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=-0.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,fef3ad775ef4b0b7 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,UTF8 Path: g2news1.google.com!news2.google.com!eweka.nl!lightspeed.eweka.nl!feeder.erje.net!news.motzarella.org!motzarella.org!Colin_Paul_Gloster From: Colin Paul Gloster Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada for 1st year students Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:22:03 +0100 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Message-ID: References: <60e0c5f0-1e17-4add-b21e-b1ef622d5233@v13g2000pro.googlegroups.com> Reply-To: Colin Paul Gloster Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: MULTIPART/MIXED; BOUNDARY="16607837-4157-1223904879=:2500" X-Trace: feeder.motzarella.org U2FsdGVkX1+7kRSyCEs8/eHpxutroj7kuUmtFU+iGSv/7QgiyBUnMs8vjlg+Ao2+nminpPpBIaIPbKs0G3N2E+Pm0jFHsuOvWUWkHA600cyzkAD3CFAEnL3AaF2/9Txzo3jCl9bSffF3FYhnvNZkwoF3dXI0e3MY X-Complaints-To: Please send complaints to abuse@motzarella.org with full headers NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:22:04 +0000 (UTC) In-Reply-To: <60e0c5f0-1e17-4add-b21e-b1ef622d5233@v13g2000pro.googlegroups.com> Content-ID: X-Auth-Sender: U2FsdGVkX1/qog6vKVeGTfgiQSMpwt7Dvuh037/TY4bN9ooA0RlGGi+PngreMwue7WpbwJFfacA= Cancel-Lock: sha1:CTz9F4z4TAqF8ntSMFiqqaQyXOw= X-X-Sender: Colin_Paul_Gloster@gian.fis.uc.pt Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:2355 Date: 2008-10-13T15:22:03+01:00 List-Id: This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text, while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools. --16607837-4157-1223904879=:2500 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Content-ID: Amado Alves started this thread with a post which appeared on October 9th, 2008: |----------------------------------------------------------------------| |"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. | | | |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." | |----------------------------------------------------------------------| Greetings, I work in the original University of Coimbra, though not as a lecturer. I have not noticed many Ada books in Portuguese. It may be beneficial to have a list of such books (even if they are out of print (it might be possible to borrow them from a library of another university) or not the best (though warnings of bad parts of books would be useful)) when I am asked for advice on how to learn Ada. As for whether vendors are prompt or not, some are but in cases where vendors were slow, they were slowed down by me (as many suggested that I could try to run benchmarks but I must still write a significantly meaningful representative body of code with which to conduct such benchmarks). |----------------------------------------------------------------------| |"(2) Compilers. Must be free (as in free beer) or very low cost" | |----------------------------------------------------------------------| Is this to teach the students that they shall live in poverty if they shall not be self-sufficient by means of a discipline other than informatics engineering? |-----------------------------------------------------------------------| |"(perhaps an educational license) and install out-of-the box on Windows| |or Linux (or both, preferably)." | |-----------------------------------------------------------------------| Aside from GNAT which had already been mentioned in this thread, I suspect that one licensing option of an Aonix compiler might be suitable. It used to be possible to get a cheap Aonix compiler many years ago and I do not know whether that is still true. Compilers are available affordably for universities from OC Systems ( WWW.OCSystems.com ) though not for Windows. Depending on the platform, Motif or OpenMotif bindings are provided. Janus/Ada and Claw are definitely available for a small amount of money though possible graphical development for a project I am involved in would not be expected to start for a long time and so I have not used Janus/Ada yet. An academic license from Sofcheck is affordable, though I do not know what you would use for graphics. You can telephone Mr. Lima of International Business Machines on 218 927 455 or 915 601 760 or fax him on 218 927 280 or Nuno Marques also of I.B.M. on 218927380 or 917226179 re a teaching license but I do not remember how much of a discount it would entail (it would be a bigger discount than for collegiate research and I have not yet taken advantage of an invitation to try a copy without committing in advance to paying for it and keeping it, so I do not know whether a graphical library is supplied). I.B.M. Ada compilers for Windows are no longer supplied. I do not know whether Irvine offers a graphical library. |----------------------------------------------------------------------| |" Must support Latin-1, preferably | |Unicode. The vendor should be prompt. | | | |[..] | | | |(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...) | |[..]" | |----------------------------------------------------------------------| Furthermore, Amado Alves later emphasized in news:1fe7f0a7-498c-4fd2-833f-ff223220dfc1@b38g2000prf.googlegroups.com on the same day: |------------------------------------------------------------------| |"[..] | | | |[..] Using JEWL and then telling my students | |"if you want graphics you have to use Windows" will send the wrong| |message I'm afraid... Not pedagogical at all." | |------------------------------------------------------------------| Support for character sets and graphics are not important for the current parts of my work, so I do not confirm nor deny their presence. I have never used it, but you may determine for yourself whether Steve Sangwine's PNG binding at HTTP://PNG-IO.Sourceforge.net is suitable. Regards from Coimbra, Colin Paul Gloster --16607837-4157-1223904879=:2500--