> > No standard way to light up dots in realtime or get key downstrokes... > > > [Just] pick one of the 15 incompatible methods of doing whatever, > > or ... hack out number 16. > > If there were 15 methods of lighting up dots in realtime and getting the > keyboard and other ports, this would not be discussed. The problem is > there is no reasonable way to do screen, keyboard, serial, parallel, > ethernet, and mouse I/O that comes with most Ada compilers. > > If there was even 1, this would not be discussed. > > We are missing some of the code, some of the interfaces, and some of the > classes. Acknowledged. But when you said that before, someone (probably tongue in cheek) suggested that our quest for excellence (his word: perfectionism) kept us from agreeing on a standard. I was trying to point out that the folks "out there" in non-Ada land would have come up with fifteen different ways (different in the details) of doing it as soon as the "problem" was discovered--and one a month after that. "Standard? What the heck you talking about, 'a standard' ? Standard ain't no noun, it's an adjective. Standard means the way 51% of the hackers do it."