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From: Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Modern copy of GNAT for OpenVMS?
Date: 6 Dec 2002 15:28:22 -0600
Organization: LJK Software
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In article <AU7I9.2811$Ec.1543@nwrddc01.gnilink.net>, "Frank J. Lhota" <NOSPAM.lhota.adarose@verizon.net> writes:
> "Marin David Condic" <mcondic.auntie.spam@acm.org> wrote in message
> news:asq6ar$2ul$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net...
>> Aside: Wouldn't it be nice to have a *standard* way of getting at various
>> "normal" OS services like networking and a GUI? Vast amounts of software
>> these days take advantage of that sort of thing, but then must become
> bound
>> to the OS that provides it. Portability starts becoming a pipe dream.
> 
> You're absolutely right, especially about the lack of GUI standards. CLI
> applications, for all their limitations, were portable. You could write a
> "Hello, World!" application that compiles and runs on everything from a Cray
> to an Atari. But let's say you want to write the GUI equivalent of "Hello,
> World!". The X-Windows approach differs from the MS-Win approach which
> differs from the Mac approach. What ever happened to the notion of
> portability.

I disagree that CLI applications are portable.  There are plenty of
Unix-style applications that get ported to VMS and end up being just
that, an out-of-place application that honors none of the standards
of the operating system on which it is running.

There is no such thing as a free lunch.