----- Original Message -----
From: Robert C. Leif, Ph.D. <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, December 13, 1999 12:57 PM
Subject: C libraries are useful: was RE: Accessing "CGI data" (Was: Rational
A.5 Command Line and HTML)


> From: Bob Leif
> To: Tucker Taft et al.
<snip>
> Therefore, I suggest that a standard Ada library be created to access
these
> calls or at least, the compiler vendors who have included these calls
should
> provide some documentation with an example.
>
Well... there is a standardization that I prefer to use in my own work, but
which
I did not mention in my solution, because like a lot of good engineering
practices,
it requires more up-front work.

The standardization to which I refer is IEEE POSIX P1003.5b-1996 also known
as the POSIX Ada bindings.

There is a quite exstensive implementation for UNIX boxes, known as florist,
done by Ted Baker at Florida Stata University, for the GNAT compiler.

Pascal Obry has done a partial binding for the Win32 platform, but it, too
is
for GNAT, and is much less complete than the UNIX implementation.

I have not tried this with Object Ada.

The point is -- there is a standard -- it just lacks implementations.  Many
of us
would like to work on these things... but we have to put bread on the table,
so
our time is limited.

The interface I provided in my example, was similar to the POSIX standard,
but not quite identical, but in my own work if I have to implement something
myself that is covered by the P1003.5 standard, I implement it to conform
to the standard interface.

<snip>