From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,2f278a2d36b705c6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news4.google.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local01.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.megapath.net!news.megapath.net.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 16:58:40 -0500 From: "Randy Brukardt" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada References: <1126512087.368854.121520@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com> Subject: Re: Ada culture & pictures. Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 17:02:26 -0500 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4952.2800 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4952.2800 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 64.32.209.38 X-Trace: sv3-CAjUvsWKrvBLc96HpHBiKVXwXBIZvFrgoR203KkbtCiGVxnh3i7BERAm9Fy+0IbPBDWZ59EiMLc9cJU!PEN1rSobnsKWEh1YMjgyYJDd/d/aG7EgL64wRMeoaAIt+adCodv7mjY/rJEzt6b2q1ZSxV5UlF9V X-Complaints-To: abuse@megapath.net X-DMCA-Complaints-To: abuse@megapath.net X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.32 Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:5283 Date: 2005-09-29T17:02:26-05:00 List-Id: wrote in message news:1126512087.368854.121520@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... > Why does the Ada community not use more pictures & graphics? Eh ? > > Think about it - the whole Ada culture seems obsessed with text. Page > after page after page of boring text. > > Perhaps it all stems from the text based Ada Language Reference manual? Pictures are pretty much irrelevant to standards work. Diagrams might make sense in a few cases, but they're hard to fit into the ISO requirements, they can't be searched for content, and they are hard to support in the many different formats that the standard appears in. Moreover, Ada itself is a text language, so there isn't any critical need to use non-text in the standard. Why there aren't more diagrams and pictures in tutorial and advocacy information is something you'll have to ask the authors of those sites and papers. Probably, they simply couldn't find anything appropriate to use. (The only pictures that RRS has ever used was the almost cliched pictures of rockets and airplanes. After all, what the heck does a compiler look like??) > Some examples : > - www.ada-auth.org. Home page, no pictures, all text. In fact I > couldn't find any pictures on the entire Web site. (Can anyone else?) You clearly didn't try hard enough. There are *lots* of pictures on ada-auth.org. But they don't have much to do with Ada (they're recording our various meetings). There are a couple of articles with diagrams in the grab bag section. And of course the folder and file icons in the VCS are "pictures". But the site is *very* vanilla, as it is intended for people actively working on creating and/or implementing the Ada standard. There isn't any money, time, or need for anything fancy. Anyone coming there that isn't creating or implementing the Ada standard is probably in the wrong place. Use www.adaic.org, www.adapower.com, or www.adaworld.com instead. > - The holy grail. Ada 95 ref manual & Standard Libraries. 543 pages. I > gave up looking, the closest I came was the hierarchy of language- > defined classes in section 3.2 12. Let me assure you that there is no graphics of any kind in the Ada reference manual (any version). There are a few tables, but the tools that create these documents are purely for processing text. In any case, this is a *reference* document; any value of it to promoting Ada is purely accidental. As several others have said, please suggest and help provide the pictures and diagrams that you think would be valuable. Those of us that are already familar with the trees often have a hard time figuring out what makes it hard for others to see the forest... Randy.