Re: Ada bindings to Linux GUI toolkits ?

[M E Leypold <development-2006-8ecbb5cc8aREMOVETHIS@ANDTHATm-e-leypold.de>]

clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP (Simon Clubley) writes:

> With the change in license for GtkAda, I have started looking for Ada

Which isn't far from clear yet, let me emphasize this. On the other
side I understand everyon very well who'll be looking for alternatives
now, since, due to the really small community it seems doubtful that the
community will able to maintain the last GMGPL version of GtkAda.

> bindings for other GUI toolkits that run under Linux.
> 
> At:
> 
> http://www.adapower.com/index.php?Command=Class&ClassID=AdaGUI&Title=Ada+GUI
> 
> there is a list of known bindings and only the base X11 and Motif interfaces
> appear to have Ada bindings for Linux. (GWindows appears to be MS-Windows
> only).

Tash has a binding to Tk (and embedded TCL ...). I've to thank Simon
Wright for having pointed me to Tash in the recent GtkAda debate.

> Are any other Ada open source bindings to current Linux based GUI toolkits
> available ?

Since Gtk, Pango and Cairo are the future of open source GUI
development -- they are at any point in time in a rather sorry state
as far as the code is concerned but move forward with astonishing
speed and adress many issues other toolkits neglected (accessability,
for instance), I can only recommend staying with Gtk.

In the case of Ada that means in my eyes that Ada just missed train
and cannot be counted under the main stream open source languages any
more. This has nothing to do with technical merits (which are high)
but with purely practical considerations.

Also learning Gtk (any GUI Toolkit) well is hard. One probably would
like to preserve one's investment in that area, so moving to another
language (and staying with Gtk) is a definite option. My
recommendation at that point for lovers of excotic languages would be
Ocaml :-), but YMMV.

OK, I've been crying "Jehova" now. I know, this is comp.lang.ada and
all, but realistically, moving away from Ada is always an alternative
if one is missing support libraries.

Regards -- Markus