Re: GNAT for MS Visual Studio

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Steve" <nospam_steved94@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:QISdna5WdIMntGjbnZ2dnUVZ_rCtnZ2d@comcast.com...
> "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> wrote in message
> news:fd1so0$lmu$1@jacob-sparre.dk...
...
> When creating a form in Visual Studio .NET, you drag and drop components
> from a tools window onto a form.  Visual Studo generates code in an
> InitializeComponent method that is called when a form is created.  You set
> up properties and events for the form by selecting the item on the form
and
> changing values in a property editor.
>
> This kind of interaction with building GUI applications is nothing new.
> It's similar to the way things have worked with Visual Basic and Delphi
for
> a long time.  Sadly Ada is lacking in this area.

There's nothing new here, and indeed, the overall design of the Claw builder
includes features like this. We only built about 15% of it before the world
changed too much to make much sense in continuing. I understand that users
don't care about such things, but please don't claim we were not aware of
what sort of things are possible.

...
> [snip]
> >
> > That I don't doubt. But to work with Microsoft, you have to have *very*
> > deep
> > pockets, and you can't care that they'll canabilize your work if you
have
> > success. It's not practical for any Ada company (and probably nearly
> > impossible for a real open source one).
>
> This is where things get interesing.  I would agree with this view if you
> had to start from scratch.  But these days you don't have to.
>
> For example Visual Studio 2005 allows you to customize the IDE.  There is
a
> Visual Studio SDK (which is a free download from Microsoft).  The VS SDK
> allows you to create VS "Packages" that integrate with Visual Studio and
may
> be used to support other languages.

I think you miss my point. Surely this sort of stuff exists, and has for a
long time. The problem is that Microsoft comes out with a new "greatest
thing" every year or two, and keeping up is just too much for most (all) Ada
vendors. Look at interfaces: Win32, MFC, .NET (several flavors), and now
Silverlight. All different; much of the work done with one will not
translate to another. Same with the programming tools: pretty much all of
the work we did integrating with previous Microsoft debuggers is not longer
of any value. You have to have a lot of money/customers in order to be able
to replace your products completely every couple of years.

I'm completely amazed that Adacore thinks (I presume, I doubt that they're
into throwing money away) that they can recoup an investment in .NET
(something which is likely to be obsolete in a few years as MS moves on to
the next big thing).

...
> The reason the majority of Ada users don't use GUI's is that existing Ada
> GUI's suck.  I am a strong advocate of Ada for everything but the user
> interface, because creating a GUI user interface in Ada is just too damn
> hard.  I've tried using ObjectAda's GUI builder, GtkAda, Claw, and Gnavi.
> The all have one thing in common... nice try, but not even close.  It is
> readily apparent that none of the developers did any serious work with VB,
> Delphi, or one of the other easy GUI development environments.

There is a good reason in the case of Claw: we purposely never tried any
other environments because we didn't want to be sued for copying them.
Moreover, we emphisized getting the bindings right; we never were able to
put the kind of effort into the Builder that we wanted to. (Remember, we
only implemented 15% of it, and almost none of the automated features,
including the dialog/property sheet generators, toolbar generators, and the
like.)

If we had built the Builder first, we would have ended up with a fancy
program that generated code for a binding that did work or didn't even
exist. It wouldn't have made any sense - no one would ever have used (or
been able to use) Claw.

                        Randy.