Ada and graphics

Ada and graphics

[The Quelisher]

To follow up on a post I made earlier, when I was interested in the
possibilities of Ada and graphics, I should have been a little more
specific. What I am looking for is something that I can write in Ada
that will allow me to write to a file the code for images such a .jpg's
or .gif's....I guess essentially create those kinds of files using a
program written in Ada. I know C cna do it, because there are CGI access
counters that do this. But preferribly I would like to do it in Ada.

Anyone know of anything like this?

Re: Ada and graphics

[Robert Dewar]

The Quelisher asks

"o follow up on a post I made earlier, when I was interested in the
ossibilities of Ada and graphics, I should have been a little more
pecific. What I am looking for is something that I can write in Ada
hat will allow me to write to a file the code for images such a .jpg's
r .gif's....I guess essentially create those kinds of files using a
rogram written in Ada. I know C cna do it, because there are CGI access
ounters that do this. But preferribly I would like to do it in Ada."


If you can do it in C, you can do it in Ada! Use pragma Import and call
exactly the same routines that you would call from C.

Re: Ada and graphics

[tmoran]

>that will allow me to write to a file the code for images such a .jpg's
  The flip answer is that Ada is a general purpose programming language
so of course you can write any set of bits you want to a file.  If you
look on Compuserve, IBMPRO section, VESA library, for TGA_VESA.ZIP,
(I'm going from memory here) you'll find source code for a program
that reads Targa 16 .tga files and displays them on PCs that have VESA
drivers (ie, all modern PC graphics cards).  As I recall, the source
code includes Targa writing, as well as reading.
  Your message said "such as .jpg's ...".  If you are specifically
asking, say, "will someone please give me source code in Ada to write
a JPEG file from a Windows Device Independent Bitmap in memory",
there I can't help, but perhaps someone else can.

Ada and graphics

[The Quelisher]

I have been working with using Ada to write some CGI programs and would
like to turn my efforts to a graphical counter. The problem I am having,
being sort of inexperienced, is if Ada is capable of generating the
binary code for images on the fly (ie when called by the browser). Is
there an Ada package that does these sort of graphics, or is there
anyone with some experience in this area that can help me out?
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Ada and graphics

[Boullier Marc]

I want to make graphics with ada but I have no library to help me 
Does someone know a little about X libraries for ada ?

thank you very much 

Re: Ada and graphics

[J.C. ANDRE (Progfou)]

Boullier Marc (boulliem@mines.u-nancy.fr) a ecrit :
> I want to make graphics with ada but I have no library to help me 
> Does someone know a little about X libraries for ada ?

> thank you very much 

I'm also interested in ! Please mail me if you found it !
P.S.: we use X11R5, DEC ADA.
--
< Linux & Network interest > -= Progfou =- < andrej@ensinfo.univ-nantes.fr >

Re: Ada and graphics

[John Cosby]

andrej@dec1 (J.C. ANDRE (Progfou)) wrote:
>Boullier Marc (boulliem@mines.u-nancy.fr) a ecrit :
>> I want to make graphics with ada but I have no library to help me 
>> Does someone know a little about X libraries for ada ?
<snip>
>P.S.: we use X11R5, DEC ADA.

Ada bindings for Xlib and Xt exist, out there somewhere in Net.land.  Check
the Public Ada Library at wuarchive (info about it pops up in this newsgroup
often).  There may also be some in the ASSET repository; I haven't checked.

Most Ada vendors will recommend a bindings vendor on request; try them.  If
you don't want to pay, you're going to be stuck with what you can get off
the Internet; if you do want to pay, contact a bindings vendor (ATC, SERC,
and Top GraphX come to mind).  Each set of bindings has its own pros and
cons; do some research before you pay.
--- 
John Cosby - cosby@greatwall.cctt.com - cosbyj@nefarious.saic.com

Re: Ada and graphics

[John Goodsen]

In article <3avnif$gkv@babyblue.cs.yale.edu> cosby@greatwall.cctt.com (John Cosby) writes:

   andrej@dec1 (J.C. ANDRE (Progfou)) wrote:
   >Boullier Marc (boulliem@mines.u-nancy.fr) a ecrit :
   >> I want to make graphics with ada but I have no library to help me 
   >> Does someone know a little about X libraries for ada ?
   <snip>
   >P.S.: we use X11R5, DEC ADA.

   Ada bindings for Xlib and Xt exist, out there somewhere in Net.land.  Check
   the Public Ada Library at wuarchive (info about it pops up in this newsgroup
   often).  There may also be some in the ASSET repository; I haven't checked.

   Most Ada vendors will recommend a bindings vendor on request; try them.  If
   you don't want to pay, you're going to be stuck with what you can get off
   the Internet; if you do want to pay, contact a bindings vendor (ATC, SERC,
   and Top GraphX come to mind).  Each set of bindings has its own pros and
   cons; do some research before you pay.

Bindings to Xlib/Xt are not often the solution you need, but many 
inexperienced developers take off down this path and waste a lot
of time and money rebuilding something they would have been better
off buying to get the graphics implemented.

You should take a serious look at a *real* structured graphics engine,
rather than hitting the low level Xlib intrinsics for your graphics.
Unless you are doing anything but the most trivial graphics application,
you will quickly have a need for a structured graphics toolkit...
Ask yourself the following questions:

   1.  Will I require pointer hit detection on graphical objects?
       (e.g. click on a graphical object and detect which object
        was clicked upon)

   2.  Will you ever have to redraw the screen?  
       (using raw xlib, graphics are not redrawn.  You have to remember
        what you drew and always be prepared to redraw it whenever a user
        moves a window over your graphics)

   4.  Do you have the need to scale, rotate or otherwise deform your
       graphical objects?

   3.  Do you have a need for hierarchical graphical objects?
       (e.g. do you want composite graphical objects which allow you to
        scale, move, rotate a set of graphical objects independently from
        other graphical objects)

   5.  Will you ever need to run your application on a non X-window platform?
       (e.g. Windows, NT, etc...)  too often this is the case, but is ignored
       until it becomes a problem at which point it can't be handled well.

Check out HeraGraph from EVB Software Engineering (info@evb.com) if you
want to see how snazzy, portable Ada graphics applications can be built in tens of
lines of pure Ada code.  Haven't seen anything else written in Ada that even
compares closely to it...

-- 
--
John Goodsen                         Currently on-site at:
The Dalmatian Group                       JP Morgan 
User Interface Specialists                60 Wall St., New York City
jgoodsen@radsoft.com                      jgoodsen@jpmorgan.com

Re: Ada and graphics

[Michael Feldman]

In article <JGOODSEN.94Nov28211857@trinidad.ny>,
John Goodsen <jgoodsen@trinidad.ny> wrote:

>Check out HeraGraph from EVB Software Engineering (info@evb.com) if you
>want to see how snazzy, portable Ada graphics applications can be built in tens of
>lines of pure Ada code.  Haven't seen anything else written in Ada that even
>compares closely to it...

I've seen demos of HeraGraph. As I recall, what I saw was very nice.

So here is an example of a vendor selling a very nice portable, easy-to-use
graphics package. Everybody out there, raise your hand if you've heard
of this product. Raise both hands if you have an idea of the price.

I'm guessing that I won't see too many hands. And this is the group
that is most interested in Ada. So tell us, John, why this product is
virtually unknown here and certainly un-advertised "out there".

These discussions always remind me of the TV commercial showing the
forlorn toy store owner who never got any customers 'cause he neglected 
to put an ad in the Yellow Pages. EVB is guaranteed to remain small
unless it figures out how to get visibility for its products.

Mike Feldman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael B. Feldman -  chair, SIGAda Education Working Group
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
         Ada on the World-Wide Web: http://lglwww.epfl.ch/Ada/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Illegitimi non carborundum." (Don't let the bastards grind you down.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Ada and graphics

[Jean-Pierre Rosen]

In article <3be9o2$kmk@felix.seas.gwu.edu>, mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes:
> In article <JGOODSEN.94Nov28211857@trinidad.ny>,
> John Goodsen <jgoodsen@trinidad.ny> wrote:
> 
> >Check out HeraGraph from EVB Software Engineering (info@evb.com) if you
> >want to see how snazzy, portable Ada graphics applications can be built in tens of
> >lines of pure Ada code.  Haven't seen anything else written in Ada that even
> >compares closely to it...
> 
> I've seen demos of HeraGraph. As I recall, what I saw was very nice.
> 
> So here is an example of a vendor selling a very nice portable, easy-to-use
> graphics package. Everybody out there, raise your hand if you've heard
> of this product. Raise both hands if you have an idea of the price.
> 

[...]
For your information, Heragraph is NOT from EVB: EVB is just marketting it
into the states. It has been developped by Strategies, France. There is a
presentation about Heragraph in the proceedings of the Ada-Europe conference
Paris, 1993.

In France, Heragraph has been used in several wide-scale projects. They even
had customers who switched to Ada, just because they wanted to use Heragraph!

Re: Ada and graphics

[Andrew Ormsby]

In article <3bha3o$5g7@cyclope.enst.fr>, rosen@enst.fr (Jean-Pierre Rosen)
wrote:
: For your information, Heragraph is NOT from EVB: EVB is just marketting it
: into the states. It has been developped by Strategies, France. There is a
: presentation about Heragraph in the proceedings of the Ada-Europe conference
: Paris, 1993.
: 
: In France, Heragraph has been used in several wide-scale projects. They even
: had customers who switched to Ada, just because they wanted to use Heragraph!

Heragraph sounds worth looking at, and I don't believe I can be the only
person outside of the US who is interested in it. Could some knowledgeable
person please post contact details for the European (or even British)
distributor for this product, please?

Many thanks.
-- 
Andrew Ormsby                                   aro@aber.ac.uk
Centre for Intelligent Systems, Department of Computer Science
University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Dyfed.

Re: Ada and graphics

[Jean-Pierre Rosen]

> Heragraph sounds worth looking at, and I don't believe I can be the only
> person outside of the US who is interested in it. Could some knowledgeable
> person please post contact details for the European (or even British)
> distributor for this product, please?
Strategies
41-43 rue de Villeneuve SILIC 429
95583 RUNGIS CEDEX
FRANCE

Tel: +33 1 46 87 11 29
Fax: +33 1 46 87 67 24
They are not distributors, they made it. And if you want to find Ada-fans,
just ask them. There is exactly ONE guy in charge of maintaining 1_000_000
LOCs, and they claim that bug reports are fixed within one day on the 
average...
> 
> Many thanks.
You're welcome

Re: Ada and graphics

[Michael Feldman]

In article <3bha3o$5g7@cyclope.enst.fr>,
Jean-Pierre Rosen <rosen@enst.fr> wrote:

>[...]
>For your information, Heragraph is NOT from EVB: EVB is just marketting it
>into the states. It has been developped by Strategies, France. There is a
>presentation about Heragraph in the proceedings of the Ada-Europe conference
>Paris, 1993.

Well, in this country we have a car called the Geo Metro. It happens
to be built by Suzuki in Japan, and sold by Chevrolet. No matter who
builds it, if it is not advertised, not very many will be sold.
>
>In France, Heragraph has been used in several wide-scale projects. They even
>had customers who switched to Ada, just because they wanted to use Heragraph!

How 'bout here in the US?

Mike Feldman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael B. Feldman -  chair, SIGAda Education Working Group
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
         Ada on the World-Wide Web: http://lglwww.epfl.ch/Ada/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Illegitimi non carborundum." (Don't let the bastards grind you down.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Ada and graphics

[Richard Riehle]

> mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes:
>     John Goodsen <jgoodsen@trinidad.ny> wrote:
>
>>Check out HeraGraph from EVB Software Engineering (info@evb.com) if you
>>want to see how snazzy, portable Ada graphics applications can be built
>
>I've seen demos of HeraGraph. As I recall, what I saw was very nice.
>
>to put an ad in the Yellow Pages. EVB is guaranteed to remain small
>unless it figures out how to get visibility for its products.
>
>Mike Feldman


     I've also seen Heragraph and agree that it is high-quality and
     impressive.  I've even seen at least one application that was
     developed with it, a kind of CAD/CAM application.  Slick!

     Apparently it is used mostly in Europe.  We Americans  really don't
     care much for software Reuse. That pioneering spirit, you know. 

     As for EVB, they have always seemed a little low-key with sales
     of quality products.  I'm not sure that is evil.


     Richard Riehle

Re: Ada and graphics

[Michael Feldman]

In article <1994Nov30.152651.21228@sei.cmu.edu>,
Richard Riehle <riehler@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu> wrote:

>     Apparently it is used mostly in Europe.  We Americans  really don't
>     care much for software Reuse. That pioneering spirit, you know. 


Sigh. How right you are.

>     As for EVB, they have always seemed a little low-key with sales
>     of quality products.  I'm not sure that is evil.

Nothing evil about it. Just guaranteed to ensure that they remain
a (very) small business.

Mike Feldman

Re: Ada and graphics

[John Goodsen]

In article <3be9o2$kmk@felix.seas.gwu.edu> mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes:

   In article <JGOODSEN.94Nov28211857@trinidad.ny>,
   John Goodsen <jgoodsen@trinidad.ny> wrote:

   >Check out HeraGraph from EVB Software Engineering (info@evb.com) if you
   >want to see how snazzy, portable Ada graphics applications can be built in tens of
   >lines of pure Ada code.  Haven't seen anything else written in Ada that even
   >compares closely to it...

   I've seen demos of HeraGraph. As I recall, what I saw was very nice.

   So here is an example of a vendor selling a very nice portable, easy-to-use
   graphics package. Everybody out there, raise your hand if you've heard
   of this product. Raise both hands if you have an idea of the price.

   I'm guessing that I won't see too many hands. And this is the group
   that is most interested in Ada. So tell us, John, why this product is
   virtually unknown here and certainly un-advertised "out there".

Maybe someone from EVB might be able to answer that better than I, since
I don't work there... 

   These discussions always remind me of the TV commercial showing the
   forlorn toy store owner who never got any customers 'cause he neglected 
   to put an ad in the Yellow Pages. EVB is guaranteed to remain small
   unless it figures out how to get visibility for its products.

I suspect that it's a chicken/egg situation.  Selling and supporting
products in the Ada community costs can cost as much as the development,
in my experience ... and we all know how non-easy it is to get word out
to the miniscule Ada markets ...

To put things back into perspective, the original intent of this post
was to shed some light on any Ada projects who are contemplating 
reinventing a graphics framework on top of something as low level as Xlib.
Don't do it unless you are absolutely sure you have no alternative.
Chances are you will waste a *LOT* of money and never have something as
nice in your system as HeraGraph or other graphics toolkits...

Is there a www server that is dedicated to advertising *COMMERCIAL*
Ada products?  One of you "Team Ada" enthusiasts interested in maintaining one?


   Mike Feldman
   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Michael B. Feldman -  chair, SIGAda Education Working Group
   Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
   The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
   202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)

-- 
--
John Goodsen                         Currently on-site at:
The Dalmatian Group                       JP Morgan 
User Interface Specialists                60 Wall St., New York City
jgoodsen@radsoft.com                      jgoodsen@jpmorgan.com

Re: Ada and graphics

[David Weller]

In article <JGOODSEN.94Dec1211314@trinidad.ny>,
John Goodsen <jgoodsen@trinidad.ny> wrote:
>
>Is there a www server that is dedicated to advertising *COMMERCIAL*
>Ada products?  One of you "Team Ada" enthusiasts interested in maintaining one?
>

John, IMHO, this is a GREAT place for the ARA to support.  In fact,
it would seem to me like it's the _first_ thing the ARA should
support.  Each company submits an HTML file to a central server.
Truth in advertising guidelines apply, naturally. 

-- 
Proud (and vocal) member of Team Ada! (and Team OS/2)        ||This is not your
   	      Ada -- Very Cool.  Doesn't Suck.               ||  father's Ada 
For all sorts of interesting Ada tidbits, run the command:   ||________________
"finger dweller@starbase.neosoft.com | more" (or e-mail with "finger" as subj.)
	|"Quitting C++ isn't so difficult, provided you show as much |
	|	persistence stopping as you did starting." dweller   |

Re: Ada and graphics

[Curtis]

David Weller writes
> John Goodsen <jgoodsen@trinidad.ny> wrote:
> >Is there a www server that is dedicated to advertising *COMMERCIAL*
> >Ada products?  One of you "Team Ada" enthusiasts interested in  
maintaining one?
> 
> John, IMHO, this is a GREAT place for the ARA to support.  In fact,
> it would seem to me like it's the _first_ thing the ARA should
> support.  Each company submits an HTML file to a central server.
> Truth in advertising guidelines apply, naturally. 
> 

Check out (includes COTS and research/PD)

http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/bam/www/toolnames.html

A select set of the GUI packages directly support Ada, please post others  
if any have been omitted.

Curtis

Re: Ada and graphics

[R. William Beckwith]

John Goodsen (jgoodsen@trinidad.ny) wrote:

: Bindings to Xlib/Xt are not often the solution you need, but many 
: inexperienced developers take off down this path and waste a lot
: of time and money rebuilding something they would have been better
: off buying to get the graphics implemented.

Agreed.

: You should take a serious look at a *real* structured graphics engine,
: rather than hitting the low level Xlib intrinsics for your graphics.
: Unless you are doing anything but the most trivial graphics application,
: you will quickly have a need for a structured graphics toolkit...
: Ask yourself the following questions:

These are nice questions.  I thought I would answer the questions with
regard to X11R6/Fresco/Ada9X for those who've been following Fresco.

:    1.  Will I require pointer hit detection on graphical objects?
:        (e.g. click on a graphical object and detect which object
:         was clicked upon)

Fresco: can do

:    2.  Will you ever have to redraw the screen?  
:        (using raw xlib, graphics are not redrawn.  You have to remember
:         what you drew and always be prepared to redraw it whenever a user
:         moves a window over your graphics)

Fresco: appl programmer doesn't ever do redraws, Fresco double-buffers
	all graphics and uses an advanced damage-based, deferred redisplay
	for high-performance

:    4.  Do you have the need to scale, rotate or otherwise deform your
:        graphical objects?

Fresco: can do, in 3D

:    3.  Do you have a need for hierarchical graphical objects?
:        (e.g. do you want composite graphical objects which allow you to
:         scale, move, rotate a set of graphical objects independently from
:         other graphical objects)

Fresco: can do, actually Fresco allows full DAGs (Directed Acyclic Graphs)
	of graphical objects and is not limited to hierarchies

:    5.  Will you ever need to run your application on a non X-window platform?
:        (e.g. Windows, NT, etc...)  too often this is the case, but is ignored
:        until it becomes a problem at which point it can't be handled well.

Fresco: can do

... Bill

Re: Ada and graphics

[lvirden]

When you say that Fresco : can do - are you talking in the present, or plans
for the near future, or plans for an unannounced future?
-- 
:s Great net resources sought...
:s Larry W. Virden                 INET: larry.virden@cas.org
:s <URL:http://www.mps.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/hpp?lvirden_sig.html>
The task of an educator should be to irrigate the desert not clear the forest.

Re: Ada and graphics

[R. William Beckwith]

lvirden@cas.org wrote:

: When you say that Fresco : can do - are you talking in the present, or plans
: for the near future, or plans for an unannounced future?

I am guiltly of the speaking in the software present tense.  ;-)
Just because I see working code here doesn't mean it is ready for
customers yet.  My apologies.

We started developing the Ada 9X version of Fresco back late last year.
We announced the product at TRI-Ada last month.

I'll try to add some real data to answer the `when' question.
Here are the steps:

Description					Projected Completion
-----------					--------------------
Map CORBA IDL to Ada 9X				done
Write IDL-to-Ada 9X compiler			done
Write multi-threaded X11R6 xlib/Ada 9X binding	done
Write implementations for graphics classes	Q4 94
Write multi-threaded Win32/Ada 9X binding	Q1 95
Add more widgets and complete documentation	Q1 95
Begin beta testing for Fresco/Ada 9X/Unix	Q1 95
Begin beta testing for Fresco/Ada 9X/Win 32	Q2 95

(These are current working estimates, not promises.
 Our Schedule is very much affected by Ada 9X compiler
 implementors.)

We split testing into three phases:

    Alpha - product is not done, features (and bugs ;-) are still being added
    Beta  - product is done, we're trying to find and fix bugs
    Gamma - we don't know of any bugs, but product is a new port

... Bill

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