RE: GUI was Re: why Ada is so unpopular ?

["amado.alves" <amado.alves@netcabo.pt>]

<<...
Various enthusiasts have suggested "Well let's go build one from 
bottom-dead-center and *make* it the library of choice..." - a noble 
ambition but one that *at best* would take a really long time...>>

There's another way: compromise. In the ASCLWG we eventually managed to agree upon selecting a pre-existing container library (Charles) to form the basis of the standard proposal. I didn't take long. The group was assembled in June 2002 (the Ada Europe workshop in Vienna), and the proposal was filed in September 2003 (AI-302/2). In the intervening dense discussion (circa 500 messages on the group list, plus circa 100 on the ARG forum) every one of us compromised about something from naming to featured abstractions to iteration methods.

If someone had started a similar process with GTK (or JEWL or...) we'd have it in Ada 2005, the standard GUI. Of course there is still plenty of time for a separate standard, or a reference API or whatever SIGAda calls it.

(I'm not disagreeing with anything, just telling a story.)