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: 103376,775f2cb8854e78a2 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-11-27 13:43:57 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: SVG to PNG [was: Ada_Arrays Project] Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 21:43:45 +0000 Message-ID: References: <17eddf9f.0311270408.53a25eb1@posting.google.com> 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 1069969435 65826894 82.43.33.75 ([25716]) User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win95; en-GB; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007 X-Accept-Language: en-gb, en, en-us In-Reply-To: <17eddf9f.0311270408.53a25eb1@posting.google.com> Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:3005 Date: 2003-11-27T21:43:45+00:00 List-Id: M?rio Amado Alves wrote: > I'm entertaining the idea of a generic package Ada_Arrays and children > where Ada_Arrays is like Ada.Strings except the element type is > generic instead of Character. > > Anybody besides me foresees the great usefulness of Ada_Arrays? > Anybody did it? I think it's the sort of thing that has been done before by lots of people, generally not in a very organised or uniform way. I would guess the biggest problem would be that people would be reluctant to pay for this sort of thing; they would think "Crikey, I could just as easily write that myself," even if they actually were wrong. > I'm considering doing it by program(med) transformation of existing > source-code for Ada.Strings. My first studies indicate semantic > analysis is required, so this might configure an ASIS application. I suggest that much of the interfaces of the Ada.Strings.*_Strings packages are specific to the Character (component) type, and not sensibly applicable to a generic array interface. I think this sort of package would be sailing perilously close to the treacherous waters of the 'containers controversy'. > (I'm also interested in this project as a test case for open source > software licensing. I'd like to release it under a "commercial open > source" license like one of those endorsed by the Software Developers > Cooperative (www.softdevelcoop.org). Specially if done by way of > program transformation from the GPLed GNAT, the licensing of > Ada_Arrays is a complex issue.) Allow me to suggest an alternative project, which I believe has a gap in the market at the moment, and could be commercially attractive. I am not aware of any commercial program at the moment which can convert a standard SVG source file into a suitable image format file (I suggest PNG as the first target to aim at). There is the SVG viewer offered by Adobe, but it has problems (bugs, deviation from the standard, certain standard facilities not supported, slowness/inefficiency), and I'm not sure that it can actually genarate image files anyway. There may be some high-end products taht are very expensive, but if so that seems to leave a gap at the lower-cost end. I think this would be a suitable product to be written in Ada, because it would require little or no platform-specific code, and it would suit Ada's strengths: efficiency and reliability. It would be impossible to accommodate any interactive features, of course, and animation would lead us to the complexities of animated GIFs or MNG files (but might be possible). I understand there are some Ada XML packages available (I'm not sure on what terms), one of which could be used as a starting point for reading the SVG source files. I believe there is an Ada PNG package (again I'm not sure about its availablity). There are further possibilities with conversions between HTML, XSL-FO, PS/EPS/PDF, and other presentation formats. > Anybody interested in collaborating? If you're interested in something like this, Mario, I might be interested in collaborating. It would be important to plan the project carefully. -- Nick Roberts