HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: garyp@gvls2.gvl.unisys.com (Gary Palangian)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Review of "Ada & C++: A Business Case Analysis
Date: 30 Jul 92 19:42:14 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Unisys Defense Systems, Great Valley Labs, Paoli, Pa


Fred McCall writes:

-The tasking model in Ada is incredibly weak.  It is considered to be
-the poorest part of the language by most people I know.  I thought
-this was one of the things that Ada9X was addressing.

and ...

-From what I understand, [bad tasking] is not just an implementation problem.
-The whole Ada tasking model is inadequate for most uses, even if
-implemented 'properly'.  The problem is with the language
-specification itself, not with certain compiler implementations of it. 

-Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com


Hey Now Fredmeister,

What exactly is it about the tasking model that makes it weak?  And
what is the reasoning being used to label the tasking model poor?  I have
never heard anyone use 'weak' and 'poor' to describe tasking in Ada.
I have heard 'complicated', 'involved', 'design heavy' & 'analysis
heavy' before (usually in the listed order from increasingly
competent Ada dudes and dudettes).

What exactly is it about the specification (I guess we're talking
about the LRM, right?) that makes Ada implementation of tasking a
problem?

This is very interesting and unusual?  Something strange is afoot
on the comp.lang.ada board.

Gary
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
From: dn1l@.ist.ucf.edu (Dale Newfield)
Subject: Object Oriented Ada Preprocessors
Keywords: OOPS, Ada++, DRAGOON, Classic-Ada, InnovAda
Organization: VSL, IST, UCF, Orlando
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 00:01:45 GMT

	I have been researching PreProcessors to Ada that basically extend the language to include Object Orientation, among other things.

I have found lots of information, but no hard facts.

I am looking for anyone that has used any of the following, or knows of any other products to tell me their experiences with them.  
How difficult is it to code?
How well do the pre-processors really work?
When the ada code is compiled, just how fast is it?
Can it do dynamic binding? at what cost to speed? 
How Ada-like are the extentions? (InnovAda is lisp-like, Classic-Ada is SmallTalk like...)

Any info would be appreciated.

Any pointer to Code for Dragoon, or Ada++ would put me in great debt...

Thanks!

Dale Newfield
dn1l@ist.ucf.edu
From: alex@cs.umd.edu (Alex Blakemore)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Ada tasking rules and AST's...
Date: 23 Jul 92 15:27:56 GMT
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742

In article <1992Jul22.194130.10544@europa.asd.contel.com> king@ssvax.gte.com (Larry King) writes:
> My question is how can I get Ada to do a rescheduling of the
> tasks to get this new entry to run.  There is one process that takes
> some amount of time but if the system call has finished we would like
> the AST entry to run before this task normally finishes.  Currently we 
> issue a delay statement for the time
> DURATION'SMALL but this causes us to lose 10 milliseconds of time just
> to do the delay.  It does cause VAX Ada to run the AST entry but we would like
> to avoid losing the 10 milliseconds if possible.  Does VAX Ada (or any
> Ada for that matter) allow you to force an execution of the next entry on 
> the queue before the current task has completely finished?  

I'm not sure I understand your question completely, but you can use

  delay 0.0; -- the delay does not have to be positive
             -- can even be negative (in which case your system 
             -- moves backwards in time, actually same as zero)

This inserts a synchronization point in your code - when it executes
the run time system must relinquish the processor to any higher
priority eligible task.  If there is no such task, then this is a noop
except for the time to check the ready queue.  You can also insert 
selective accept statements with else parts to check specific queues.

Both these methods involve stating explictly at which points you are willing
to relinquish the processor or accept a new entry.

  ... code, possibly in another accept stmt
  select
    accept my_ast_entry do
      ... do something; 

    end;
  else
     null;  -- no ast was there
  end select;
  ... get back to previous work

scattering this throughout could get a little ugly - there are probably
better ways.  Using 'Count is NOT one of them in general.
Ada9X offers some other nice alternatives to allow asynchronous
transfer of control and handle interrupts.

hope this helps
                    
-- 
-------------------------------
Alex Blakemore alex@cs.umd.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
From: sinan@milton.u.washington.edu (Sinan Karasu)
Subject: Re: Verdix, generics and optimization
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 13:32:18 GMT

 well ( ahem ), I would like to apologize for the bitter tone of the
previous posting. Actually I have been very happy with past support
I have gotten from Sun and Verdix. It's just the fact that This one
bit me very bad. And on the day previous to the deadline ....
( Today is my drop dead date for using Verdix compiler....
 If I can not prove that it works by today then we must switch
back to Alsys.  Oh well.........)...

 Again I apologize for the harsh tone....

 Someone has suggested that I post actual code, if not too big
so that people could work on a concrete problem instead of an abstract
one. I will try to do that. Unfortunately the current code is approx.
5000 lines. I will not have the time this weekend ( gotta switch 
compilers) . I will attepmt to cut the size down next week tho'....
Thanx

Sinan
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
From: rsi@scf16.scf.loral.com (Rich S. Ishikawa)
Subject: Question about system addresses in Ada....
Organization: Loral Space and Range Systems, Sunnyvale, CA
Distribution: comp
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 02:55:05 GMT




I was wondering if there is a graceful way of retrieving an address from 
a C routine back to Verdix Ada using a pragma interface (ie., address 63fb23
back in Ada).

I am currently passing a system.address as a parameter to the C program, but
addresses don't seem to be modifiable, only the variable it is addressed to.

I've tried passing the address of a system.address, but that doesn't seem to
work either.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.



-RI



--
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
-*-*-* Richard S. Ishikawa -*-*-*-*-\     "To be or not to be..."     /*-*-*-*-
-*-*-*-* rsi@scf16.scf.loral.com -*-*-\   - can't be the question.  /*-*-*-*-*-
-*-*-* Loral Space and Range Systems *-*-*-*-* (408)734-6337 *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
-*-*-*-* 1260 Crossman Ave. Sunnyvale, CA  94089 *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
From: d3g349@gilligan.oname (PR Berard)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Are GSA Discounts Really Discounts???
Date: 28 Jul 92 16:20:01 GMT
Reply-To: d3g349@gilligan.oname
Organization: Sun Microsystems

I'm not sure that this is really the best newsgroup to post this to, but it's
my best guess.

Here's the situation. While researching existing CASE tools, I stumbled across
this interesting situation. One of the most reputable vendors on my list is on 
the GSA Schedule and offers their product at a "substantially" reduced price.
Actually, they offer a 50% discount only on their base product. The discount 
does not apply to any add-on products. I guess that this is not out of the 
ordinary.

The catch is that if we buy their product on at the reduced price, then we
must by one license for each user. If we buy at the commercial price, we can
buy one license per seat (which makes much more sense to me and is what we
really need). Assuming that we had 5 seats and 10 users, it would cost us
$7,000 more for the product at the "discounted" GSA price.

Has anyone else run across this problem? Are there other marketing schemes
used by vendors to take advantage of the GSA schedule? Does the government
realize this? 

Thanks for your input,

Peter
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
From: mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539)
Subject: Re: Review of "Ada & C++: A Business Case Analysis
Organization: Texas Instruments Inc
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 15:59:50 GMT

In <1992Jul30.084243.1137@lmpsbbs.comm.mot.com> davidk@mcil.comm.mot.com (David Kramer) writes:

>In article <2408@nic.cerf.net>, jonesm@nic.cerf.net (Matthew Jones) writes:
>|> C (and C++) is not an operating system, real time or other. There are many 
>|> real time operating systems available, usually tied to the hardware
>|> (ie VxWorks or OS9 for the 68k family...). This way seems much more sensible 
>|> to me than the Ada "we can solve everyones real time requirements on
>|> all hardware with one paradigm." 
>If you have something against the Ada implementation you are always free
>to use direct system service calls to the operating system just like
>you do in C. Meanwhile there are projects that have used Ada tasking
>very successfully, and have thereby left the option open to port
>their application to some new super-chip in the future without major
>changes to their application.

The tasking model in Ada is incredibly weak.  It is considered to be
the poorest part of the language by most people I know.  I thought
this was one of the things that Ada9X was addressing.

>But the main point I wanted to make is that currently you can't implement
>a distributed C++ application (whether real-time or not) with the compilers 
>of today without significant effort.

You can't do it in Ada, either, unless your OS environment and
compiler support things for you.  This is hardly guaranteed.  There's
sure a lot of distributed environment C code out there.

>|>                                  Also you might consider that many
>|> people have found the Ada tasking model to be implemented very 
>|> poorly by the Ada vendors.
>This is very unfortunate. However, there are vendors that *have* implemented 
>tasking properly. When purchasing any item you have to be sure to buy the 
>product that satisfies your requirements. Ada compilers are no
>different.

From what I understand, this is not just an implementation problem.
The whole Ada tasking model is inadequate for most uses, even if
implemented 'properly'.  The problem is with the language
specification itself, not with certain compiler implementations of it. 

-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.
From: np4@prism.gatech.EDU (Nick Pomponio)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Ada for OS/2
Date: 24 Jul 92 12:14:54 GMT
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology

I have recently switched to the OS/2 operating system (as have many others
in my laboratory) on an IBM PC compatible. I had been using Meridian
OpenAda 386 under DOS, but it won't run in a DOS window under OS/2 because,
apparently, it uses a VCPI extender to access the protected mode of the 386
while compiling. I called Meridian, and was told that they have no plans
to upgrade to a DPMI compliant extender (which does run under OS/2), but
that they are considering possibly developing an OS/2 native version.

Does anyone know of any other protected mode Ada compiler (for large programs)
that will run under OS/2?

-- 
POMPONIO,NICHOLAS A
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
uucp:	  ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!np4
Internet: np4@prism.gatech.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
From: spray@convex.com (Rob Spray)
Subject: Re: Pentagon opens software reuse center-- Access??
Organization: CONVEX Computer Corporation, Richardson, Tx., USA
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 16:23:01 GMT
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

In <541@oodis01.af.mil> nelsonb@oodis01.af.mil (Contractor Bert Nelson) writes:

>My question is ... How can I look at this code?  Is it available via FTP?

Interesting: will it follow the ASR or the COSMIC model?

--Rob  spray@convex.com
From: adainfo@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu (Michele L. Kee (AdaIC))
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Ada 9X announcement - ACVC Test Availability
Keywords: Ada 9X, ACVC
Date: 22 Jul 92 15:21:44 GMT
Organization: Ada Information Clearinghouse


ACVC TEST AVAILABILITY (7/17)

One of the objectives of the ACVC review process for Ada 9X
is to promote feedback on the test suite from various
sources during its development.  In order to give users and
compiler developers maximum visibility into the process, the
Ada 9X Project Office will provide access to the tests that
are being developed for Ada 9X prior to their formal
release.  These tests can be accessed by anonymous ftp over the
Internet from "ftp.sei.cmu.edu" in the directory "pub/acvc-9x".
Naming conventions for the tests remain the same as for the
Ada83 ACVC test suite except that a date has been appended
to the file to identify the version of the
test for the purposes of this preliminary release.

Initially, the tests in the directory will be those that have
been corrected, consolidated, or otherwise modified as a result
of formulating a baseline test suite which will be applicable to
both Ada83 and Ada 9X (the 9X-Basic baseline).  Subsequently,
tests of Ada 9X specific functionality will be added.

It should be understood that the tests in this directory
represent work-in-progress and are subject to change.  They are
under review by the ACVC Reviewers.  All comments should be sent
by email to "ada9x-acvc@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu", with the full file
name of the test in the subject line.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
This article is being posted for the Ada 9X Project Office.

-- 
Ada Information Clearinghouse (AdaIC)		|  IIT Research Institute
703/685-1477, 800/AdaIC-11, FAX 703/685-7019	|  operates the AdaIC for
Internet:  adainfo@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu		|  the Ada Joint Program
CompuServe:  70312,3303				|  Office (AJPO).
Organization: Penn State University
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 09:58:54 EDT
From: Jack W. Sharer <J0S@psuvm.psu.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Ada for OS/2


In article <64242@hydra.gatech.EDU>, np4@prism.gatech.EDU (Nick Pomponio) says:
>I have recently switched to the OS/2 operating system (as have many others
>in my laboratory) on an IBM PC compatible. I had been using Meridian
>OpenAda 386 under DOS, but it won't run in a DOS window under OS/2 because,
>apparently, it uses a VCPI extender to access the protected mode of the 386
>while compiling. I called Meridian, and was told that they have no plans
>to upgrade to a DPMI compliant extender (which does run under OS/2), but
>that they are considering possibly developing an OS/2 native version.

If Meridian uses the PharLap DOS extender, then they may just need to
relink with the newest PharLap system which supports DPMI.

BTY, Alsys sells an OS/2 version of Ada.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
From: sasaki@sasaki.zko.dec.com (Marty Sasaki)
Subject: Re: calling Ada from C ?
Reply-To: sasaki@tle.enet.dec.com
Organization: Digital Equipment Co.
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 18:23:55 GMT


In article <22169@oasys.dt.navy.mil>, diprosp@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Michael DiProspero) writes:
|>Does anyone have any ideas on how to make efficient (or even not so efficient)
|>calls to Ada from C.  I've been able to call C routines from Ada using the
|>pragma interface command - unfortunately I also want to be able to go the
|>other way as well and I'm not quite sure how.  Any help on the subject would
|>be appreciated.  Thanks.

It depends on the C calling implementation and the Ada implementation.
As an example, is an Ada record passed by reference or by value? Does
the Ada compiler pass small records by value and large ones by
reference?

There are two problems, telling the outside world that the function
exists and has a certain name, and figuring out the parameter passing
mechanism. Additionally, one may have to call elaboration routines
explicitly.

In both VAX Ada and DEC Ada you can use a pragma to specify the
external name as well as the parameter passing mechanisms:

	pragma EXPORT_FUNCTION (FOO, "FOO", MECHANISM => (VALUE, REFERENCE));

Here a function with name FOO, has external name FOO, and has two
parameters, the first passed by value, and the second by reference.

As mentioned in other notes, in order to assure structure/record
alignment you will probably need an Ada representation clause.
--
Marty Sasaki                            sasaki@tle.enet.dec.com
Digital Equipment Co.                   Sasaki Kite Fabrications
110 Spit Brook Road ZK02-3/N30          26 Green Street
Nashua, NH 03062                        Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
603-881-0151                            617-522-8546

Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
From: smccoy@dw3f.ess.harris.com (Scott McCoy)
Subject: Re: Style Guide "Enforcers: (was Re: Question of style)
Reply-To: smccoy@dw3f.ess.harris.com (Scott McCoy)
Organization: Harris Corporation Information Systems Division
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 21:07:37 GMT

In article <3070001@mothra.rose.hp.com>, tom@mothra.rose.hp.com
(Thomas Vachuska) writes:

| >Hmmm.... pretty printers are fine and dandy, but I would tend to
| >think that
| >interactive (or incremental) formating, would be the thing to go
| >after -
| >as in GNU Emacs Ada mode.  What do you think?

What I have experienced is that after a relatively short period of time
(something like a few weeks), most of my Ada programmers turn off the
interactive or incremental formatting capabilities in their environments.
The programmers usually say that they find the auto-formatting to be
intrusive and disrupts their "creative" flow.  Note that the programmers
were of varying levels of experience, from little to several years (or
programming Ada).

This is just my experience, no flames please. 

| >
| >I know that there is a pretty good Ada mode, but as far as I know
| >it does not
| >perform any style guideline enforcement.  Does anybody want to
| >correct me on
| >this?  I'd love to be wrong. ;)
| >
| >Thomas Vachuska
|
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
----------
| >tom@hpncmo.rose.hp.com                   (916)-785-4983  (Telnet &
| >Voice Mail)
|
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
----------
| >
| >
--
Scott McCoy	Harris ISD	Opinions expressed are my own.
		Internet: 	smccoy@dw3f.ess.harris.com
		Voice   : 	(407) 984-5964
		FAX     : 	(407) 984-6323
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
From: cew@bat.gsfc.nasa.gov (ASTS Craig E Warsaw)
Subject: Re: GUI Builder for Ada
Reply-To: cwarsaw@cen.com
Organization: Century Computing, Inc.
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 16:47:37 GMT

In article <59120@mimsy.umd.edu>, alex@cs.umd.edu (Alex Blakemore) writes:
  a window.  Grammi and TAE+ help with the menus, buttons and panels, but not 
  the really hard part of what you draw inside a window.  Again, based
  on stale info. 

Although I can't speak for Grammi, the above statement isn't entirely
true for TAE Plus.  TAE Plus has a type of object called a Data Driven
Object (DDO).  With a drawing editor (based on idraw), you can draw
whatever you like and animate portions of it (albeit in predefined
ways, e.g. stretchers, movers, rotators).  You can also create a
discrete pictures DDO which completely replaces the background with
each new value (for animation).

NASA has an anonymous FTP site that has contributed DDOs which you can
use or tailor to your needs.
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Craig Warsaw                         TAE Plus project                     --
-- Century Computing, Inc.              under contract to:                   --
-- Internet:  cwarsaw@cen.com           NASA Goddard Space Flight Center     --
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.lang.tcl
From: andylee@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Andy Lee)
Subject: Problem between Canvas Text and Scrollbar
Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 19:49:33 GMT

Hello,

I am new to this group, forgive me if this problem has been discussed
already.  The 'problem' is between a canvas containing text and a
vertical scrollbar.  Here is a small wish script that demonstrates the
problem:

---------- Scripts Starts Here 8< ----------

#!wish -f
#
# Problem between canvas text and vertical scroll bar
#

# Create a scroll bar and a canvas
pack append . \
        [scrollbar .scrollbar -command ".canvas yview"] {left filly} \
        [canvas .canvas -yscrollcommand ".scrollbar set"] {left expand}

# Write 100 lines of canvas text
set canvastext [.canvas create text 0 0 -anchor nw -justify left \
        -text "Canvas Test:\n"]
for {set i 1} {$i <= 100} {incr i} {
        .canvas insert $canvastext end "Line $i\n"}

---------- Script Ends Here 8< ----------

The initial scrollbar slider occupides the entire scroll space, but as
soon as I press the lower arrow, the slider becomes just a small line.
And the arrows let me scroll past the text (either above or below),
which is not desirable.

Any help is greatly appreciated...






-- 
Andy A. Lee           UCLA MS Graduate Student, AI Neural Networks
andylee@cs.ucla.edu   Down-to-Earth Idealist & Independent NeXT Developer
(310)824-7131         "If you don't watch your figure, who will?" - TV Ad.
(310)208-0200         "Trust is earned, not given away." - Star Trek: TNG
From: ouster@sprite.Berkeley.EDU (John Ousterhout)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.tcl
Subject: Re: bug in expr?
Date: 22 Jul 1992 20:26:35 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley Sprite Project
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: tyranny.berkeley.edu
Keywords: expr, integer, floating, arithmetic

In article <1992Jul21.215415.23716@crd.ge.com>, kennykb@dssv01.crd.ge.com (Kevin B. Kenny) writes:
|> 
|> Can someone explain the following?  More to the point, can someone fix it?
|> 
|> wish: set x [expr 400000.0+500000.0]
|> 900000
|> wish: set y [expr $x*$x]
|> -1748818944
|> 
|> The square of 900000.0 oughtn't to be a large negative number.
|> 
|> 
|> 73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin          There isn't any .signature virus, is there?

Adrian Ho's right about the problem, namely that implicit floating-to-
integer conversion is occurring in expr.  His solutions will probably
work OK, although they're a little ugly.  I'll see if I can find a solution
that is both clean and correct.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.tcl