I just got off the phone with ACT, a very constructive conversation might I add. There's many things to say so I'll try to be clear. however I'm french so if anything sounds foreign to you, let me know and i'll try to rephrase :-). Q: How open are they to the idea of the library as it seems to be direting itself so far? A: ACT (which does not speak for other vendors) have a list of preferences so to speak. 1. Their first point of research is the WG's hence if we can get the library (or I suppose parts of it) considered by any relative WG's it would be a big plus for the life of the library as far as ACT goes and perhaps it's relativaly safe to assume others as well (but I will confirm that as I will contact other vendors as well).. ACT mentionned and recognizes Charle's library they know it's been submitted (partly I believe) to the ARG and that really seems to give it a good plus. Again this is ACT's point of view, they do not speak for the others. so I'll find out from the others themselves :-) 2. Should their needs not be met by the WG's suggestions they would then be looking at good quality libraries (well organized, well documented, good quality code with clear code documentation and coding style reflected throughout the effort along with test programs or libraries to be able to test everything out). So just throwing existing code somewhere in the hierarchy of the library simply wont be looked at. Although a joint effort by many programmers, the code style and quality will need to be consistent thoughout the library. In the case of ACT they would need to be about to do two things. 1. Offer a good quality library as you may know, because at that point it would be a commercial quality library they would expect commercial quality code and documentation (which at that point makes sense :-). 2. They would also need to be able to offer full support of the library to their customers (which of course can't be achieved with poorly tested/documented code). If they can't see a possibility of both these conditions being met by a library effort, it wont be considered. However if it does meet these 2 conditions, it could very well be considered for inclusion with their compilers. NOTE: What this tells me is that we need to be aiming for the ARG and the WG's, not the vendors as far as where we throw the library first. get the ARG and it's WG's in there and the vendors will "follow" in quotes :-). By that I dont necessarily mean that they would be standarizing the library however. WG's govern what makes the Ada language, it's libraries well maybe we can talk to Charles about how that works :-). But ACT would advise in going the WG way as much as possible because it is their first place to look at. And they are ready to do a little trial and error as in take something built that they find interesting, incorporate it into their distributions and see if it has success or not. If yes, great, if not, well at least they tried :-). Which I believe answers Marin's financial concerns :-). Q: Did you, as a compiler vendor conduct any surveys or research, amongst your clients to see what they could possibly want in a library? A: Not really, they don't tend to get all that many requests from their clients in that respect either. But they did get some. as a standard library such things as a library to manage directories and files for examples...manage lists were asked for. It seems that no demand has been made for a very big list of things. individual things (like the directory management) is what they seem to get asked for However they don't rule out the possibility that for example customers might not feel confortable making this kind of request for any reason. Also if they haven't so far, they think they might soon, either existing customers, or new ones could start making demands also. To help me describe them the attempt (goal) of the library at least as a first part, I compared it to the inclusion of the STL as part of todays C++ compilers. Q: What would they, as compiler vendors, like to see in the library? A: To them, the library would need to somewhat avoid domain specific functionalities as a library. The contents of the library would need to remain I guess generic as much as possible. However he seemed open to business specific libraries built upon the generic standard libraries. For example Report generation libraries, statistics etc etc when I suggested such libraries to him. He added that perhaps, the reason why they weren't getting many request could be because in some parts, the clients developed solutions for themselves to fill in the current gaps that were not met by what was included in Ada and the included libraries. I guess here I can add, as per my experience, that if the customers start demanding for certain things, whether generic or not, if enough of them ask for it. it could become corporately viable to see about fulfilling that need as in (the infamous law of Offer versus Demand) :-). Like a friend once told me, he had a business tha tsold computers, and software....someone came in and asked for 1,000,000 rolls of toilet paper. There's money to be made in that so he got him 1,000,000 rolls of toilet paper....Offer and Demand at work here...:-). Q: What about more elaborate libraries that are missing when comparing Ada to such languages as C++, Delphi and the likes? A: Well of course anything that fills in a gap that is definitaly missing from Ada (and respect the quality control conditions mentionned above, good quality code and possibility of full support from them to their clients) could be considered. Again Offer and Demand would also be at play here. Q: What about even more sophisticated things. things that could entice other domains to be interested by Ada and bring new customers and customer types? A: They are not against this kind of thing at all. Who would be? ;-). As to what such libraries could contain? they couldn't say as they have not yet done any research as to what could bring in different types of customers. So Anything goes in this one. I talked to him about for example. Multimedia libraries Music (digital audio and MIDI), 3D engines and other such things to go get other industries so to speak, he definitaly liked that idea to see Ada possibly used in fields it's not being used right now. Very open to this idea. While maintaining the same 2 points of course, quality documented code and easily supportable by them to their clients. As I mentionned, these are the words and thoughts of ACT. therefore I will be contacting a couple other vendors to get their perspective on things and see what their thoughts are on this too. I think from this, it's looking good to get something worth it started. -- St�phane Richard "Ada World" Webmaster http://www.adaworld.com