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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,1fb7f2283a6b04a0 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-10-27 16:17:47 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news2.google.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!82-43-33-75.cable.ubr01.croy.blueyonder.co.UK!not-for-mail From: Nick Roberts Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Grace 0.51 released Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 00:17:45 +0000 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 82-43-33-75.cable.ubr01.croy.blueyonder.co.uk (82.43.33.75) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: news.uni-berlin.de 1067300266 35880571 82.43.33.75 (16 [25716]) User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win95; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031013 Thunderbird/0.3 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en In-Reply-To: Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:1752 Date: 2003-10-28T00:17:45+00:00 List-Id: Stephen Leake wrote: > I've made a new release of Grace, _the_ community Ada library :). > Config_Files has been improved. See > http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/grace/. > > In the context of the long-lasting "yet another Ada library" thread, > remember all the discussion a couple years ago about Grace? How many > people have contributed? Two. Only one person has contributed to Tenet so far (me ;-) > If we do get a community library going, let's at least use the name > Grace (for Grace Hopper), and not CAL or whatever. Or alternatively, let's call it 'Charles', or maybe 'ASCL', or 'Booch', or 'PragmARC', or 'GAPSE', or 'AdaSL', or 'SAL', or 'Tenet', or ... In fact, my guess is that it's going to be called 'Ada'. I believe the ARG are interested in introducing a basic set of containers into the next revision, although it might be in a an optional annex, and they might well simply decide not to (probably because of lack of time). If you're interested, please look at AI-302: http://www.ada-auth.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/AIs/AI-10302.TXT This proposal is huge, but it is currently undergoing revision to significantly reduce it. I think the proposal, submitted by Matthew Heaney and based on Charles, is basically very good. The reason why I've not given up on Tenet yet is that, to my knowledge, no-one else is going to produce implementations of a list and a map that support clustering (dynamic storage in a linked list or tree of smallish arrays of the element type). If someone is able to correct me about this, I'd be very grateful. (For a start, I am not very familiar with the Booch collection.) Clustering affects the specification in a small but significant way: you need to be able to specify the clustering factor (the number of elements per array). As far as I'm concerned, clustering is going to be vital to the efficiency of my future projects. The ARG follows the principle that 'the market should decide' about a particular technology before it is incorporated into the Ada standard. But it doesn't follow this principle (or any other principle) slavishly. I feel it is one possible reason why the ARG might reject any container proposal for the next revision, and to be honest I think that if they do they might be right. They will have to judge whether the benefits outweigh the risks. Links to some of the the projects I mentioned are: http://home.earthlink.net/~matthewjheaney/charles/ http://www.adapower.net/booch/ http://home.earthlink.net/~jrcarter010/pragmarc.htm http://adasl.sourceforge.net/ http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ramatthews/ [for GAPSE] http://ascl.sourceforge.net/ http://tenet.berlios.de I hope it won't seem out of place for me to say here that I write this with nothing but benign intent, and a lot of respect, toward the various people who have worked hard on their own container projects. -- Nick Roberts