Information Systems Annex was RE: Dispatching and generics - language lawyer question

["Robert C. Leif" <rleif@rleif.com>]

From: Bob Leif
To: Robert Dewar et al.

"(there are lots of things in GNAT that are very interesting
but don't get used, e.g. the entire Information Systems
Annex :-)" 
This is very unfortunate. I would prefer financial institutions employ
reliable software that works in decimals. One problem with the
Information Systems Annex is that it was to some extent based on COBOL,
particularly, the picture clause. For both marketing and technical
reasons, I believe that the Information Systems Annex would make an
excellent engine for an XML based system. In terms of Ada, the XML
Pattern element has some excellent layout features and capabilities.
However, some of its syntax is too terse. An Ada version would increase
the utility of the Information Systems Annex.

I also believe that a way around the static requirement for Ada decimals
should be created. I still would like to use the slide-rule formula to
calculate the exponent. Would a pragma To_Static be possible?

-----Original Message-----
From: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org
[mailto:comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org] On Behalf Of Robert Dewar
Sent: Monday, August 12, 2002 5:45 AM
To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
Subject: Re: Dispatching and generics - language lawyer question

Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com> wrote in message
news:<1028303374.179416@master.nyc.kbcfp.com>...

> I think that the GNAT creators would disagree with you.
> As far as I know, they make corresponding Ada and C++
> objects layout compatible. Perhaps one of them will
> explain why.


That's a bit confused. The layout of tagged types in
GNAT is defined by the body of the run-time unit Ada.Tags.
Whether this corresponds or not to some particular C++
compiler depends on whether you tailor Ada.Tags
appropriately. 

In practice, the only significant use of the tight C++
binding of objects and tagged types in GNAT was by SGI
for some of their graphics packages, otherwise I don't
think the feature has been used. 

(there are lots of things in GNAT that are very interesting
but don't get used, e.g. the entire Information Systems
Annex :-)