Re: Free Software using AdaEd (Announcement)

[mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman)]

In article <19940922.224250.87@arcangel.demon.co.uk>,
Peter Burwood <adaed@arcangel.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>I recently ported Ada/Ed 1.11.0a to the Acorn range of computers(*)
>running RISC OS and I mailed adaed@cs.nyu.edu to register the port. All I
>received back from two emails was what looked like an automated
>acknowledgement. This led me to the, perhaps erroneous, conclusion that
>Ada/Ed was no longer supported or developed.

>I would love to hear that Ada/Ed is still maintained since I have some bugs
>to report which I would like to have fixed.

I wish I had good news for you, but I don't, really. NYU is really
tied up with GNAT, and the funding we had at GW was to build the
IDE's that resulted in GW-Ada/Ed, DOS and Mac versions.

We should think of Ada/Ed in its current incarnations as a test of the
conjecture that freely distributable Ada compilers can make a big
difference in the acceptance of the language.

The steady e-mail I get, from across the US and around the world, tells
me that we were on target in doing and distributing these "products".

[snip]

>Finally, is there a newer address for Ada/Ed communication, or do I need to
>wait for GAS to support Acorn machines (soon I hope) and then use GNAT ?

Well, we are the nearest thing to a support site. If people report
bug _fixes_ to us, we will make an effort to apply them to the
various versions. We prefer to distribute our stuff via PAL, as
it's central, mirrored, and much more tuned for ftp than our boxes
here at GW.

NYU is unlikely to give Ada/Ed any attention; they have (properly,
IMHO) moved on to GNAT and haven't got funds or time for Ada/Ed.

Ada/Ed, and especially the "packaged" DOS and Mac versions that
combine NYU's good work with our own, makes for a really nice
educational package. But in the end, it's a "toy" that runs out
of steam pretty fast.

We will grab the Ada/Ed "added value" described in the original
post and play with it over here. Perhaps we can be talked into
trying to harmonize some of the ports, but we are doing it as a
hobby at this point, without funding, so we're obviously not
able to push it to the top of the to-do list.

IMHO, our best overall policy (as a community) is to consider the 
free-software concept proved, and move on to building nice tools for GNAT.

Mike Feldman
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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@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
NOTE NEW PHONE NUMBER.
"Pork is all that stuff the government gives the other guys."
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