From: Bob Leif
To: David Botton et al.

The question is NOT XML vs. Ada for programming. It is for the GUI and data
exchange, which "standard" or 'standards" is best as an interface to Ada?
XML DTDs are flexible enough to accommodate our needs. I submit that XML is
by far the least bad choice of: Microsoft Windows, IDE from CORBA, and JAVA.
XML is a vendor neutral standard from the World Wide Web Consortium. The
Document Type Definitions are sufficiently flexible for our needs.

Please see NASA on Astronomical Instrument Markup Language, an IML Dialect
Prepared for: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center by  Century Computing, a
division of AppNet, Inc.
http://pioneer.gsfc.nasa.gov/public/iml/IMLandAIML.doc
This document includs the following:

<RecordFormat name="Status" size="64" ordered="true" >
                <Format name="tag"     format="%s" size="16" ordered="true" />
                <Format name="Time"    format="%d" size="4" ordered="true" />
                <ArrayFormat name="Temperatures" size="40" ordered="true" >
                        <Format name="dataElement" format="%f" size="4" ordered="true" />
                </ArrayFormat>
                <Format name="Heat Switch" format="%d" size="4" ordered="true" />
            </RecordFormat>

The question is how closely can one make XML follow Ada semantics? Since XML
permits the creation of DTDs, for many applications we should only need to
worry about our own DTD's. The ability to use off-the-shelf browsers and
web-page editors to run and produce screens would significantly facilitate
the development of commercial applications in Ada.

Parenthetically, I believe that it would benefit both the Ada community and
the World Wide Web consortium to include one or more Ada language experts in
the group that is working on XML.

-----Original Message-----
From: Team Ada: Ada Advocacy Issues (83 & 95)
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of David Botton
Sent: Sunday, April 16, 2000 11:30 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: What the competition looks like (resurrected)


I get such a kick out of the "Lets go XML" deal. XML
as a "programming tool" is already so poluted with
platform specific versions that if it ever does get
standardized it would make no difference.

The only reason AdaPower isn't XML'd from start to end
is the only browser supporting XML and letting you do
anything half decent with XML is Internet Explorer on
Windows! (I do expect to some day have all of
AdaPowers articles availble in an XML format for
download, exchange, etc. though)

XML has some nice features for data exchange, but it
is sad that a mark up language is being pushed as a
programming language and the answer to all problems
with a syntax that makes you wish you were programming
in C.

David Botton


> From: Bob Leif
> It is now time to for Ada to switch to the next
> software epoch, XML.

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