada Common Environment
>Bindings."  One binding from each area will be designated as "ARA Common"
>and will be recognized by member companies of the Ada Common Environment
>Working Group.

    Excellent idea, we have a fair amount of "broken" code around here
due to the Ada83 X windows bindings fiasco.

>The nominated binding must be an existing implementation. It must be
>freely distributable, though not necessarily in the public domain.
>Bindings which do not rely heavily on vendor-specific language features
>are a plus.

  Hey this is Ada, Why not define the the specs as standardized public domain
and allow vendors to make whatever body implementations they want. The Ada
community needs portability between Ada implementations which doesn't exist
in the Ada83 world.
  .
  .
  .

>1.  The X Window System (X11)
>2.  Win32 (MicroSoft Win32)
>3.  ODBC (Open Database Connectivity)
>4.  MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes)

  Wouldn't it be better to define a portable platform independent
"PIGUI" Ada class specification that could "liberate" Ada somewhat.
Even Microsoft has made MFC a somewhat portable class framework for
the C++ world. Given the considerable language differences between
Ada and C++, it seems a clean start reworking ideas already out there
would benefit the Ada community. MS Windows is not the be-all, end-all
environment for everybody.

  PIGUI References:

   http://www.zeta.org.au/~rosko/pigui.htm  
   http://www.cs.unm.edu/~wampler           "V" for C++
      see also  C/C++ Users Journal August 1996, page 21
  
 I realize "time to market" is important but sometimes HASTE makes WASTE.

-----------------------------

       Mark Taube 
       Raytheon Electronic Systems