Date:	Sun, 23 Oct 94 19:00:37 GMT
From:	dolan AT fnoc DOT navy DOT mil (Kent Dolan)
To:	drupp AT cs DOT washington DOT edu
Subject:	Re: Gnat_1.83/Ada 9X
Cc:	djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu, gsscgi AT ematek DOT de

>> Does anyone know what graphic interface using DOS can be used with
>> GNAT?

> To clarify this question: GNAT for DOS is built upon DJGPP using the
> GCC back end.  So the question becomes what graphic interfaces are
> there that can be used with DJGPP assuming a developer can write a thin
> Ada binding to the interface.

A company in Germany called Ematek sells a commercial product billed as
a 32 bit GKS with bindings to C and to FORTRAN.  One would have to get
from them the interface to the low level implementation to do an Ada
binding, since what their product documents is the thin FORTRAN and thin C
bindings, but they'd probably be delighted to cooperate in making their
product more widely accessible.

I use a version of this product from FORTRAN in my day to day work, and
have yet to encounter a bug in it in almost three years of use.  Since
I helped write the GKS standard on which it is based, I can argue that I
would recognize a bug if I saw one.

Ematek is on the net as gsscgi AT ematek DOT de, and can be otherwise contacted
as 

   Ematek GmbH
   Subbelrather Strasse 17
   D-50823 Cologne, Germany
   Phone: +49-221-512074
   Fax: +49-221-529666

GKS is the Graphical Kernel System, an ANSI and ISO standard, and
provides a very full featured 2D graphics Application Programming
Interface.  There is a 3D extension to the standard, as well.  They
also sell an implementation of CGI, the lower level programming
interface for creating portable graphics data files.  Many commercial
shrink wrap software products support CGI as an "interface of last
resort".

Although both the GKS and the CGI international standards support
raster graphics, they really predate the blossoming of raster displays,
and are better thought of as line drawn graphics on raster displays.
As such, they are more suitable for engineering drawings than for
photorealistic graphics.

Also available "from the net" (I'll look it up if anyone's interested)
is xgks, a GKS binding to X Windows 11, PEX ( a fairly sparse proof of
concept implementation of the PHIGS very rich American and
International standard language for high end 3D graphics), VOGL, a
freeware reimplementation of the Silicon Graphics language GL, SUIT, if
I have the name right, which includes a Simplified PHIGS, and etc.

FTP info for all of these on request.

Naturally the fact that I like the Ematek product does not mean that
either my company or my client endorses it.  This is just a private,
well informed opinion.

Xanthian.
--
Kent, the man from xanth.
Kent Paul Dolan, CSC contractor at Fleet Numerical.  (408) 656-4363.
(Navy Unix email:   )  (Navy cc:Mail email: )  (real world email:     )
<dolan AT fnoc DOT navy DOT mil>  <dolank AT fnoc DOT navy DOT mil>  <xanthian AT well DOT sf DOT ca DOT us>

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