Original-Received: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 17:08:11 
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From: Mark Elston <elston AT cave DOT arc DOT nasa DOT gov>
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 17:08:08 -0800
To: mfeldman AT seas DOT gwu DOT edu
Cc: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Subject: Re: Ada and djgpp

> >From mfeldman AT seas DOT gwu DOT edu  Wed Mar 15 16:16:30 1995
>
> ... 
> I've been using GNAT extensively on Solaris, DOS, and OS/2. It is a
> very nice piece of work. It will be completed by summer; it is
> _quite_ usable now. I follow discussions about C++ templates with
> great interest; Ada has had working templates for 10 years, and GNAT
> does them fine too.  No tasking yet on DOS, but we are working on
> that here at GW now.
> 
> [snip]
>
> > I just wanted to pass on the information for anyone else who would
> > like to experiment with a very promising Ada 9X compiler.  I think it
> > is great that we have, in essence, first crack at a language -- even
> > before the commercial world jumps into the fray. (Of course the
> > standard has yet to be finalized, so the commercial world will
> > probably catch up soon after that happens).
> 
> [snip]
>
> The _revised_ Ada standard was officially published by ISO on Feb. 15,
> 1995, so Ada 95 is official. It is an ISO, an ANSI, and a FIPS
> (Federal Information Processing Standard) standard. The revision
> adds the rest of OOP to the language - type extension, dynamic
> polymorphism (Ada 83 has static), etc. 
> 
> [snip]
>
> The GNAT Team expects to be able to validate (using the government-
> sponsored validation suite) in the summer. I realize this is mainly
> a DOS group, but you might be interested to know that Silicon Graphics
> has made a significant commitment to both Ada in general and GNAT in
> particular. I have heard SGI folks rave about Ada's multitasking stuff 
> in doing their animation and virtual-reality work. They have stated that
> their interest is not especially government-related, rather they think
> that GNAT will help them sell hardware. I've seen some very spectacular
> video-game-type demos mixing Ada and C++.
> 
> Mike Feldman
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Michael B. Feldman -  chair, SIGAda Education Working Group
> Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
> The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
> 202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) - mfeldman AT seas DOT gwu DOT edu (Internet)
> 

As I said...

> I am not an Ada-Wise person (or an Ada Wise-Person for that matter).

Thanks for the clarification.

Also, thanks for a lot of info here.  I have not been a big user of
Ada (due mostly to (un)availability of compilers and additional
libraries -- such as X Windows) but when I *have* used Ada it was a
good language with much to recommend it.

I am very excited about GNAT and the (upcoming) validation testing.  I
am sorry to hear that (as I read in the documentation) the DOS version
does not support tasking.  I hope that is rectified soon.  Dos will be
my primary Ada platform for a while.

Keep up the good work.

Mark
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Mark Elston                       #include <std-disclaimer.h>
elston AT cave DOT arc DOT nasa DOT gov          #include <std-witticism.h>