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"Robert C. Leif, Ph.D." <[log in to unmask]>
Fri, 3 Nov 2000 21:06:58 -0800
text/plain (65 lines)
From: Bob Leif
To: John McCabe et al.
"we need to expand and pointing out places where Ada is used in a
'trivial' way is always going to help."

Since I make my living primarily in the development of Analytical Cytology
chemistries and instruments, I am exposed to and depend upon a large number
of commercial software products. A specific case in point is my recent
upgrade to Adobe Photoshop 6.0. I use Photoshop to display and manipulate
the 12 bit images that I produce with a very low noise camera. Adobe claims
that Photoshop is has been upgraded from 8 to 16 bits per pixel for
monochrome images; unfortunately, most of its methods do not take 16 bit
images as arguments. The obvious reason for this and many other examples of
similar lack of functionality in upgrades of commercial products is that
their software designs were suboptimal. These design flaws were often the
result of the choice of programming language.

The gray scale maximum value and, of course, the number of pixels in a
rectangular image (X_Max and Y_Max) should have been based on generic .
Since C++ templates have only recently come into use, I doubt that Adobe
made use of this functionality. Can anyone comment on the capacity of C++
templates and classes to build first monochrome images and then reuse the
monochrome code for N dimensional color images. I suspect that an Ada
generic with a two dimensional array of pixels, which could be a tagged
type, would be a much better place to start.

The reason for my interest is that Analytical Cytology images can have
measurements of 8 or even more molecular species and the spectra are not
limited to visible light. I might note that this type of technology will
eventually be used for automated Pap tests and other cytology and pathology
diagnostic procedures.

Returning to the beginning, it should be noted software upgrades are the
ultimate maintenance business. They can be very profitable; in that,
upgrades are often sold directly to the end-user. The ease of maintenance of
Ada should both lower the costs of upgrades and increase their frequency. In
short, Ada has much to offer to the developers of commercial software.

-----Original Message-----
From: Team Ada: Ada Advocacy Issues (83 & 95)
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2000 1:29 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Times Square Studios building


>Hey, Mike's previous repeated, documented citation about Ada being used to
>upgrade the NYC subway system ought to carry more weight.  (Go to his
>SIGAda Education WG webpage for links.)  And that it's based on very
>effective and cost-effective "reuse" from Paris, Cairo, etc. subway systems
>in Ada.  Those applications are much more in a domain with requirements for
>which we should be extolling Ada, and ought to impress your boss much more
>than a neon sign.   -hh

I still don't agree with this attitude. I don't think we should be so
blinkered
about Ada's capabilities. Sure it is the perfect language for safety
critical
work, but this is already well known. Of course we need to try to maintain
that
market, but we need to expand and pointing out places where Ada is used in a
'trivial' way is always going to help.

John

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