Re: GUI for Ada (GPS with GtkAda or GtkGlade GUI Builder)

[Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>]

Norman Worth <nworth@comcastNOSPAM.net> writes:

> Somebody mentioned using Tcl/Tk for the GUI.  A decent binding does
> exist.  I was at the conference where it was introduced several years
> ago.  The results are nice, and Tk is a nice interface to work with,
> but the code for the Ada/Tk combination is pretty ugly.

See https://sourceforge.net/projects/tcladashell/.

Personally I'd write the HCI in Tcl/Tk and run it from an interpreter
which has been extended to support the application.

Writing Ada code that supports Tcl commands to provide input to the
application is straightforward, as it is for commands to get output from
the application.

For a long time I put up with polling the application to detect changes,
but in January 2014 I wrote Tcl.Async:

   Tcl.Async supports writing Tcl variables from Ada. This is especially
   important if the Ada code isn't running in the same thread as the Tcl
   interpreter.

   You can use the 'trace' facility in Tcl to detect when such a write
   has taken place.