Re: A community Windows binding

["Alexander E. Kopilovich" <aek@VB1162.spb.edu>]

Jeffrey Carter wrote:

> Between callbacks and the single queue of events for all windows of JEWL 
> is an approach more suited to concurrent languages: multiple queues, one 
> per top-level window, with the assumption of one task per queue/window. 
> There should be the ability to select what events will be put in the 
> queue, and the possibility to combine queues when a window doesn't merit 
> its own task. Such an approach should scale better than JEWL's single 
> queue, and be more readable than callbacks.
>
> What would be ideal would be an Ada-centric windowing library, with 
> implementations based on Win32, X, and the like.

Well, message queue management can be made Ada-centric, and perhaps this is
really a good idea (but are there any preliminary works in this direction?
not necessarily already Ada-centric, perhaps some abstract foundations may
be of interest if they rely upon only those concepts that have adequate
representation in Ada).

But this (message queue managent) is just one aspect of full-scale windowing
library, and actually most users touch it only briefly. Much more heavily
used aspect is ontology, and the windowing ontologies of Win32 and X systems
aren't the same. For example, vast majority of Delphi users don't know the
term "canvas", but as far as I know, all X programmers are perfectly aware
of it.

Also, full-scale windowing library always use containers rather heavily.
But reading all discussions on AI-302 (Container Library) I never seen a sign
of recognition of this need.





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