RE: GUI toolkit for Ada again

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

From: Bob Leif
To: McDoobie et al.

I looked at a book on the spreadsheet. It appeared that the spreadsheet
still had the same bad design as Excel. The columns and rows could not be
renamed. Presently, our corporate books are kept on two computers, which
share the same keyboard and printer. We continue to use Lotus IMPROV, which
is the only spreadsheet I know off that has a reasonable design.
Unfortunately, IMPROV itself had the gross deficiency that it can not run on
a version of Windows latter than 3.1. I would be ecstatic to replace IMPROV;
but, not with an inferior product. I should note that Excel xp does run in
an XML mode. A spreadsheet written in Ada as an XML application that was
based on software engineering principles including the use of decimal
numbers, particularly for money, would be a revolutionary product. An Ada J
code compiler would provide an excellent macro language.

I just tried to make Word xp behave like FrameMaker. Needless to say, the
artificial stupidity engine did its thing. The equivalent of FrameMaker in
XML based on Ada would be a great improvement. The spreadsheet would then be
the tables in the text editor.

As far as the database, ask Lockheed-Martin, it has already been written. If
any of you really wish to raise your blood pressure, please look at
http://plan.cancer.gov/ and look at the section Informatics and Information
Flow http://plan.cancer.gov/infbuilding.htm. Then think of what an Ada based
relational-object database could do for clinical trials and cancer research
in general. We taxpayers have already funded this tool. Why is medical and
other necessary research denied access to it?

An office product would be an excellent subject to discuss at the SIGAda
2001 Workshop on �Creating a Symbiotic Relationship Between XML and Ada�.

-----Original Message-----
From: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org
[mailto:comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org]On Behalf Of McDoobie
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2001 8:19 PM
To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
Subject: RE: GUI toolkit for Ada again


In article <mailman.994462029.11996.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>, "Robert C.
Leif, Ph.D." <rleif@rleif.com> wrote:

> From: Bob Leif To: Gart Scott, Larry Kilgallen et al.
>
> At SIGAda 2001, I will chair a workshop, "Creating a Symbiotic
> Relationship Between XML and Ada". One of the main subjects of this
> workshop will be, what is the status and what needs to be done to create
> a portable GUI based on XML and Ada?
>
> I might note that a very significant part of a simple, user-friendly,
> small, commercial operating system could be based on an XML/Ada GUI and
> the following Ada components: a real-time kernel, Ada-POSIX, and an Ada
> 95 based object-relational database. The addition of a rationally
> designed Ada/XML Office suite would be a life-saver application. I will
> leave the term, killer application, to the present commercial
> manufacturers' products, which are very good at increasing stress.
>
>

Have we considered investigating Open Office at www.openoffice.org for
just such an endeavor? It's cross platform, Open Source, and handles
Microsoft Office data formats.
I've looked at it, and it certainly appears that it fits right in with the
description you've given above. It also appears that good chunks of it
could stand a good sound rewrite in Ada code. It's pretty jumbled right now.

Your opinion?

McDoobie
chris@dont.spam.me