Re: DOM and SAX parsing in Ada

[Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@acm.org>]

Nick Roberts <nick.roberts@acm.org> writes:

> My comments are based on an e-mail exchange I had with the AdaCore employee
> who was (at the time) in charge of work on XML/Ada, a couple of months ago.
> His comments came as a surprise to me, in part because of what is said on
> the web site ("Contributions to this library are most appreciated, including
> bug reports"), but I have it from the horse's mouth, so to speak.
> 
> When I suggested that I wanted to make changes to the code, he indicated
> that those changes could not be merged back into the AdaCore CVS copy unless
> I signed a copyright assignment, in favour of either AdaCore or the FSF, to
> the latter of which I am agreeable. 

ok, no problem here.

> When I suggested that XML/Ada be moved to SourceForge, he indicated
> that it would have to be a separate project (a fork), whose changes
> could never, in practice, be merged back into the AdaCore CVS,
> because of the difficulty of getting all the contributors to sign
> the assignment. This is to the best of my recollection and
> understanding.

Ok, AdaCore wants to maintain the CVS repository on their server.
That's reasonable, it's one of their supported products.

> So, I could see very little advantage to making any contributions to
> XML/Ada, since it would create two XML/Adas (mine and AdaCore's).
> Would that be an advantage to the Ada community?

Big disconnect. Why do you say there would be two? Hmm, apparently you
feel you can only contribute if the CVS repository is on SourceForge.
Why is that, specifically?

Perhaps you don't have CVS write access to AdaCore's repository?
Others have hinted that is the case, but you have not specifically
mentioned it. If that is the problem, ask them for write access, and
see what they say.

> On the subject of comments, I suggested that the amount of
> maintenance documention (in the form of comments or in any other
> form) was insufficient -- it was nearly nonexistent, in fact -- and
> the answer was, in essence, that no maintenance documentation is
> required, since the code is self-documenting. I'm afraid, to me,
> that attitude is unacceptable (and doesn't seem very professional,
> frankly).

Well, did you try reading the code? THat is the only thing that
matters, not some arbitrary standard of "not enough comment lines". If
you can, in fact, understand it, then it _is_ self-documenting.

On the other hand, I agree that a lot of AdaCore's code is not well
enough documented; I'm thinking of some parts of GtkAda in particular.

But the proper response is to contribute good documentation, not just
complain. 

-- 
-- Stephe