Mike Brenner wrote:

> But beware, most of those APIs do not work (some by design and most by bugs)
> on either Netscape, Microsoft Explorer, Mosaic, or Paladin.

there might be some slight incompatabilities in browser VM's that would
cause some applets to behave differently, true, I heared that. But I do
not use Java for applets, I use it for standalone applications.

>
> Nasser > ... If I want to find if a file is in a directory, I call a method ...
>
> Yes, the limitations on text_io and lack of directory management was
> put in to implement some kind of least common denominator file system
> that respected DEC's desire for every user of VMS to go through the
> Record Manager.

OK.

Java as a langauge is not as good as Ada as a langauge. but as a
platform, it is very good.

lots of the Java API's that come "build into" the platform (JDK) are
very usefull. lots of ready to use data structures, database
connectivity, etc.. these utilities classes for me is what is attractive
in Java, not the language itself. For example, in Ada how would I find
if a file is write accessable? using the Ada libraries that come with
the langauge? there is no such Ada API. offcourse I can write the code
myself to interface to the system and find out (since it is easy now to
call C from Ada). or I can use the Ada posix API that I can find
somehwere on the net, But this is the point, in Java I dont have to do
this, the JDK API provides all these ready to use. and on any platform.
and I think this is what Ada needs.

>
> Nasser > ... I dont think the Ada to Java hooks will take care of this ...
>
> What hooks are being referred to? The Ada source code does not hook
> into Java, it directly converts to Ada byte code.

yes, that is what I meant. I mean using the Ada/Java conversion. if it
is too much work all the time to do that, I am not sure if it will fly.
the headach of managing this, with the build process/makefiles/source
configuration/management of using 2 langauges like this togother. I have
to really try it first. It has to be smooth process, if there are too
many manual steps involved to do this all the time, it might not work.
are there many people who are allready using this system of development,
i.e. Ada/Java togother? I wonder how it is working out. I plan this
weekend to spend lots of time looking at this. If I find it easy to call
Java from Ada without much work, I will definitly consider writing my
program in Ada/Java.

thanks,
Nasser