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=-0.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FORGED_GMAIL_RCVD, FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,f15b862e11b575a4 X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII Path: g2news2.google.com!postnews.google.com!o21g2000prn.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: Shark8 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Air traffic control system in Java Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2011 00:10:51 -0800 (PST) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: References: <4d6ffe16$0$17930$a8266bb1@postbox2.readnews.com> <4d711c62$0$27719$882e7ee2@usenet-news.net> <4d712326$0$27719$882e7ee2@usenet-news.net> <4d712b6a$0$17204$882e7ee2@usenet-news.net> <0b3daa32-8571-4a7f-a96f-cd876f4c4127@d12g2000prj.googlegroups.com> <4d712e64$0$17204$882e7ee2@usenet-news.net> <1l023eg1ilrni.xwge3tgrabol$.dlg@40tude.net> <882b38e2-0eaa-4b2e-944c-692eca47908f@q12g2000prb.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 174.28.182.16 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: posting.google.com 1299312651 9446 127.0.0.1 (5 Mar 2011 08:10:51 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2011 08:10:51 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: o21g2000prn.googlegroups.com; posting-host=174.28.182.16; posting-account=lJ3JNwoAAAAQfH3VV9vttJLkThaxtTfC User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.2.14) Gecko/20110218 Firefox/3.6.14 ( .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET4.0E),gzip(gfe) Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:18845 Date: 2011-03-05T00:10:51-08:00 List-Id: On Mar 5, 12:15=A0am, "Vinzent Hoefler" <0439279208b62c95f1880bf0f8776...@t-domaingrabbing.de> wrote: > Shark8 wrote: > > On Mar 4, 10:15 pm, "Vinzent Hoefler" > > <0439279208b62c95f1880bf0f8776...@t-domaingrabbing.de> wrote: > > > Interesting you should mention Oberon; I just installed it into a VM > > to play with. > > {VirtualPC is free now, so if you're using Windows there is little > > disincentive > > to throwing odd/interesting OSes into a VM.} > > I'm happy user of VirtualBox sind a couple of major versions. ;) And that diminishes my pointing out that VirtualPC is free how? {You're just making my point that it is *easy*/*cheap* to have VMs.} > >> Considering what I regularly read in the appropriate newsgroups, even = a big > >> library like the VCL of Delphi is not nearly enough to satisfy its use= rs, > >> there are a lot of add-ons, third party tools and hacks to get what th= ey > >> want (and Delphi is even just Windows-only, so we're not even talking = problems > >> of cross-platform GUI). > > > Delphi's VCL is actually one of the best GUI-builders I've seen... > > there was > > also the Kylix port of the VCL to the Linux environs which fizzled > > out, but > > iy *WAS* there. > > Well, FreePascal has Lazarus, that's probably more cross-platform. :) Possibly, Though I wasn't able to get it to work last time I tried it. > Yet, it doesn't drive a lot of users to use it (at least there complainin= g > about the same as the Ada community), so it doesn't seem to be a major > gain. > > > Given that the VCL is basically an object-oriented wrapper of the > > Windows [graphics] API > > And still, a lot of regular users are /not/ satisfied with what the VCL > offers. And it's already huge (thus, nothing I would put in a standards > document). I didn't say we should enshrine the VCL as a standard. I *DID* say that the VCL presents us with an intriguing possible opportunity to implement a GUI hierarchy. > > > it seems to me that Ada *could* be used similarly and > > in an > > even better manner: an object-oriented hierarchy-among-specifications > > which > > have their bodies chosen as per the platform being developed. > > Yes, it is surely *possible*. But it also means that you probably have to > trade look-and-feel against the portability. And that means, users of > your Ada-GUI will complain about the differences, will not use it or > "patch" it according to their specific needs. True enough. However, the lack-of-GUI may be more weighty than a GUI-I-Have-To-Tweak, especially in the minds of Ada-newbies. > IMO, there's no point in standardizing such a beast, if you can't get it > right. Ah, but I believe that you *can* "get it right." Scroll-bars should scroll; edit-boxes should be editable; spin-edits should constrain themselves to valid [numeric] values which are modified by the attached arrow-buttons. > After all, there's GtkAda, that's probably as cross-platform as it will > ever get and yet it doesn't convince users to use Ada. > > (Honestly, I don't know why someone would want to use Java for that, > Java doesn't even have real callbacks, but well ...) Java --> *Shudder* > >> So if someone expects such a beast can be standardized at all, I'd cal= l him > >> overly optimistic at least. > > > OpenGL and PotScript/PDF are standard and [true] cross-platform, no? > > Couldn't a standard GUI therefore be built upon them? > > I seriously doubt that there are any OpenGL implementation or > Postscript-interpreters for systems like VxWorks or Integrity. ;) I was working on an PostScript interpreter as a bit of a hobby-ish aside. All in Ada, it was all in Ada but was destroyed when my HD dies. (It was a non-critical/untested code-base so wasn't backed-up.) OpenGL is a bit interesting as it can be *massively* [IMO] improved by a) restricting the inputs to valid values, and b) overloading the functions so as to be rid of the nasty "3fv"-type suffixes. {The OpenGL standard allows for just such an approach using languages which support overloading.} > Wasn't there a standard GUI description language (based on XML?) a couple > of years ago? What happened to it? Hopefully it died a slow and horrid death. {I don't like XML at all; the *only* good things about it are the "/>" single-tag closure and that attributes *must* be quoted, IMO.} > And as mentioned above. To put something like that into a language standa= rd, > you have to keep minimalistic (remember that the vendors need to implemen= t > it and cost of implementation is also an issue in terms of standardizatio= n). > But being minimalistic also means, that nobody will use it due to lack of > (necessary) features. That's where the beauty of the VCL shines: a 'minimal' implementation may be extended as needed. {And these extensions are how more complex types are introduced/elaborated to the user.} > IME, if a minimalistic GUI is needed, embed a webserver into your applica= tion > and let it start up the browser. This served me well so far. Virtually ev= erybody > knows how to use a browser, and in the days of Web 2.0 such an approach i= s > probably even "en vogue". I think Ada could get the upper hand if a) the embedded webserver was standard, b) the events [server-side] were easy-to-handle, and c) Ada programmers encouraged/evangelized the method.