Re: Graphical user interface in Unix?

Re: Graphical user interface in Unix?

[nabbasi]

In article <6prknm$a49$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Jorgen.Pettersson@saab.se says...
>
>Hello,
>I am a project manager for a project developing an Ada95-application
>and I am trying to find the best alternative to connect a graphical
>user interface to the Ada95-application.
>
>I would appreciate if someone could share their experience with me
>in this area.
>
 
ok, it depends how advacned the use interface is. for light/thin user interface,
such as forms, data entry, and things like that, I suggest using 
HTML/browser for this, and a simple perl/shell CGI to call the Ada program with 
the post data. writing user interfaces in HTML is simple, the client 
can run any where. you could even write the whole Ada application as 
a CGI, or write the Ada app as a server-side plug-in. (assuming you 
can build Ada apps as a DLL or shared images) or you can 
also write out-of-process Ada stand alone app as a server side app also, 
talks to browser client. many different ways you can design things here. you
could even use corba to have you ada app talk to the browser client using
iiop nowadays. (a number of web server now have corba support build in).

For interfactive user interface this might nor work well, so you can try TASH,
the tcl/tk Ada package. this allows you to write the GUI in the tcl/tk
binding, so it is in Ada as well as the application in Ada.

or you could use Java AWT, now that there are Ada bindings to all 1.1+ java
classes. do you want the GUI and the body of the application be in one
address space? 

it really depends how complicated the user interface is, and what the target
platforms are, etc..  the simplist is HTML forms. trivial to write and have
it work.

off course if all failes, you could use write it in X  using some of the
Ada X bindings. 

Nasser

Re: Graphical user interface in Unix?

[Tarjei Tj�stheim Jensen]

Jorgen.Pettersson@saab.se wrote in message <6prknm$a49$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>Hello,
>I am a project manager for a project developing an Ada95-application
>and I am trying to find the best alternative to connect a graphical
>user interface to the Ada95-application.


If you use tk (tash?) then you would have a measure of portability. E.g. you
could theoretically move the code between operating systems without hassle.

I think a combination of tcl and tk to handle files and user interface would be
nice. By files I mean file names: I would use tk/tcl to get the user to point
and click on the right file/directory, etc and then pass the fully qualified
path to the application.


Greetings,

Re: Graphical user interface in Unix?

[Lengyel Sandor]

Jorgen.Pettersson@saab.se wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> I am a project manager for a project developing an Ada95-application
> and I am trying to find the best alternative to connect a graphical
> user interface to the Ada95-application.
> 
> I would appreciate if someone could share their experience with me
> in this area.
> 
> -----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
> http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp   Create Your Own Free Member Forum

Personally I feel that atleast in the free tools, to have a
cross-platform GUI created, Ada could improve compared to ather
languages.
  My first choice would be Tash, however I find it slightly discouraging
that to build a widget in Tash, it takes twice as much code, as in TCL
or Python. (Tkinter). But the potential is there, to create widget
classes in Tash which we could all use :-).

-- 
 Lengyel Sándor

Hass, alkoss, gyarapits,
S a haza fényre derül. (Kölcsey)

Graphical user interface in Unix?

[Jorgen.Pettersson]

Hello,
I am a project manager for a project developing an Ada95-application
and I am trying to find the best alternative to connect a graphical
user interface to the Ada95-application.

I would appreciate if someone could share their experience with me
in this area.

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp   Create Your Own Free Member Forum

Re: Graphical user interface in Unix?

[Dale Stanbrough]

Jorgen.Pettersson@saab.se wrote:

" Hello,
  I am a project manager for a project developing an Ada95-application
  and I am trying to find the best alternative to connect a graphical
  user interface to the Ada95-application.
  
  I would appreciate if someone could share their experience with me
  in this area."


Motif is ok _if_ you have a group of people who understand C/Ada
interactions very well (i.e. know how to use the Interfaces.C.* packages
well), and if you take the time to provide some sort of support for
various features. For example i have written a package to make using
callbacks a lot easier/safer than normal. 

The existing (public) bindings leave a lot to be desired when it comes to
mapping anonymous C enumeration types to ada enumeration types, rather
than the much simpler and equivalent numeric constants.


Dale