Re: BMP/JPG/GIF library in Ada?

[tmoran@acm.org]

>>     type Triple_DIBitmap_Type (Height, Width : Claw.Int) is ...
>Similar. I've chosen a constrained representation inheriting from Controlled.
  Interesting.  Claw's DIBitmap types start at Root_DIBitmap_Type, which
is abstract tagged, but not Controlled.  Why do you inherit from Controlled?
Is there something special you do for initialization or finalization?

>  procedure Create (
>     This : out Object; Width : in Positive; Height : in Positive);
  Why a Create procedure instead of just a declaration (as above)?  This
implies you must be using heap allocation since you don't know the
Height or Width when you declare an instance of Object, right?

>     procedure Triple_DIBitmap_Type_Output (
>         Stream : access Ada.Streams.Root_Stream_Type'class;
>         Item   : in Triple_DIBitmap_Type);
>     for Triple_DIBitmap_Type'Write use Triple_DIBitmap_Type_Write;
>  function Get_stream (This : in Object)
>     return Ada.Streams.Stream_element_array;
  Why this instead of the 'Output mechanism plus a predefined
"new Ada.Streams.Root_Stream_Type" that marshalls into an array?

>Claw is Windows specific, it isn't?
  Yes.  Claw.Bitmaps includes calls to Windows' routines for painting etc
as well as just the data structure handling.

  If this is for web serving, I'm guessing you intend to dynamically draw
on a bmp internally, since that's simple, and then convert to gif or jpg
to transmit more reasonably sized data, right?