Re: GNAT for MS Visual Studio

["Steve" <nospam_steved94@comcast.net>]

"Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> wrote in message 
news:fd1so0$lmu$1@jacob-sparre.dk...
[snip]
> What's "Windows Forms"? I know all about the native GUI environment 
> (that's
> what Claw and several other GUI builders target), and .NET and some about
> Silverlight, but never heard of anything else (nor have ever heard of 
> anyone
> wanting it, either).
>

Windows forms are a set of classes that are part of the .NET framework. 
They make it _very_ easy to put together user interfaces.  If you want to 
try out a system that is similar to what you get with visual studio, go to:
http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/

To find SharpDevelop.  SharpDevelop is a free IDE for C# VB and Boo .NET 
projects.

Visual Studio is in may ways better than SharpDevelop, but it's hard to beat 
free when you want to get an idea of how things work.

When creating a form in Visual Studio .NET, you drag and drop components 
from a tools window onto a form.  Visual Studo generates code in an 
InitializeComponent method that is called when a form is created.  You set 
up properties and events for the form by selecting the item on the form and 
changing values in a property editor.

This kind of interaction with building GUI applications is nothing new. 
It's similar to the way things have worked with Visual Basic and Delphi for 
a long time.  Sadly Ada is lacking in this area.

[snip]
>
> That I don't doubt. But to work with Microsoft, you have to have *very* 
> deep
> pockets, and you can't care that they'll canabilize your work if you have
> success. It's not practical for any Ada company (and probably nearly
> impossible for a real open source one).
>

This is where things get interesing.  I would agree with this view if you 
had to start from scratch.  But these days you don't have to.

For example Visual Studio 2005 allows you to customize the IDE.  There is a 
Visual Studio SDK (which is a free download from Microsoft).  The VS SDK 
allows you to create VS "Packages" that integrate with Visual Studio and may 
be used to support other languages.

I don't see a significant barrier to implementing VS Packages for building 
.NET forms in Ada, given that a compiler that produces .NET code is 
available.  The largest task would be the learning curve of working with the 
SDK.

[snip]
>> gif file. But I want it all inside MS Visual Studio. I want it to look 
>> and
>> feel like every other language under Visual Studio except I want it to be
>> Ada.
>
> You want miracles. I can't say I blame you (this isn't that far from what 
> we
> were trying to accomplish with Claw), but I don't think it will happen.
> Given the rate at which Microsoft evolves their stuff, simply keeping up
> would be too much for the majority of Ada companies. (It surely would be 
> too
> much for ours.) The majority of (paying) Ada users don't use GUIs anyway
> (something we found out with Claw) - the people on comp.lang.ada are not
> that typical of the Ada user base as a whole (or at least of the ones that
> keep Ada companies in business).
>

The reason the majority of Ada users don't use GUI's is that existing Ada 
GUI's suck.  I am a strong advocate of Ada for everything but the user 
interface, because creating a GUI user interface in Ada is just too damn 
hard.  I've tried using ObjectAda's GUI builder, GtkAda, Claw, and Gnavi. 
The all have one thing in common... nice try, but not even close.  It is 
readily apparent that none of the developers did any serious work with VB, 
Delphi, or one of the other easy GUI development environments.

GtkAda comes the closest to being a reasonable development environment, but 
every time I've tried using it on Windows, something doesn't work right.

If you open up sharpdevelop you can start creating forms immediately.  Drag 
and drop components onto a form, set their properties and so forth.  The 
same is true with Visual Basic and Delphi.  With these kind of environments 
you get immeidate feedback on what you're creating, and having to go add 
code is a secondary concern.  If the code happened to be Ada, I don't think 
most users would much care.

On a side note MFC (the Microsoft Foundation Class framework with Visual 
C++) also sucks.  I think the only reason it is used is because it is backed 
by a software giant.

Regards,
Steve
(The Duck)

>                              Randy.
>