OT:GNAT (Re: GPS - A new kind of IDE?)

OT:GNAT (Re: GPS - A new kind of IDE?)

[Toshitaka Kumano]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> At least so far no one confused our Ada compiler with a
> little bug :-)

I always wonder why the great compiler has such a misleading
name :-)

When I saw the name at first on 1994, I, as a programmer,
thought it should be an acronym, irrelevant to insects. 

And how surprised I was when I found a cute bug fluttering
on the brochure!
 # at Japan SIG Ada on 1996 if I remember correctly.

Since then I, as a Japanese programmer, consider that
the name might be a jokey one, OR that the English word "bug"
should mean, if anything, Coleoptera like a ladybug,
not Diptera like a gnat :-)


Anyway, we may see many GNAT issues in *GNATS* after the release
of GCC 3.1 :-)

# ADA, GPS, GLADE, etc... We may need visibility rules here :-)
-- 
Toshitaka Kumano

Re: OT:GNAT (Re: GPS - A new kind of IDE?)

[Alexandre E. Kopilovitch]

Toshitaka Kumano <kumano@cl.cilas.net> wrote:
>I always wonder why the great compiler has such a misleading name :-)

As far as I understand, there was a person, inside the team of the initial
creators of GNAT, at the French side, Kirille Comar (or Komar, it doesn't mean
for the issue). And "comar" (and also "komar") in Russian transliteration
means exactly "gnat". Assuming that Russian nationality of this person (his
first name suggests that), one may guess that the source of the name "GNAT" for
the compiler was from there. ... Hm, I hope nobody will annoyed by this beautiful
hypothesis -:)

>And how surprised I was when I found a cute bug fluttering
>on the brochure!

Don't you feel that that picture reminds an airplane fighter? And that must be
familiar and pleasant association for substantial part of Ada users.


Alexander Kopilovitch                      aek@vib.usr.pu.ru
Saint-Petersburg
Russia

Re: OT:GNAT (Re: GPS - A new kind of IDE?)

[John McCabe]

On Thu, 09 May 2002 05:42:24 +0900, Toshitaka Kumano
<kumano@cl.cilas.net> wrote:

>When I saw the name at first on 1994, I, as a programmer,
>thought it should be an acronym, irrelevant to insects. 

Err - it *is* an acronym, for GNU Ada Translator.

Re: OT:GNAT (Re: GPS - A new kind of IDE?)

[Martin Dowie]

"John McCabe" <john.nospam@nospamassen.nospamdemon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3cda2fc8.1578790@news.demon.co.uk...
> >When I saw the name at first on 1994, I, as a programmer,
> >thought it should be an acronym, irrelevant to insects.
>
> Err - it *is* an acronym, for GNU Ada Translator.

Isn't the story now that is *was* an acronym but doesn't
stand for anything now?

Re: OT:GNAT (Re: GPS - A new kind of IDE?)

[Florian Weimer]

john.nospam@nospamassen.nospamdemon.co.uk (John McCabe) writes:

> On Thu, 09 May 2002 05:42:24 +0900, Toshitaka Kumano
> <kumano@cl.cilas.net> wrote:
>
>>When I saw the name at first on 1994, I, as a programmer,
>>thought it should be an acronym, irrelevant to insects. 
>
> Err - it *is* an acronym, for GNU Ada Translator.

Once upon a time, there was an Ada compiler called the GNU Ada
Translater, but nowadays, GNAT is just GNAT.

Re: OT:GNAT (Re: GPS - A new kind of IDE?)

[Wes Groleau]

> >When I saw the name at first on 1994, I, as a programmer,
> >thought it should be an acronym, irrelevant to insects.
> 
> Err - it *is* an acronym, for GNU Ada Translator.

Actually GNU NYU Ada Translator.
         G   N   A   T

but if the creators want to declare
a new interpretation, I won't argue.

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

Re: OT:GNAT (Re: GPS - A new kind of IDE?)

[John McCabe]

On Thu, 09 May 2002 08:44:40 -0500, Wes Groleau
<wesgroleau@despammed.com> wrote:

>> Err - it *is* an acronym, for GNU Ada Translator.

>Actually GNU NYU Ada Translator.
>         G   N   A   T

Oops - of course.

>but if the creators want to declare
>a new interpretation, I won't argue.

I wasn't aware that they had, but if that *is* the case then it's fair
enough.

Re: OT:GNAT (Re: GPS - A new kind of IDE?)

[Pascal Obry]

john.nospam@nospamassen.nospamdemon.co.uk (John McCabe) writes:

> I wasn't aware that they had, but if that *is* the case then it's fair
> enough.

The problem was with "Translator", a lot of peoples thought that GNAT
translated Ada to C and then compile. This is wrong as everybody knows at
this point.

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|         http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.obry
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"
--|
--| gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.pgp.net --recv-key C1082595

Re: OT:GNAT (Re: GPS - A new kind of IDE?)

[John McCabe]

On 09 May 2002 17:35:31 +0200, Pascal Obry <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> wrote:

>
>john.nospam@nospamassen.nospamdemon.co.uk (John McCabe) writes:
>
>> I wasn't aware that they had, but if that *is* the case then it's fair
>> enough.
>
>The problem was with "Translator", a lot of peoples thought that GNAT
>translated Ada to C and then compile. This is wrong as everybody knows at
>this point.

Yes - that was an *extremely* common misconception, even though it
could have made some sense (well, for Ada83 I guess). I made it myself
actually until I was put right.

Re: OT:GNAT (Re: GPS - A new kind of IDE?)

[Preben Randhol]

On Thu, 09 May 2002 08:44:40 -0500, Wes Groleau wrote:
> 
> Actually GNU NYU Ada Translator.
>          G   N   A   T
> 
> but if the creators want to declare
> a new interpretation, I won't argue.

Perhaps it now is:

GNAT Not A Translator
G    N   A T

It should also fulfil the recursiveness of GNU abbreviations ;-)

Preben
-- 
�There are three things you can do to a woman. You can love her, suffer
 for her, or turn her into literature.�  - Justine, by Lawrence Durrell

Re: OT:GNAT (Re: GPS - A new kind of IDE?)

[Toshitaka Kumano]

"Alexandre E. Kopilovitch" wrote:
> As far as I understand, there was a person, inside the team of the initial
> creators of GNAT, at the French side, Kirille Comar (or Komar, it doesn't mean
> for the issue). And "comar" (and also "komar") in Russian transliteration
> means exactly "gnat".

Of ACT-Europe?

Eureka!

# From my shabby Russian dictionary, I had learned "komar" as "mosquito".


> hypothesis -:)

Hypothesis?  Very convincing!
Thank you very much for the anecdote. I love it !


> Don't you feel that that picture reminds an airplane fighter?

Like this ?
http://www.holloman.af.mil/photos/f-117/990923.jpg


BTW, do you write Ada identifiers in Cyrillic alphabet ?

-- 
Toshitaka Kumano
Kamakura
Japan

Re: OT:GNAT (Re: GPS - A new kind of IDE?)

[Ed Falis]

Alexandre E. Kopilovitch wrote:
> Toshitaka Kumano <kumano@cl.cilas.net> wrote:
> 
>>I always wonder why the great compiler has such a misleading name :-)
> 
> 
> As far as I understand, there was a person, inside the team of the initial
> creators of GNAT, at the French side, Kirille Comar (or Komar, it doesn't mean
> for the issue). And "comar" (and also "komar") in Russian transliteration
> means exactly "gnat". Assuming that Russian nationality of this person (his
> first name suggests that), one may guess that the source of the name "GNAT" for
> the compiler was from there. ... Hm, I hope nobody will annoyed by this beautiful
> hypothesis -:)

Ah well, Cyrille is thoroughly French.  But hypotheses are fun, no?

So, in that vein, perhaps GNAT was a fly in the ointment for established 
vendors (one of whom I worked for at the time).  ;-)

- Ed

Re: OT:GNAT (Re: GPS - A new kind of IDE?)

[Cyrille Comar]

> As far as I understand, there was a person, inside the team of the initial
> creators of GNAT, at the French side, Kirille Comar (or Komar, it doesn't mean
> for the issue). And "comar" (and also "komar") in Russian transliteration
> As far as I understand, there was a person, inside the team of the
> initial creators of GNAT, at the French side, Kirille Comar (or
> Komar, it doesn't mean for the issue). And "comar" (and also
> "komar") in Russian transliteration means exactly "gnat". Assuming
> that Russian nationality of this person (his first name suggests
> that), one may guess that the source of the name "GNAT" for the
> compiler was from there. ... Hm, I hope nobody will annoyed by this
> beautiful hypothesis -:)

This is a funny hypothesis but it is not an accurate one :-( I joined
the GNAT project relatively early on (in 1993) but the name of the
project had already been settled for a long time.  When I joined I
didn't have the foggiest idea of what GNAT meant in English and when I
discovered it, I did indeed have the feeling of being predestined for
the job;-)

Concerning my nationality, once again I am sorry to disappoint you but
it is very French and for some time already. We have a family tale
relating that our family would have migrated from Poland with Marie
Leszczinska when she married Louis XV, a French King from the early
18th century... but this is at least 10 generations back and the family
tree becomes fuzzy before that...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cyrille Comar                       Email:      comar@act-europe.fr
ACT Europe                          Phone:      +33 1 4970 6716
8 rue de Milan                      Fax:        +33 1 4970 0552
75009, France                       www:        http://www.act-europe.fr

Re: OT:GNAT (Re: GPS - A new kind of IDE?)

[Ted Dennison]

comar@act-europe.fr (Cyrille Comar) wrote in message news:<1cf9fecf.0205100226.696937e8@posting.google.com>...
> This is a funny hypothesis but it is not an accurate one :-( I joined

Well, since it was decided that GNAT no longer is an acronym, a good
reason for the name is now needed. Its a shame we have to let a
trifling thing like the truth get in the way of this one. :-(

Perhaps we should just say that its because bugs like the majestic
Gnat should be flying free, not be trapped within our computer
programs. :-)

> Concerning my nationality, once again I am sorry to disappoint you but
> it is very French and for some time already. We have a family tale
> relating that our family would have migrated from Poland with Marie

Polish and Russian are fairly closely related though (well...they are
both Slavic anyway). So it seems likely that it would mean something
similar in Polish. Does it?

-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: OT:GNAT (Re: GPS - A new kind of IDE?)

[Alexandre E. Kopilovitch]

>> Don't you feel that that picture reminds an airplane fighter?
>
>Like this ?
>http://www.holloman.af.mil/photos/f-117/990923.jpg

Well. I think yes.


>BTW, do you write Ada identifiers in Cyrillic alphabet ?

No, never. First, I'm in Saint-Petersburg, at the western edge of Russia, and
traditionally, the partisans of Russification/Cyrillization of the programming
languages were concentrated in Novosibirsk (the regional "capital" of Siberia).
Second. almost all actual and potential users and customers are outside of Russia
(one can say that we simply have too few own tasks here, except. of course, of
dirty accounting on PCs). Third, Cyrillic encoding itself is an epic poem -;)
- currently there are 3 competing encodings in wide use - so-called "Windows"
(1251), "KOI-8R", and "alternative" (which was de facto standard for MS DOS).
Therefore, it is quite unreliable to send e-mail in Cyrillic to your Russian
friend if you do not know in advance that the recipient will be able to read
your Cyrillic encoding -:(


Alexander Kopilovitch                      aek@vib.usr.pu.ru
Saint-Petersburg
Russia

Re: OT:GNAT (Re: GPS - A new kind of IDE?)

[Michal Nowak]

On 2002-05-10 at 08:09 dennison@telepath.com wrote:

>Well, since it was decided that GNAT no longer is an acronym, a good
>reason for the name is now needed. Its a shame we have to let a
>trifling thing like the truth get in the way of this one. :-(

[cut about flying bugs]

>Polish and Russian are fairly closely related though (well...they are
>both Slavic anyway). So it seems likely that it would mean something
>similar in Polish. Does it?

Yes it does. But something totally not similar. Gnat in Polish means
"bone". Rather big one, possibly from a carrion. So it is negative
meaning, with bad association...:-(. Gnat is not exception here, 
glut (from GLUT) means err,... something not pleasant. Maybe somewhere
in the world GNAT has some positive, nice meaning?

Mike

Re: OT:GNAT (Re: GPS - A new kind of IDE?)

[Robert Dewar]

Michal Nowak <vinnie@inetia.pl> wrote in message news:<mailman.1021062903.6076.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>...

> Maybe somewhere
> in the world GNAT has some positive, nice meaning?

We like to think that is true in the Ada world at least :-)

Re: OT:GNAT (Re: GPS - A new kind of IDE?)

[Michal Nowak]

On 2002-05-10 at 22:35 Michal Nowak wrote:
>On 2002-05-10 at 08:09 dennison@telepath.com wrote:

>>Polish and Russian are fairly closely related though (well...they are
>>both Slavic anyway). So it seems likely that it would mean something
>>similar in Polish. Does it?
>
>Yes it does. But something totally not similar. Gnat in Polish means

I was kindly pointed, that I misunderstood the question (what resulted
in wrong answer). Well, "komar" in Polish means "mosquito", so this also
is no progress. Maybe GNAT should be just its own GNAT, just like there
are name like "kylix" or "ximian".

Mike