Re: GWindows and David Botton

[David Botton <david@botton.com>]

GWindows/GNATCOM was born out of:

Personal need for a solid GMGPL Windows library that would easliy 
support under the covers what is needed for serious COM and Active X 
control use and development. (Yes, I have actually used GWindows + 
GNATCOM to even develop fully working Active X controls running in VB 
or .NET programs).

Easy to use and teach (with all modesty aside its simplicity combined 
with extreme extensability is something I am proud of) - a person with 
moderate skills can teach himself most of GWindows in a few hours and 
any one familiar with Windows can work miracles not long after that 
with the advantages of Ada.

Very clean and well documented (in code at least) Windows framework 
that took real advantage of Ada the language not just a "binding" be it 
thick or thin. Take a look at the way I bind to windows functions and 
it becomes obvious how the approach of a thick binding using a thin set 
of prototypes is inferior and clutters code. (I would recommend any one 
looking to do bindings in the future consider this approach to creating 
solid code around an API instead of "bindings").

To insure that Ada would be fully usable on Windows (that means even 
Windows CE, etc. ala GStrings and things like that) including all the 
new Windows technogies that are COM based (as even .NET is built on COM 
for the most part) in to the way future with out need for constant new 
bindings.

To be part of my (sadly, once plan) to produce a GNU VB/Delphi killer 
that would start to draw more of a mass interest in Ada as a whole for 
all platforms (It is possible to compile large parts of GWindows using 
Wine under Linux, but that was not the plan, just to get a more 
diverese and "younger" crowd to Ada). Sadly it is so close but yet I am 
no longer in the position to really push for it these days.

There are may other reasons as well, but these should I hope at least 
get people interested in looking  deeper in to the heart of the 
GWindows and GNATCOM. There is much more to it then many realize.

David Botton



On 2004-09-28 14:25:40 -0400, "stephane richard" 
<stephane.richard@verizon.net> said:

> 
> "Pascal Obry" <pascal@obry.org> wrote in message news:uekkmnv4c.fsf@obry.org...
>> 
>> On big plus for Gwindows is that it can automatically generate binding for
>> all COM/ActivX objects. Everything that come as COM/ActivX on Windows can be
>> instantly used in Ada via Gwindows without the need to write a binding!
>> 
>> Pascal.
>> 
>> -- 
>> 
>> --|------------------------------------------------------
>> --| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
>> --| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
>> --|------------------------------------------------------
>> --|              http://www.obry.org
>> --| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"
>> --|
>> --| gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.pgp.net --recv-key C1082595
> 
> here's one I didn't know :-)......