Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[chris.danx]

"Brian Orpin" <abuse@borpin.co.uk> wrote in message
news:f49tktghbv140bg63a292jul1h940pj5pt@4ax.com...
> On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 02:47:46 GMT, "DuckE" <nospam_steved94@home.com>
> wrote:
>
> >So yes, I do see the need for these features in the form of an IDE for
> >Windows.  The Windows front end on Emacs is not consistant with other
> >windows programs.  Such an editor is definitely desirable.
>
> Your assumption is that all users are 'Windows' users.

That's not what Steve(?) said at all.  "an IDE for Windows" is not saying all
users are Windows users, it's an IDE for Windows users.

If ppl want Ada to become popular, you have to appeal to the biggest potential
user base, which is the Windows platform.  However much some of you may dislike
the OS, it is the domininant OS and there is no denying it.

I'm doing this IDE because

a) I (and others) need compiler configurability

b) It's an interesting problem comprising of many different
   problems, algorithms and solutions

c) It gives me experience with working on slightly
   bigger apps and managing it all

d) It's a project I can do

e) I'll learn from it.

f) It may do something for Ada*

g) It'll be free and it's


[   Oh yeah, no way am I distribing patches to versions in dif(f) files.  I hate
them, I have nothing but trouble with them, and see no reason for their use in
the modern age.  Everything you need will go in one zip and no bloomin'
iffs.  ]

Jerry Coffin and I have had a discussion of various issues related to the IDE
and it's design on the alt.os.development thread "Re: Ada ? C ? was Re: Jochen
Liedtke has died".  I know the title is a bit iffy, discussing Ada under a
thread that started with a principle L4 developer, but you may want to take a
look through the discussion if curious about the IDE and where it's at...


> Emacs predates

No argument

> Windoze and is available on just about any platform and any OS.

I see no reason why that should be achievable for an IDE (though I have no wish
to do so at present).  One possibility would be to port gwindows to wine or
something, but i'm unsure about this and it's a lot of work.

> You can
> invoke modes to make it 'more Windows like' if you wish.

Yeah, but can you click..click..click , and do this if you don't know how to use
it?  I've never had to look through a bunch of help files to find out how to use
anything like JBuilder or ConTEXT!

[** HCI bit **]

Fitt's law:

(try http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~cs5724/g1/#procons for examples of fitt's law)

tell's us that keystroke interface will win over a totally GUI based solution,
for competent users.  But GUI interfaces do feature keystrokes for at least the
critical functions, making them as fast for competent users for critical tasks.
For non-critical tasks, there is a penalty for the traditional GUI interface.


My thoughts:

The penalty for GUI systems is offset by the familiarity of the interface and
the previous knowledge the user has accumulated in the world (other GUI IDEs).
A keystroke interface, while desirable for experienced users, doesn't allow
knowledge accumulated in the world to be transferred as readily to new
scenarios.  In the case of Emacs however, this is eliminated by the near total
uniformity of the key interface accross various different editing modes.

Comparing the learning curves of a GUI IDE, and a keystroke interface leads me
to the conclusion that a GUI IDE is a suitable candidate for the majority of
uses in circumstances where the time available is tight, or the developer is
eager to get working and they are unfamiliar with the Emacs interface.

Also this analysis applies to the more traditional GUI technologies e.g. linear
menus.  A pie menu on the other hand may offer comparible performance to
keystroke interface, though this needs further investigation.  The benefit of
the pie-menu is negated to some extent by the time it will take for a user to
learn this concept, and become familiar with the mouse ahead sequences.  The
latter will IMO require less time to learn than the keystroke approach.  While
the former requires very little time (and at least a two button mouse :-) ).


NOTE:

If the developer is familiar with Emacs, then he or she is free to use it,
unless their manager objects.

[end HCI bit]


> That is of course what Tutorials (built in) and FAQs are about.

Again, the Windows GUI based IDEs are much easier to learn to use (ok, there are
some oddballs, but those designers haven't read "the design of everyday things"
by Norman :-) ), and it's likely
managers don't want to have a high learning curve for tools.


Chris Campbell

*Ada 95 is a nice language but I'm no die hard.  It's not a good tool for
certain problems and I freely acknowledge this.  When a problem arises and Ada
doesn't offer an elegant solution other languages are used.

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Michael Erdmann]

"chris.danx" schrieb:

> That's not what Steve(?) said at all.  "an IDE for Windows" is not saying all
> users are Windows users, it's an IDE for Windows users.
>
> If ppl want Ada to become popular, you have to appeal to the biggest potential
> user base, which is the Windows platform.  However much some of you may dislike
> the OS, it is the domininant OS and there is no denying it.

You are right, but keep it potable between platforms e.g. GTK for
Linux.

> I'm doing this IDE because
>
> a) I (and others) need compiler configurability

Why, most of the commercial compilers include an IDE. The times are long a
go, that a compiler was just an CLI issue.  Only the GNAT is not cleanly integrated

into an IDE (except for GLIDE which i dont like)

> b) It's an interesting problem comprising of many different
>    problems, algorithms and solutions
>
> c) It gives me experience with working on slightly
>    bigger apps and managing it all

An IDE is a quite  big application. Assume at least 2 ot 3 PY in average depending
on the functionatlity. The effort will increase dramatically with the user
configuration options.

> d) It's a project I can do

I you start such a project i like to work on this issue as well. Did you already
thought about a home site for the project? May be sourceforge.net is a
good location.

> e) I'll learn from it.

This is for sure. May be it should not be written in Ada at all, may be in Java?

> f) It may do something for Ada*

This is where i am not so sure, but i displike the environment which
is currently available the the GNAT.

Regards
    M.Erdmann

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[chris.danx]

> > That's not what Steve(?) said at all.  "an IDE for Windows" is not saying
all
> > users are Windows users, it's an IDE for Windows users.
> >
> > If ppl want Ada to become popular, you have to appeal to the biggest
potential
> > user base, which is the Windows platform.  However much some of you may
dislike
> > the OS, it is the domininant OS and there is no denying it.
>
> You are right, but keep it potable between platforms e.g. GTK for
> Linux.

That means there can be no use of GWindows and using GTK/Ada instead.  I might
consider that, but I'm not familiar with Gtk at all, and it needs to support
accelerator keys, make plugins possible, allow dynamic menus, allow custom
controls to be created, and more.  Also is Gtk not scripted, slowing the whole
thing down?


> > I'm doing this IDE because
> >
> > a) I (and others) need compiler configurability
>
> Why, most of the commercial compilers include an IDE. The times are long a
> go, that a compiler was just an CLI issue.  Only the GNAT is not cleanly
integrated
>
> into an IDE (except for GLIDE which i dont like)

My thought isn't that it should deal exclusively with Ada (only in the
beginning) but should allow a programmer to use other languages and tools from
within the IDE, link it all together, debug it, etc.  Maybe never needing to
leave the environment to completely build the program.  However I'd be happy if
it handled different Ada compilers seamlessly.



> > d) It's a project I can do
>
> I you start such a project i like to work on this issue as well. Did you
already
> thought about a home site for the project? May be sourceforge.net is a
> good location.

Even a little help would be great, but if not then that's ok, i'm prepared for
the level of work and can handle it.

I don't have a home site yet, and only a little code.  Most of what I've done in
the last few days has been to design a minimal IDE that will make up the first
prototype.  The prototype isn't a release, just an experiment in compiler
configuration.  There is to be no Syntax Highlighting and minimal features in
the 1st prototype.


> > e) I'll learn from it.
>
> This is for sure. May be it should not be written in Ada at all, may be in
Java?

Away you and ... The ide's written in Java I've used have been really slow and
had patchy graphics, well just crap and that was with JIT on.

{ If anyones looking for a fast cross platform technology check out Juice (it's
really fast, whips JVM), the only drawback is they didn't do much with it and
it's not well known (and needs patience and commitment); I say someone should
get an Ada compiler for it.  Then Juice and Ada would blow Java out the water,
well out of the fabric of space and time actually.

The ppl who developed it made the mistake of tying development to the Oberon
Environment, but it can run in diff browsers and all that's needed is a stand
alone version, so you can run and develop apps!  It's a real nice fast system
that could make Sun (and .NET) needing Cocodamol.
 }



Chris

RE: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Robert C. Leif, Ph.D.]

From: Bob Leif
To: Chris Danx et al.

I totally agree that, "My thought isn't that it should deal exclusively with
Ada (only in the
beginning) but should allow a programmer to use other languages and tools
from
within the IDE, link it all together, debug it, etc."

This could be accomplished by creating an IDE based on XML and driven by
Ada. Each language would have its own schema. Besides Ada, a schema for XML
should be included. I hope to have a discussion and would welcome one or
more presentations on this subject 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 chris.danx
Sent: Saturday, July 14, 2001 5:52 AM
To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
Subject: Re: An Ada IDE and discussions


> > That's not what Steve(?) said at all.  "an IDE for Windows" is not
saying
all
> > users are Windows users, it's an IDE for Windows users.
> >
> > If ppl want Ada to become popular, you have to appeal to the biggest
potential
> > user base, which is the Windows platform.  However much some of you may
dislike
> > the OS, it is the domininant OS and there is no denying it.
>
> You are right, but keep it potable between platforms e.g. GTK for
> Linux.

That means there can be no use of GWindows and using GTK/Ada instead.  I
might
consider that, but I'm not familiar with Gtk at all, and it needs to support
accelerator keys, make plugins possible, allow dynamic menus, allow custom
controls to be created, and more.  Also is Gtk not scripted, slowing the
whole
thing down?


> > I'm doing this IDE because
> >
> > a) I (and others) need compiler configurability
>
> Why, most of the commercial compilers include an IDE. The times are long a
> go, that a compiler was just an CLI issue.  Only the GNAT is not cleanly
integrated
>
> into an IDE (except for GLIDE which i dont like)

My thought isn't that it should deal exclusively with Ada (only in the
beginning) but should allow a programmer to use other languages and tools
from
within the IDE, link it all together, debug it, etc.  Maybe never needing to
leave the environment to completely build the program.  However I'd be happy
if
it handled different Ada compilers seamlessly.



> > d) It's a project I can do
>
> I you start such a project i like to work on this issue as well. Did you
already
> thought about a home site for the project? May be sourceforge.net is a
> good location.

Even a little help would be great, but if not then that's ok, i'm prepared
for
the level of work and can handle it.

I don't have a home site yet, and only a little code.  Most of what I've
done in
the last few days has been to design a minimal IDE that will make up the
first
prototype.  The prototype isn't a release, just an experiment in compiler
configuration.  There is to be no Syntax Highlighting and minimal features
in
the 1st prototype.


> > e) I'll learn from it.
>
> This is for sure. May be it should not be written in Ada at all, may be in
Java?

Away you and ... The ide's written in Java I've used have been really slow
and
had patchy graphics, well just crap and that was with JIT on.

{ If anyones looking for a fast cross platform technology check out Juice
(it's
really fast, whips JVM), the only drawback is they didn't do much with it
and
it's not well known (and needs patience and commitment); I say someone
should
get an Ada compiler for it.  Then Juice and Ada would blow Java out the
water,
well out of the fabric of space and time actually.

The ppl who developed it made the mistake of tying development to the Oberon
Environment, but it can run in diff browsers and all that's needed is a
stand
alone version, so you can run and develop apps!  It's a real nice fast
system
that could make Sun (and .NET) needing Cocodamol.
 }



Chris

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Stefan Skoglund]

"chris.danx" wrote:
> That means there can be no use of GWindows and using GTK/Ada instead.  I might
> consider that, but I'm not familiar with Gtk at all, and it needs to support
> accelerator keys, make plugins possible, allow dynamic menus, allow custom
> controls to be created, and more.  Also is Gtk not scripted, slowing the whole
> thing down?

Do Gtk+ support acc keys (graphical artistis likes acc. keys) yes
Plugins (script-fu in gimp) yes
Dynamic menus yes.
Custom controls yes
Gtk+ scripted NO
libglade gives you an application whose GUI is stored as a xml file.

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Marin David Condic]

The last time I looked at Gtk, my conclusion was this: "It has potential. It
needs a good 'How To' book"

It does work on Windows (I had some installation problems) and Unix systems,
so you gain a lot in the way of portability. However, its look-and-feel is
un-Windows-ish. Maybe thats a good thing - maybe not - that's a matter of
perspective. Its a classic problem - if you want portability, you have to
play to the least common denominator between systems. Personally, I'd like
to have the portability.

You may want to take a serious look at Gtk. For me (since I have to actually
earn a living doing something that doesn't involve playing with things like
Gnat & Gtk), I'm waiting for it to mature some more before taking another
pass at it. The reason for me is that the Motif-ish style of building a GUI
wasn't intuitively obvious (my world is different) and there was not a good
"Let me take you step-by-step through the process of building a GUI with
Gtk" manual available. I'd received advice to read up on the underlying C
calls and got pointed at related documents of similar flavor. If I had the
time, I suppose I could delve into it and learn enough to make it work.
Maybe by now someone has written a "How To" guide for it & I should take
another glance at it? I certainly wouldn't discourage you from looking it
over.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"chris.danx" <chris.danx@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:JeX37.39341$B56.8075497@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com...
>
> That means there can be no use of GWindows and using GTK/Ada instead.  I
might
> consider that, but I'm not familiar with Gtk at all, and it needs to
support
> accelerator keys, make plugins possible, allow dynamic menus, allow custom
> controls to be created, and more.  Also is Gtk not scripted, slowing the
whole
> thing down?
>
>

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Ted Dennison]

In article <ytL37.37665$B56.7588180@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>, chris.danx
says...
>I'm doing this IDE because

Well certianly don't let blowhards like myself deter you from writing this. If
its got you exited enough to do it, go for it.

Anyway, it'd be good to point newbies to. Emacs will always be there when they
are ready to do real work. ;-)


---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Ted Dennison]

In article <JeX37.39341$B56.8075497@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>, chris.danx
says...
>controls to be created, and more.  Also is Gtk not scripted, slowing the whole
>thing down?

No, you are probably thinking of TK. Gtk is written in C and has a C interface.
Its a rather nice toolkit too. The only thing I'd really like to see that it
doesn't have is some kind of loadable interface definition language, like UIL.
But if you are set on something that will be intuitively familiar to Windows
users, you'd probably be better off using the base Windows UI, as Gtk probably
doesn't have an equivalent for *everything*.

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Al Christians]

Ted Dennison wrote:
> 
> In article <JeX37.39341$B56.8075497@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>, chris.danx
> says...
> >controls to be created, and more.  Also is Gtk not scripted, slowing the whole
> >thing down?
> 
> No, you are probably thinking of TK. Gtk is written in C and has a C interface.
> Its a rather nice toolkit too. The only thing I'd really like to see that it
> doesn't have is some kind of loadable interface definition language, like UIL.
> But if you are set on something that will be intuitively familiar to Windows
> users, you'd probably be better off using the base Windows UI, as Gtk probably
> doesn't have an equivalent for *everything*.
> 

I have the idea that it is expected that GNAT will soon (whatever that
means, say over the next couple of years) be more compatible with the
other gcc implementations, in particular the c++ compiler.  Will that
make it easier for Ada code compiled by GNAT to interoperate with C++ 
gui code (eg wxWindows and/or fltk)?  

If that was possible, I would suggest that it might be better to try
to promote Ada as a powerful back-end engine, and not get into one of
these 10-year gui toolkit projects (look at how long wxWindows has been
developing, eg).   

In a good gui development system, maybe the developer doesn't have a
lot of need to look at the gui code and doesn't care what kind of 
language it's in. Graphical programming (graphically connecting UI 
the rest of the program) as in IBM Visual Age might be fine.  So 
might XML.  Who cares where it goes from there? 

An Ada IDE with gui builder could build a UI in c++ for one of the c++ 
toolkits and hide the c++ so that the developer would not normally 
see it.  There is some kind of gui spaghetti that develops when one
starts writing too much code in the middle of gui classes.  An IDE that
prevented this by forcing separation of UI and implementation could be 
advantageous.  

Al

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Mark Lundquist]

"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:K4F47.21102$Kf3.266366@www.newsranger.com...
> In article <JeX37.39341$B56.8075497@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>,
chris.danx
> says...
> >controls to be created, and more.  Also is Gtk not scripted, slowing the
whole
> >thing down?
>
> No, you are probably thinking of TK. Gtk is written in C and has a C
interface.

And just to clarify, there is no relationship between Tk and Gtk, beyond the
common letters in the names!

-- mark

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Ed Falis]

Al Christians wrote:An Ada IDE with gui builder could build a UI in c++ for one of
the c++

> toolkits and hide the c++ so that the developer would not normally
> see it.  There is some kind of gui spaghetti that develops when one
> starts writing too much code in the middle of gui classes.  An IDE that
> prevented this by forcing separation of UI and implementation could be
> advantageous.
>
> Al

GtkAda already works with the GTK+ "glade" GUI builder, with a choice of output
languages for source code, including Ada 95.  As far as windows look-and-feel goes,
there's a "redmond" GTK+ theme you can install on your machine that goes a good bit
of the way there.

- Ed

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Emmanuel Briot]

Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com> writes:
> No, you are probably thinking of TK. Gtk is written in C and has a C interface.
> Its a rather nice toolkit too. The only thing I'd really like to see that it
> doesn't have is some kind of loadable interface definition language, like UIL.
> But if you are set on something that will be intuitively familiar to Windows
> users, you'd probably be better off using the base Windows UI, as Gtk probably
> doesn't have an equivalent for *everything*.


I'm in no way a UIL expert, but Gtk has something similar, based on XML. You
can dynamically load an interface written in XML. There's even a GUI builder to
generate the XML for you.

The only potential problem is for callbacks, since you need to actually write
them yourself, but then in a compiled language I don't see how it would
work. Any idea welcome.

Emmanuel

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Emmanuel Briot]

"Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> writes:

> The last time I looked at Gtk, my conclusion was this: "It has potential. It
> needs a good 'How To' book"


And of course, being a person who really wants to develop Ada, you decided to
contribute one, so that Ada could be used by more developers... I must have
missed it, though.


> The reason for me is that the Motif-ish style of building a GUI
> wasn't intuitively obvious (my world is different) and there was not a good
> "Let me take you step-by-step through the process of building a GUI with
> Gtk" manual available.

About the Motif-ish style: for people not completely aware of GUI programming,
this means that basically your interface is built through blocks and boxes,
that you embed in others boxes, and so on. This hugely facilitates the handling
of resizing, since the containers themselves take care of repositionning the
widgets at the right location.

Now, there's also a documented widget in GtkAda, called Gtk_Fixed, that
provides the windows style of programming (for the few things I know about
windows), that is you specify the coordinates and sizes of the widgets. This is
of course usable from the GUI builder. So the restriction Marin is speaking
about doesn't seem to apply. Of course, you are on your own to manage the
repositioning of widgets after the window has been resized by the user...



> I'd received advice to read up on the underlying C calls and got pointed at
> related documents of similar flavor. If I had the time, I suppose I could
> delve into it and learn enough to make it work.  Maybe by now someone has
> written a "How To" guide for it & I should take another glance at it? I
> certainly wouldn't discourage you from looking it over.

And I would say the same thing again: there are some very good books about C
programming and gtk+ programming. They fully apply to GtkAda, since basically
what is needed in a howto is to describe the various containers and explain how
to build an interface from there, not all the low-level details specific to Ada.

The only area where things are really different is for callbacks, and the
technics is fully describe in the 31 pages of the GtkAda user's guide.

You should really consider contributing such a howto, if you think the existing
documentation is not enough.

Of course, supported users of ACT do ask questions that get answered generally
very fast, so that they don't stay blocked...

Emmanuel

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Tor Fredrik Aas]

Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com> writes:

>... 
> doesn't have is some kind of loadable interface definition language, like UIL.
> But if you are set on something that will be intuitively familiar to Windows
>... 

But is has, GTK has glade for dynamic loadable interface descriptions. A underlying
XML based format, even has a nice graphical  dialog editor ( named glade, oddly enough ).
Loading of dialogs is done through libglade - you should read the documentation that comes
with libglade for more on this.

There is even a nice book for en introduction to GTK named "Developing Linux applications
with GTK and GLIB" or something like that. This is purely C, but it should tranfer quite easy
to ada I would guess, but then I have never used GtkAda ( might do that someday since I am forced
to do some ada work right now).

--
Tor Fredrik Aas

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[nicolas]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1438 bytes --]

"Emmanuel Briot" <briot@act-europe.fr> a �crit dans le message news:
m3r8vg5778.fsf@lyon.act-europe.fr...

> And of course, being a person who really wants to develop Ada, you decided
to
> contribute one, so that Ada could be used by more developers... I must
have
> missed it, though.
<snip>
>Now, there's also a documented widget in GtkAda, called Gtk_Fixed, that
>provides the windows style of programming (for the few things I know about
>windows),

More likely you missed what Marin said just a few lines below :
"(since I have to actually earn a living doing something that doesn't
involve playing with things like Gnat & Gtk)"

Honestly I don't think you can have the slightest hope to expand (and even
maintain) Ada use,
if you are not really competitive on Win32 platform whatever you think about
it.
That means that compiler vendors must provide everything so that potential
users won't see any regression or any increased complexity when they try Ada
for the first time.
More than that, they must really see benefits.
It includes debuggers, IDE, GUI (as intuitive and easy for Windows
developpers, as what they are used to)

I have no illusion about the feelings of a programmer coming to Ada and Java
for the first time,
and tries to build a basic application in both languages.
You cannot rely only on people who are already convinced that they have to
use Ada (Especially if they are not building Win32 applications)

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Marin David Condic]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3182 bytes --]

Well, its not *my* product and I don't earn a living directly or indirectly
from it so I'm more on the "customer" side of things. It kind of comes down
to this: If I'm trying to build a GUI, I have alternatives as to what tools
are available to do that job. If someone has a GUI builder out there that is
well documented and includes all the info I need to use it versus (maybe a
perfectly wonderful) tool that "hides its light under a bushel basket" by
not having all the info one needs to effectively use it, which way do you
think I'm likely to go?

I don't mean to criticise the guys building GtkAda and say that their tool
is doodoo. I've driven the tool enough to know that it does seem to work and
does provide a means of building GUIs that can be used on different
platforms. That's an achievement. However, as an "Art Critic" I'm picking on
what I perceive to be a certain lack of documentation that I believe is
needed to explain how to use the tool. I think the developers should take
that in the spirit in which it is offered - a helpful criticism that might
just serve to making a better & more successful product.

I've done GUI building on the Windows platform and you're right about
wanting things to look familiar. I'm willing to accept that the GtkAda GUI
builder operates on different concepts and that I would have to learn how to
develop using those concepts. That's where I'm saying there is a missing
layer of documentation. If a toolmaker wants to build something that
operates differently from what the end-user is used to seeing, maybe that is
a good thing, but to do so implies that the toolmaker is going to have to
help the customer transition to the new paradigm. Otherwise, we stick to
what we know... :-)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"nicolas" <n.brunot@cadwin.com> wrote in message
news:9j12ic$bvi$1@s1.read.news.oleane.net...
> "Emmanuel Briot" <briot@act-europe.fr> a �crit dans le message news:
> m3r8vg5778.fsf@lyon.act-europe.fr...
>
>
> More likely you missed what Marin said just a few lines below :
> "(since I have to actually earn a living doing something that doesn't
> involve playing with things like Gnat & Gtk)"
>
> Honestly I don't think you can have the slightest hope to expand (and even
> maintain) Ada use,
> if you are not really competitive on Win32 platform whatever you think
about
> it.
> That means that compiler vendors must provide everything so that potential
> users won't see any regression or any increased complexity when they try
Ada
> for the first time.
> More than that, they must really see benefits.
> It includes debuggers, IDE, GUI (as intuitive and easy for Windows
> developpers, as what they are used to)
>
> I have no illusion about the feelings of a programmer coming to Ada and
Java
> for the first time,
> and tries to build a basic application in both languages.
> You cannot rely only on people who are already convinced that they have to
> use Ada (Especially if they are not building Win32 applications)
>
>
>

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[chris.danx]

"Stefan Skoglund" <stetson@ebox.tninet.se> wrote in message
news:3B52CC1D.21CFB0B8@ebox.tninet.se...
> "chris.danx" wrote:
> > That means there can be no use of GWindows and using GTK/Ada instead.  I
might
> > consider that, but I'm not familiar with Gtk at all, and it needs to support
> > accelerator keys, make plugins possible, allow dynamic menus, allow custom
> > controls to be created, and more.  Also is Gtk not scripted, slowing the
whole
> > thing down?
>
> Do Gtk+ support acc keys (graphical artistis likes acc. keys) yes
> Plugins (script-fu in gimp) yes
> Dynamic menus yes.
> Custom controls yes
> Gtk+ scripted NO
> libglade gives you an application whose GUI is stored as a xml file.

Thanks, I was getting confused with tcl/tk or somthing.

I've been rather busy training my Ape, Kira, to be nice to those moany
villagers, but I will make a decision on Gtk soon (today or tommorrow).


Thanks again,
Chris Campbell

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Ted Dennison]

In article <v7telrgm1nf.fsf_-_@sun234.fof.kog.no>, Tor Fredrik Aas says...
>
>Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com> writes:
>
>> doesn't have is some kind of loadable interface definition language, like 
>> UIL. But if you are set on something that will be intuitively familiar to 

>But is has, GTK has glade for dynamic loadable interface descriptions. A 
>underlying XML based format, even has a nice graphical  dialog editor ( named 
>glade, oddly enough ).


When last I looked at it, I thought Glade created files which then got
translated into source code so that they can compiled and linked into the
application (after editing to add in any callback code). That's not even close
to the same thing.

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Ted Dennison]

In article <h3X47.42779$WS4.6503459@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com>, chris.danx
says...
>I've been rather busy training my Ape, Kira, to be nice to those moany
>villagers, but I will make a decision on Gtk soon (today or tommorrow).

Just rub his tummy a bit, give him a big pile of food, and leave him tied up to
the village store with the pink fluffy leash. :-)

That should give you enough time to start reading through the user guide at
http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/docs/gtkada_ug.html to see if it can do
everything you need. The widget hierarchy is at
http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/docs/gtkada_ug.html#SEC9 .

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

RE: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Robert C. Leif, Ph.D.]

From: Bob Leif
To: Emmanuel Briot et al.

Are you sure that you want callbacks? Could we use Ada tasks and protected
types. If necessary, you could expand your XML server.

-----Original Message-----
From: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org
[mailto:comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org]On Behalf Of Emmanuel Briot
Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2001 12:43 AM
To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
Subject: Re: An Ada IDE and discussions


Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com> writes:
> No, you are probably thinking of TK. Gtk is written in C and has a C
interface.
> Its a rather nice toolkit too. The only thing I'd really like to see that
it
> doesn't have is some kind of loadable interface definition language, like
UIL.
> But if you are set on something that will be intuitively familiar to
Windows
> users, you'd probably be better off using the base Windows UI, as Gtk
probably
> doesn't have an equivalent for *everything*.


I'm in no way a UIL expert, but Gtk has something similar, based on XML. You
can dynamically load an interface written in XML. There's even a GUI builder
to
generate the XML for you.

The only potential problem is for callbacks, since you need to actually
write
them yourself, but then in a compiled language I don't see how it would
work. Any idea welcome.

Emmanuel

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[nicolas]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2217 bytes --]

"Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> a �crit dans
le message news: 9j1ee8$258$1@nh.pace.co.uk...
> Well, its not *my* product and I don't earn a living directly or
indirectly
> from it so I'm more on the "customer" side of things.

Well, I just meant that if compiler vendors are waiting for their potential
customers to do their job, they'd better not be in a hurry :-)
Especially when they say more or less :
"You want to use Ada ? You should be ashamed not contributing to tools that
everybody expects to come with a decent compiler ..."

> to this: If I'm trying to build a GUI, I have alternatives as to what
tools
> are available to do that job. If someone has a GUI builder out there that
is
> well documented and includes all the info I need to use it versus (maybe a
> perfectly wonderful) tool that "hides its light under a bushel basket" by
> not having all the info one needs to effectively use it, which way do you
> think I'm likely to go?

I guess we agree that you are likely to go the same way every sensible
person would go ...

> I've done GUI building on the Windows platform and you're right about
> wanting things to look familiar. I'm willing to accept that the GtkAda GUI
> builder operates on different concepts and that I would have to learn how
to
> develop using those concepts. That's where I'm saying there is a missing
> layer of documentation. If a toolmaker wants to build something that
> operates differently from what the end-user is used to seeing, maybe that
is
> a good thing, but to do so implies that the toolmaker is going to have to
> help the customer transition to the new paradigm. Otherwise, we stick to
> what we know... :-)

Well, on that specific point, Win32 programming is such a standard, that I'm
not sure that there is any choice.
It's up to Ada vendors to provide something natural and intuitive for Win32
programmers if they want to survive.
Or at least something natural and intuitive to Java programmers who find
almost everything coming with their compiler.
Why trying to promote others concepts than those which satisfy almost
everybody ?
After all, Ada is about standards, reuse, and not invent the wheel again
every day.

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Marin David Condic]

Win32 programming *is* a standard of sorts that is widely used - millions of
people have it & use it daily. Hence ignoring that market is not wise. But
remember that the various flavors of Unix are *also* a kind of a standard
that is used by millions of people daily. Operating in that environment is
very important as well.

Ada is (at least in part) about standards *and* portability. Its nice to be
able to build code on one machine and have it compile/run on another machine
with a very different architecture. To this end, I applaud GtkAda - it is
trying to provide a common GUI building environment across two very
different platforms & from what I gather is succeeding at that. It is hard
to merge the two systems without settling on *some* style that is going to
clash with the other style. Is it wise to adopt the Unix/Motif look-&-feel
and try to force Windows into that mode? Or should the Windows L&F have been
forced onto the Unix side? Take your pick - some substantial part of the
computer programming & using weorld is going to be unhappy.

I guess that since the GtkAda started from the Gtk/Unix world, the choice
got made to move that style to the Windows side. Should they have pitched
the style & started fresh? They might not have had a product at all if they
did. Certainly, they'd face competition from Claw and others. It might have
become a "me too!" product that had no special niche.

I won't gripe about GtkAda not fitting the paradigm I'm used to. I'd
consider it as a potential tool if a) I was developing in Ada and b) I
needed portability between Unix & Windows. (If I was Windows only, I'd want
something that did the L&F of Windows rather than a compromise.) One could
also evaluate the possibility of using Ada and Java to produce systems that
were portable - and even Internet ready, so there are alternatives. The
decision would come down to a comparison of environments & features & price
and so on. The minute you remove constraint A (develop in Ada) the choices
expand a lot. Hence if the objective is to build apps that are portable
between Unix and Windows, GtkAda has to stack up favorably against a lot of
other players. So the question for the developers is "What market(s) are you
shooting for and how do you stack up against the competitors in that
market?"

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/



"nicolas" <n.brunot@cadwin.com> wrote in message
news:%vY47.3041$Aw2.4266090@nnrp6.proxad.net...
>
> Well, on that specific point, Win32 programming is such a standard, that
I'm
> not sure that there is any choice.
> It's up to Ada vendors to provide something natural and intuitive for
Win32
> programmers if they want to survive.
> Or at least something natural and intuitive to Java programmers who find
> almost everything coming with their compiler.
> Why trying to promote others concepts than those which satisfy almost
> everybody ?
> After all, Ada is about standards, reuse, and not invent the wheel again
> every day.
>

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[chris.danx]

"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:1SX47.22269$Kf3.285163@www.newsranger.com...
> In article <h3X47.42779$WS4.6503459@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com>, chris.danx
> says...
> >I've been rather busy training my Ape, Kira, to be nice to those moany
> >villagers, but I will make a decision on Gtk soon (today or tommorrow).
>
> Just rub his tummy a bit, give him a big pile of food, and leave him tied up
to
> the village store with the pink fluffy leash. :-)

Tried that with this ape.  She's got a mind of his own and wanders off even
though Kira's still tied to the store (looking for fish would you believe?).
Stupid ape... I'm trading her in for a tiger.  He might not be smart but at
least he won't wander for miles looking for fish!!!  No, he'll just pick up the
first villager he comes across.

> That should give you enough time to start reading through the user guide at
> http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/docs/gtkada_ug.html to see if it can do
> everything you need. The widget hierarchy is at
> http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/docs/gtkada_ug.html#SEC9 .

Thanks Ted, do you know of a tutorial (I only found the ACT one and it wasn't
downloadable)?


Thanks Again,
Chris Campbell

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Ted Dennison]

In article <X8X47.22203$Kf3.282197@www.newsranger.com>, Ted Dennison says...
>
>In article <v7telrgm1nf.fsf_-_@sun234.fof.kog.no>, Tor Fredrik Aas says...
>>
>>But is has, GTK has glade for dynamic loadable interface descriptions. A 
>>underlying XML based format, even has a nice graphical  dialog editor ( named 
>>glade, oddly enough ).
>
>
>When last I looked at it, I thought Glade created files which then got
>translated into source code so that they can compiled and linked into the
>application (after editing to add in any callback code). That's not even close
>to the same thing.

While finding the link for someone else, I took the oppertunity to glance at
this part of the GTKAda UG. There is indeed a library (libglade) that you can
use to parse those files and load the appropriate widgets at runtime. UIL
actually has its own compiler to get the parsing out of runtime, but this is
pretty close. Its a shame I don't currently have a good excuse for trying it
out...

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Pascal Obry]

"Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> writes:

> Well, its not *my* product and I don't earn a living directly or indirectly
> from it so I'm more on the "customer" side of things. It kind of comes down

Well this is an Open Source project. In a sense this is OUR product. You can
build nice documentation for it, add some features that will make it the best
GUI builder in the world... and sell it if you like or sell you support or
whatever. Of course you'll need to also distribute the sources.

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"

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Marin David Condic]

Still sounds suspiciously like someone trying to get me to work for free.
:-)

If I had a business - or worked for one - in which GtkAda or some similar
products were part of the end product, I could see an argument for
contributing to the project. The "Rising Tide Lifts All Boats" argument
might be one reason I'd want to extend the basic product then let my
competitors have the enhancements. I might see a case where I sell the
enhancements for $$$ and maybe not make them available to my competitors.
(In this case, we're talking about a manual - not software - so I'm some
kind of value-added repackager.)

If my company were already in the process of utilizing this tool, I again
might (I stress, "might") find some reason as a customer why it is to my
benefit to make some enhancements and make those enhancements available to
the folks who sold me the tool - or the general public. A larger user
community might have some advantage to me, so providing enhancements may
encourage more use & I might gain from that. Maybe. (Why not just buy a tool
for a few hundred bucks that already has what I need - including the large
user community? A developer's time is *very* expensive in comparison.)

But if I'm just a part-time, home-brew, hacker, I don't see much advantage
to it. I develop some enhancements as a "Labor of Love" and give it away so
that some for-profit company can use it to generate more revenue? How do I
gain? Why not just keep it for myself?

Likewise, if my company does not have some kind of vested interest in the
toolset and is just shopping around for a toolset to get some job done,
where is there an incentive for me to do this? If my company wanted to be a
tool-building company, presumably we'd have done that already. If we just
have some job to do, we want to do it with our efforts concentrated on the
job - not tool building. Hence, we go select some tool that will do the job
and move on. If the tool doesn't do 100% of what we want, we evaluate other
tools to see how close we can get. If we find something that does 100% of
what we want, we might look at the price tag and make the classic "Make Or
Buy" decision - guess which way that is likely to go... So unless I
absolutely can't live without *this* tool and it absolutely needs *this*
enhancement and I can't pay someone to make the enhancement less that what
it would cost me to do it myself, where is the incentive for me to enhance
it? And if I do, where is the incentive to share it?

I guess I just don't see much advantage to doing that sort of work unless I
stand to gain in some way. How is it I gain if I am not either a tool vendor
or don't have a choice about toolsets and need some enhancement? I think
that is part of the problem with the GPL. It won't breed developers forever
because it doesn't incentivize them much. Sooner or later even computer
geeks will catch on. :-)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Pascal Obry" <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message
news:uzoa3phda.fsf@wanadoo.fr...
>
> Well this is an Open Source project. In a sense this is OUR product. You
can
> build nice documentation for it, add some features that will make it the
best
> GUI builder in the world... and sell it if you like or sell you support or
> whatever. Of course you'll need to also distribute the sources.
>

RE: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Beard, Frank]

I saw a demo, can't remember the product name, probably six or seven years
ago,
where the GUI interface was developed on a UNIX platform.  The vendor also
had
a set of libraries for Windows.  On Unix, it looked like Motif, but when it 
was linked on Windows it looked like Windows.  Granted the demo only had
some
drop down menus, a listbox or two, and some buttons.  Maybe someone will 
remember the product.  The problem for us was when the decision was made
to port to Windows they took away our Unix boxes.  The GUI builder only
worked
on Unix, but could be linked with their Windows libraries to have a Windows
product.  So, it sounded ideal if you needed your product running in both
environments; otherwise, Windows users would have no reason to go out and
buy a Unix box just to do the user interface.

I know one of the goals of Screen Machine, by Objective Interfaces, was to
allow creation of a highly portable UI across various OS's.  Anybody know
about that product?  And whatever happened to it?

There was another GUI builder product (I think) by Frontier Technologies
that I think was targeting both Unix and Windows (off of Unix for five
years and forget everything).  Anybody know about that product?

We were using Bluestone on HP-UX, but they didn't have anything for Windows
at the time, so we dropped interest in them.

It seems like GtkAda could take the same approach as the first product, or
Screen Machine, so the product looks like a native application depending
on where it's linked.

Frank

-----Original Message-----
From: Marin David Condic [mailto:marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com]

Win32 programming *is* a standard of sorts that is widely used - millions of
people have it & use it daily. Hence ignoring that market is not wise. But
remember that the various flavors of Unix are *also* a kind of a standard
that is used by millions of people daily. Operating in that environment is
very important as well.

Ada is (at least in part) about standards *and* portability. Its nice to be
able to build code on one machine and have it compile/run on another machine
with a very different architecture. To this end, I applaud GtkAda - it is
trying to provide a common GUI building environment across two very
different platforms & from what I gather is succeeding at that. It is hard
to merge the two systems without settling on *some* style that is going to
clash with the other style. Is it wise to adopt the Unix/Motif look-&-feel
and try to force Windows into that mode? Or should the Windows L&F have been
forced onto the Unix side? Take your pick - some substantial part of the
computer programming & using weorld is going to be unhappy.

I guess that since the GtkAda started from the Gtk/Unix world, the choice
got made to move that style to the Windows side. Should they have pitched
the style & started fresh? They might not have had a product at all if they
did. Certainly, they'd face competition from Claw and others. It might have
become a "me too!" product that had no special niche.

I won't gripe about GtkAda not fitting the paradigm I'm used to. I'd
consider it as a potential tool if a) I was developing in Ada and b) I
needed portability between Unix & Windows. (If I was Windows only, I'd want
something that did the L&F of Windows rather than a compromise.) One could
also evaluate the possibility of using Ada and Java to produce systems that
were portable - and even Internet ready, so there are alternatives. The
decision would come down to a comparison of environments & features & price
and so on. The minute you remove constraint A (develop in Ada) the choices
expand a lot. Hence if the objective is to build apps that are portable
between Unix and Windows, GtkAda has to stack up favorably against a lot of
other players. So the question for the developers is "What market(s) are you
shooting for and how do you stack up against the competitors in that
market?"

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Stefan Skoglund]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> 
> The last time I looked at Gtk, my conclusion was this: "It has potential. It
> needs a good 'How To' book"

http://developer.gnome.org/doc/GGAD/ (for the book.tar.gz file)
http://developer.gnome.org/doc/GGAD/ggad.html (directly)

Written by Havoc for the GNOME project.

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Stefan Skoglund]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> with a very different architecture. To this end, I applaud GtkAda - it is
> trying to provide a common GUI building environment across two very
> different platforms & from what I gather is succeeding at that. It is hard
> to merge the two systems without settling on *some* style that is going to

GtkAda depends on Gtk+ which really is the toolkit in the GIMP project
so well a Ada program written with the help of GtkAda could easily look
like the Gimp.

> and try to force Windows into that mode? Or should the Windows L&F have been
> forced onto the Unix side? Take your pick - some substantial part of the
> computer programming & using weorld is going to be unhappy.

Using the windows look&feel in the GIMP wouldn't work !!

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Stefan Skoglund]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> But if I'm just a part-time, home-brew, hacker, I don't see much advantage
> to it. I develop some enhancements as a "Labor of Love" and give it away so
> that some for-profit company can use it to generate more revenue? How do I
> gain? Why not just keep it for myself?

Because some other guys could do some enhancements to your work
and if he/she is a nice guy and not a crook send his enhancements
to YOU.

> it would cost me to do it myself, where is the incentive for me to enhance
> it? And if I do, where is the incentive to share it?

The reasons to contribute your enhancements to some community written
tool is to lessen your own maintenance burden.

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Stefan Skoglund]

Ted Dennison wrote:
> doesn't have is some kind of loadable interface definition language, like UIL.
> But if you are set on something that will be intuitively familiar to Windows
> users, you'd probably be better off using the base Windows UI, as Gtk probably

In the gnome project they uses glade (gtk+ ui dev tool) to generate xml
files which describes the application.

GNUmeric is written with the help of {lib}glade.

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Stefan Skoglund]

Ted Dennison wrote:
> doesn't have is some kind of loadable interface definition language, like UIL.
> But if you are set on something that will be intuitively familiar to Windows
> users, you'd probably be better off using the base Windows UI, as Gtk probably
> doesn't have an equivalent for *everything*.

Check out
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/gnome-glade/index.html?dwzone=linux

Howto use libglade and glade in a project.

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Stefan Skoglund]

Ted Dennison wrote:
> >application (after editing to add in any callback code). That's not even close
> >to the same thing.
> 
> While finding the link for someone else, I took the oppertunity to glance at
> this part of the GTKAda UG. There is indeed a library (libglade) that you can
> use to parse those files and load the appropriate widgets at runtime. UIL
> actually has its own compiler to get the parsing out of runtime, but this is
> pretty close. Its a shame I don't currently have a good excuse for trying it
> out...

Pick up the current gnumeric and look on glade/libglade in action
(you need a lot of cruft :-) )

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Pascal Obry]

"Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> writes:

> Still sounds suspiciously like someone trying to get me to work for free.
> :-)

Ok if you need a better reason. I think that Ada is not that visible in the
software world. The work we can put together (all of us) are to make Ada more
visible, more accepted and (we can dream) have Ada sometime be the most
popular language :) Of course I'm not completly stupid, I don't see that this
comming year but next year :-)

Just look five years ago, the Ada world was not the same at all and one reason
is that there is many good piece of GPL code under Ada.

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"

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[nicolas]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 878 bytes --]

"Stefan Skoglund" <stetson@ebox.tninet.se> a �crit dans le message news:
3B54BF44.646290DC@ebox.tninet.se...
> Using the windows look&feel in the GIMP wouldn't work !!

Is there a technical reason for that ?

We have a proprietary GUI originally developped for DOS
It was then ported to Unix
And finally to Windows when it came to evidence that in our market every DOS
user and 99% of unix users switched to Windows.

Originally it was a Motif look GUI.
A few years ago we changed the look to a Windows look GUI

There was some strong debate about that, but a few weeks after the change,
nobody (us internally as well as customers) would even think in coming back
to Motif

I have a RH 7.0 where a lot of things have a Windows look.
When you use swing, you have a choice, but you have a Windows look

By the way, are you sure it is very useful to re-invent swing again ?

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Marin David Condic]

I think we agree wholeheartedly on the objective you outlined. We both want
to see Ada accepted at a greater level than it is. I think we both agree
that the presence of lots of Ada code available for development serves this
goal. I think we also both agree that your garden variety hacker, small
business, internal corporate developer, etc. ought to be able to get the
source, use it in their software, modify it as needed, etc. and not have to
pay a royalty. (That's what will get Ada accepted for various forms of
internal development.) Where I think we part company (correct me if I'm
wrong) is that I believe a different license is possible/desirable that
secures some financial rights for the authors of a work in the event that
someone takes their work & uses it for financial gain. If I understand you
correctly, you seem to be favoring the GPL which basically does not secure
those rights - or at least has not dealt with that question.

I might be willing to contribute to some community accessible code, but I'd
like to think that if I'm spending time on it that there is some $$$ in it
for me if someone else is going to take my work and make $$$ for themselves
with it. Otherwise, it seems I'm just making a gift to "The Community" of my
time and talent. Granted, I may receive other people's gifts to the
community by way of picking up their changes, but I think that from a
cost/benefit analysis in most cases, I may be better off simply purchasing
what I want rather than paying for it with sweat equity. (My time is worth a
considerable amount of money when compared to the cost of many commercially
available products.)

Or I could simply take and never give back and turn a hard heart towards the
community contributors when they cry "Unfair!" :-) (Hint: That's why
currency and markets and free enterprise and trade were invented in the
first place! :-)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Pascal Obry" <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message
news:uu20an3i8.fsf@wanadoo.fr...
>
> Ok if you need a better reason. I think that Ada is not that visible in
the
> software world. The work we can put together (all of us) are to make Ada
more
> visible, more accepted and (we can dream) have Ada sometime be the most
> popular language :) Of course I'm not completly stupid, I don't see that
this
> comming year but next year :-)
>
> Just look five years ago, the Ada world was not the same at all and one
reason
> is that there is many good piece of GPL code under Ada.
>

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Marin David Condic]

Thanks for the links. This may be helpful in some ways. A cursory inspection
though seems to indicate that this documentation is related to some other
parts of the Gtk tools. I was specifically interested in the GtkAda GUI
building program and I don't think this document addresses that. (I probably
was unclear and inaccurate in the original post) However, I will go look it
over more thoroughly.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/

"Stefan Skoglund" <stetson@ebox.tninet.se> wrote in message
news:3B54BD52.B4A5C83E@ebox.tninet.se...
>
> http://developer.gnome.org/doc/GGAD/ (for the book.tar.gz file)
> http://developer.gnome.org/doc/GGAD/ggad.html (directly)
>
> Written by Havoc for the GNOME project.

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[McDoobie]

In article <K4F47.21102$Kf3.266366@www.newsranger.com>, Ted
Dennison<dennison@telepath.com> wrote:

> In article <JeX37.39341$B56.8075497@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>,
> chris.danx says...
>>controls to be created, and more.  Also is Gtk not scripted, slowing the
>>whole thing down?
> 
> No, you are probably thinking of TK. Gtk is written in C and has a C
> interface. Its a rather nice toolkit too. The only thing I'd really like
> to see that it doesn't have is some kind of loadable interface
> definition language, like UIL. But if you are set on something that will
> be intuitively familiar to Windows users, you'd probably be better off
> using the base Windows UI, as Gtk probably doesn't have an equivalent
> for *everything*.

The Mozilla project has developed XUL, which seems to fit your description
of a UIL nicely.
Another nice feature of XUL is that it's implementation independant. As
long as 'whatever' has XUL support, it'll work.

Theres also the Gtk .rc files, but those dont really fit the definital of a UIL.

McDoobie
chris@dont.spam.me

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Pascal Obry]

"Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> writes:

> I think we agree wholeheartedly on the objective you outlined. We both want
> to see Ada accepted at a greater level than it is. I think we both agree
> that the presence of lots of Ada code available for development serves this
> goal. I think we also both agree that your garden variety hacker, small
> business, internal corporate developer, etc. ought to be able to get the
> source, use it in their software, modify it as needed, etc. and not have to
> pay a royalty. (That's what will get Ada accepted for various forms of
> internal development.) Where I think we part company (correct me if I'm
> wrong) is that I believe a different license is possible/desirable that
> secures some financial rights for the authors of a work in the event that
> someone takes their work & uses it for financial gain. If I understand you
> correctly, you seem to be favoring the GPL which basically does not secure
> those rights - or at least has not dealt with that question.

Yep. Because everything I build is based on the GPL license. All my work would
not be possible without GNAT for example. I will not like to have to buy an
Ada compiler for my home/hobby job !

So yes I favor the GPL because my work is based on plenty of other GPL
softwares. Piece by piece we can as hobbyist build very nice software. Today
with Linux, GNAT and AWS, I can build some very nice Web server. And I do not
count all Ada components and library I use. All this will not be possible if I
had to pay some compagnies to be able to use Linux, GNAT and some Ada
components.

Now, this is certainly not a problem for a company where buying a software
and/or support for it is just the right things to do. I would not start a
project in my company without some kind of support. But Pascal Obry at home
don't want to spent some hundred of $ to have the right to build and
distribute a software.

> I might be willing to contribute to some community accessible code, but I'd
> like to think that if I'm spending time on it that there is some $$$ in it
> for me if someone else is going to take my work and make $$$ for themselves
> with it. 

Don't you have some piece of code in your hard disc that you could share ? As
I said in my previous message, I don't write software only for the community
but just to learn something or for the fun :) For example AWS has started
because I wanted to understand how the HTTP protocol was working... and some
time after... well you know the story :) Idem for SMTP, POSIX...

Anyway, let me just add something. I find the Ada community to be less active
in the Open Source movement. I don't say it is bad or good, just that it seems
to me that the C/C++, Java, Eiffel, Perl... communities are doing far more in
this area.

I'll just add, let's talk about $$$ when Ada will be on the right tracks. I'm
convinced that without GNU/Ada Ada will be just invisible today, used only in
some very small niche.

Just my 2 cents,
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"

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Marin David Condic]

"Pascal Obry" <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message
news:upuaymc2i.fsf@wanadoo.fr...
>
> Yep. Because everything I build is based on the GPL license. All my work
would
> not be possible without GNAT for example. I will not like to have to buy
an
> Ada compiler for my home/hobby job !
>
Maybe you missed my point. I'm not talking about charging you to use the
software as a home/hobbyist. Nor even if you are at work developing
something for in-house use. I'm interested if you take some of my code and
use it to build "PascalSoft Spreadsheet" (or similar) and start selling it
for $29.95 on the open market. That's when I think you would owe me some $$$
for my contribution to your commercial success.

Check out the Ada Developers Cooperative Licence (ADCL) that Dr. Leif has
written about in Ada Letters - article referenced somewhere in this
newsgroup recently. I think you would see that the basic idea is to let
software be open source and allow it to be used widely, but insisting on
some kind of royalty if money starts changing hands.


>
> Don't you have some piece of code in your hard disc that you could share ?

Yes. Go visit my web site and look over what is there.
(http://www.mcondic.com/) I think you will find that I can be very easy with
licensing terms if you decide you want to do something commercial with the
software I put there.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Ted Dennison]

In article <9j4g2a$802$1@nh.pace.co.uk>, Marin David Condic says...
>
>Maybe you missed my point. I'm not talking about charging you to use the
>software as a home/hobbyist. Nor even if you are at work developing
>something for in-house use. I'm interested if you take some of my code and
>use it to build "PascalSoft Spreadsheet" (or similar) and start selling it
>for $29.95 on the open market. That's when I think you would owe me some $$$
>for my contribution to your commercial success.

If that bugs you, GPL your software (with no GMGPL-style excemptions). Then when
someone does that kind of thing, they will have to GPL it, which will give you
(and everyone else) free access to it. They can still sell it for $30, but that
has to be covering the convenience of having it on CD (perhaps with hardcopy
docs and instructions).

I generally don't want to do that with my stuff, because I want to be able to
use it myself freely at work.

>Check out the Ada Developers Cooperative Licence (ADCL) that Dr. Leif has
>written about in Ada Letters - article referenced somewhere in this
>newsgroup recently. I think you would see that the basic idea is to let
>software be open source and allow it to be used widely, but insisting on
>some kind of royalty if money starts changing hands.

I'd like to see it (I don't suppose its online anywhere?). But if it
discriminates against certian types of users, or requires any kind of royalty
for any distribution of it, it is *not* OpenSource (according at least points 1
and 6 in the defintion - http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.html ).



---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Pascal Obry]

"Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> writes:

> "Pascal Obry" <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message
> news:upuaymc2i.fsf@wanadoo.fr...
> >
> > Yep. Because everything I build is based on the GPL license. All my work
> would
> > not be possible without GNAT for example. I will not like to have to buy
> an
> > Ada compiler for my home/hobby job !
> >
> Maybe you missed my point. I'm not talking about charging you to use the
> software as a home/hobbyist. Nor even if you are at work developing
> something for in-house use. I'm interested if you take some of my code and
> use it to build "PascalSoft Spreadsheet" (or similar) and start selling it
> for $29.95 on the open market. That's when I think you would owe me some $$$
> for my contribution to your commercial success.

Not sure I missed the point. This is theorical, do we have a single example
where somebody have charged something for a tool/soft he has done nothing for
in the GPL world.

And in anycase if your software if GPL (we are talking about GPL software
here) then this guys needs also to have his soft distributed with sources. And
if the sources is identical I just can't see why somebody will buy something
that is plain free "one-click" away !

Now if he has done something nice with your GPL code, of course he can
distribute and sell it... but you can do the same things with any piece of GPL
code. The market will anyway kill any abuse from the start! I mean here a
contribution to some code that just serve nothing.

All in all I understand your point, and I agree about your expectations, it is
just that I do not see the world with the same glasses... I'm ready to play
this game (giving for free) as long as all my life is not based on this
principle :) I of course get payed for my day job :)

> Check out the Ada Developers Cooperative Licence (ADCL) that Dr. Leif has

I'll have a look when I'll have some time.

> > Don't you have some piece of code in your hard disc that you could share ?
> 
> Yes. Go visit my web site and look over what is there.

I know, I already had a look at your homepage. This was more a general
comment nothing against you.

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"

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[chris.danx]

"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:1SX47.22269$Kf3.285163@www.newsranger.com...
> In article <h3X47.42779$WS4.6503459@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com>, chris.danx
> says...
> >I've been rather busy training my Ape, Kira, to be nice to those moany
> >villagers, but I will make a decision on Gtk soon (today or tommorrow).
>
> Just rub his tummy a bit, give him a big pile of food, and leave him tied up
to
> the village store with the pink fluffy leash. :-)

Oops I was wrong.  A bit more persistence and the rope of learning and it
worked.  Yes, yes, yes!!!  Kira has the distinct glow of goodness and villagers
now worship at her pen in awe of her magnificent glow!


Thanks Ted,
Chris Campbell

> That should give you enough time to start reading through the user guide at
> http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/docs/gtkada_ug.html to see if it can do
> everything you need. The widget hierarchy is at
> http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/docs/gtkada_ug.html#SEC9 .
>
> ---
> T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
>           home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Marin David Condic]

http://www.acm.org/sigada/ada_letters/March1999.html  has an abstract of the
article. However, you'd need to contact Dr. Leif for the original. He posted
his address elsewhere in the group: rleif@rleif.com

As for when something is open source and when it isn't, I guess you could
get into definitional wars. If there is such a thing as "OpenSource(tm)"
then the owner of the (tm) can define it any way they like and maybe that
excludes the ADCL. However, from my reading of the ADCL and my maybe more
"broad" interpretation of the meaning of "open source" I think you still
have that. In some ways, its more "open" because AFAIK, it doesn't require
that use of ADCL software automatically makes the using software ADCL - no
"infection". (Maybe you'd consider that "bad" - I'd look at it as making the
software more generally useful.)

Anyway, I don't think that would stop you from using your code at work any
more than the GPL would stop you. Not unless you are making a product that
is going to be sold to someone.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:%Fk57.23889$Kf3.323037@www.newsranger.com...
>
>
> I'd like to see it (I don't suppose its online anywhere?). But if it
> discriminates against certian types of users, or requires any kind of
royalty
> for any distribution of it, it is *not* OpenSource (according at least
points 1
> and 6 in the defintion - http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.html ).
>

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Ted Dennison]

In article <SeZ47.58512$B56.11546588@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>, chris.danx
says...
>Thanks Ted, do you know of a tutorial (I only found the ACT one and it wasn't
>downloadable)?

I believe I went through a non-Ada-specific one I found on the GTK+ website. (
http://www.gtk.org/tutorial/ , probably). That and the GTKAda user guide ought
to be enough to get you started. But I have had Motif and Motif GUI-builder
experience. Others without that experience might have more trouble, I really
can't say.

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Stefan Skoglund]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> secures some financial rights for the authors of a work in the event that
> someone takes their work & uses it for financial gain. If I understand you
> correctly, you seem to be favoring the GPL which basically does not secure
> those rights - or at least has not dealt with that question.

I will reiterate what the GPL says in this case:
if someone uses some GPL:ed code in his/her/their product
and distributes it with an license incompatible with the GPL
that guy is a THIEF and should go to jail for that.

They can distribute it to their customers under the GPL and still
charge money but their customers can request and must receive 
the source of said sw.

The customers can also distribute the sw by themselves too.
but the company still distributes the sw with a Gnu Public License.

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Stefan Skoglund]

McDoobie wrote:
> Theres also the Gtk .rc files, but those dont really fit the definital of a UIL.

They are really to support customization of the Gtk+ gui.
It you want to use different fonts for different types of buttons
you do it thru a modificaton to your .gtkrc

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Ted Dennison]

In article <9j4o47$b5a$1@nh.pace.co.uk>, Marin David Condic says...
>get into definitional wars. If there is such a thing as "OpenSource(tm)"
>then the owner of the (tm) can define it any way they like and maybe that
>excludes the ADCL. However, from my reading of the ADCL and my maybe more

They tried to do just that right after the term was coined. However, apparently
OpenSource is too generic of a term to trademark. But this is as close to
official as you can get. You aren't really OpenSource unless you conform to that
defintion, and saying you are is just going to bring down a whole lot of heat on
yourself (as several companies have already found out).

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

RE: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Beard, Frank]

I was browsing around the Aonix Web site
(http://www.aonix.com/content/index.html)
and clicked on the Product button at the top of the screen.
I just happened to look at TeleUSE.  It is supposed to be a
high powered GUI/Development tool for Unix.  I noticed a new
product TeleUSE/Windows.  The product now claims you can do
development on either platform and run on the other. I quote

"You need the flexibility to build your applications from a
single source - and give them the look and feel of the platform
on which they are deployed, whether it be UNIX or Windows. "

It also says;

"The "Wintif" library - is capable of rendering GUI elements
that look and feel like Motif, Windows NT, or Windows 95."

and

"After creating an executable for Solaris, the developers
transfer all their TeleUSE files to TeleUSE/Win on Windows.
TeleUSE/Win, which includes precisely the same set of tools
that are provided by TeleUSE on Solaris, accepts all the
files. When the Application Builder is invoked, TeleUSE/Win
automatically invokes Visual C++ and links the application
with libraries that provide a native Windows look and feel." 

I know you can't really go by what a vendor says, but if it's
half as good as they claim, why don't they advertise it more,
or at least speak up on this list.

Has anyone used this product?
Does it run on Linux?

Frank

-----Original Message-----
From: nicolas [mailto:n.brunot@cadwin.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2001 4:14 AM
To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
Subject: Re: An Ada IDE and discussions


"Stefan Skoglund" <stetson@ebox.tninet.se> a écrit dans le message news:
3B54BF44.646290DC@ebox.tninet.se...
> Using the windows look&feel in the GIMP wouldn't work !!

Is there a technical reason for that ?

We have a proprietary GUI originally developped for DOS
It was then ported to Unix
And finally to Windows when it came to evidence that in our market every DOS
user and 99% of unix users switched to Windows.

Originally it was a Motif look GUI.
A few years ago we changed the look to a Windows look GUI

There was some strong debate about that, but a few weeks after the change,
nobody (us internally as well as customers) would even think in coming back
to Motif

I have a RH 7.0 where a lot of things have a Windows look.
When you use swing, you have a choice, but you have a Windows look

By the way, are you sure it is very useful to re-invent swing again ?



_______________________________________________
comp.lang.ada mailing list
comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
http://ada.eu.org/mailman/listinfo/comp.lang.ada

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Marin David Condic]

Well then, lets coin whatever different terms we like for it - just so we
don't run afoul of the OpenSource Cops. :-)

The way I see it, there are two different things going on here. One is the
issue of making source code available so that it can be used, studied,
modified and extended. The other is the assignment of rights to one or more
parties in the process. On the one hand, I'm in favor of making source
widely available. On the other hand, I'm against the idea of a) signing my
rights away when I distribute source for some subsystem and b) attempting to
force someone else to sign their rights away just because they want to use
my subsystem in their (sub)system.

If I put useful code out in some forum, I'd like for you to be able to use
it in building your home or work projects. I'd like to be sure that if you
give someone else your project that you include with that (at minimum) the
source that I gave you - without forcing you to give out your source code if
that is your choice. If you *change* my source (as opposed to simply calling
it or extending it - as in class extension {think of separate files versus
changing my files}) that you make those changes available to me and anyone
else that you may have given the code to. All of this serves to get my
source code into as many hands as possible and to be used with the minimal
of restrictions that might discourage anyone from wanting to use it.

If we can't call this OpenSource, then let's call it AvailableSource.

The part two of this contraption is the business of rights and remuneration.
If you take my work and use it in your work *and* sell your work for money,
it seems fair to me that I should get some part of that sale since part of
the product is the fruit of my labor. I may choose to make that dolar figure
high, low or even non-existant, but the right exists and I'd prefer not to
arbitrarily give it away just by giving you the source code. Its your choice
to decide if it is worth it to you to pay me the royalty I ask in order to
get some percentage of your product out the door quicker, better, cheaper,
etc., or if the cost is too steep to justify the use. (We can always haggle
over price!)

Granted, there are problems with this model on all sorts of fronts. For one
thing, if you use my work in your business and don't resell it, I'm still
subsidizing your business. (If you didn't have to write it or buy it
elsewhere, this saves you expenses you'd otherwise have to pay for with
revenue.) For another thing, you can always get creative in terms of
accounting and how you choose to market your end product. You may charge a
bundle for services and nothing (or nearly nothing) for the software - in
which case, I again lose out. (I hear that in Salt Lake City the booze laws
are so restrictive that some bars give away liquor with the purchase of a
soft-drink. Hence you pay for the coke and the rum is free and the laws
regarding sale of rum don't apply.)

But even if the system isn't perfect, I think it is still an interesting
concept. It promotes the development of generally available source code
because the writers stand at least *some* chance of gaining from making
useful code available. Even though it isn't 100% equitable, it reduces the
worst inequities considerably. It recognizes the symbiotic relationship
between the writer and the value-added user by exchanging free
(monetary-free) use of the software for wider circulation. And you still
have source available for all the stuff circulating this way.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:miY57.932$ar1.3812@www.newsranger.com...
>
> They tried to do just that right after the term was coined. However,
apparently
> OpenSource is too generic of a term to trademark. But this is as close to
> official as you can get. You aren't really OpenSource unless you conform t
o that
> defintion, and saying you are is just going to bring down a whole lot of
heat on
> yourself (as several companies have already found out).
>

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Ted Dennison]

In article <9j9qer$aek$1@nh.pace.co.uk>, Marin David Condic says...
>
>Well then, lets coin whatever different terms we like for it - just so we
>don't run afoul of the OpenSource Cops. :-)
..
>If we can't call this OpenSource, then let's call it AvailableSource.

How about "SharedSource"? That's the term Microsoft is using. :-)

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[nicolas]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 873 bytes --]

We never tried it, since we have our own product evolving for our needs.

I think that to be successfull, a Ada GUI product should

1/
be a standard product packaged with main Ada compilers
swing for Java is a good example

2/
be absolutely compatible and familiar to developpers with widely used
products for popular languages.
Especially for Windows and Linux developpers.

We have Java applications, for which the portability is even better than Ada
applications.
We don't even have to recompile for different platforms.

"Beard, Frank" <beardf@spawar.navy.mil> a �crit dans le message news:
mailman.995648003.8404.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org...
I know you can't really go by what a vendor says, but if it's
half as good as they claim, why don't they advertise it more,
or at least speak up on this list.

Has anyone used this product?
Does it run on Linux?

Frank

Re: An Ada IDE and discussions

[Warren W. Gay VE3WWG]

"Beard, Frank" wrote:
> I was browsing around the Aonix Web site
> (http://www.aonix.com/content/index.html)
> and clicked on the Product button at the top of the screen.
> I just happened to look at TeleUSE.  It is supposed to be a
> high powered GUI/Development tool for Unix.  I noticed a new
> product TeleUSE/Windows.  The product now claims you can do
> development on either platform and run on the other. I quote
...snip...
> I know you can't really go by what a vendor says, but if it's
> half as good as they claim, why don't they advertise it more,
> or at least speak up on this list.
> 
> Has anyone used this product?
> Does it run on Linux?
> 
> Frank

Linux? Dunno..

We looked at it briefly. We were looking for a rapid X-Window
development package, and for this, it didn't seem to make the
grade for us. I am convinced that if you become well-versed in
their product, including their "D" language, it might work well.

However, if you have the situation where your developers are
not using the product daily/weekly, and/or they're not quick
on the technical uptake, you won't find it's use "rapid". It
does purport to support the "whole development life cycle", 
which may justify the "extra effort". For us, quick and _easy_
development was more important, since for maintenance, we rarely
make big changes to the screens after the fact. What I found with
my initial trials was that I could have coded the darn thing by
hand faster (at least for smaller screens).

What I also found was that when I got it to generate code, I often
ended up choosing names that conflicted with "something else",
and so it would seldom work for me the first time (there would
be conflicts in their "D" language with either other objects or
keywords). This would be OK, but there was never any errors or
warnings -- just the compiled code would not work.
After much investigation, you could eventually make 
it work -- but this defeated the "quick development time" that 
we were looking for.

We ended up going for X-Designer, which was much easier to
learn (you might be able to use it without documentation). It
did not require proprietary widget libraries either. THe downsides
are that it has fewer widgets to choose from (but you can add to
the selection), and it does not try to address the full "development
life cycle". 

X-Designer is available for Linux, and I think it
can support Ada if you use some downloadable perl script to do
some script-magic.

FWIW, Warren.

-- 
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://members.home.net/ve3wwg