Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!bellcore!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!brl-tgr!tgr!RCONN@SIMTEL20.ARPA From: RCONN@SIMTEL20.ARPA (Rick Conn) Newsgroups: net.micro Subject: Re: A Validated Ada Compiler for the IBM PC/XT! Message-ID: <9073@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Fri, 8-Mar-85 09:25:48 EST Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.9073 Posted: Fri Mar 8 09:25:48 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 11-Mar-85 05:28:43 EST Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA Lines: 34 Paul, Your point is well-taken. For very large projects, especially when a good CM system or library management system is not available to keep the libraries in sync, offloading may not be feasible. However, I continue to feel that there are many situations in which offloading (at least during unit coding and testing) is quite feasible. I am just now completing involvement in a spelling checker program, which is a small- to medium-sized effort. The design was oriented around two major objects: the DOCUMENT to be checked and the DICTIONARY (there can be more than one) to check against. There are two packages which deal with these objects, DOCUMENT_HANDLER and DICTIONARY_MANAGER, and each package was assigned to one person to code and unit test. The specifications, which, of course, were subject to change, were planned during the design phase, and the development (including coding and unit testing) of the bodies was done in complete independence. Such development could easily have been offloaded to a PC if an Ada compiler existed for one. The only requirement for this would be that the MACHINE_DEPENDENCIES packages be duplicated on each PC. Each package was in complete control of its object; the DOCUMENT_HANDLER was given the name of a file containing a document and provided words and context information to its user. The user was never concerned with details of document structure or manipulation. To illustrate, MICRO:contains the spec to DOCUMENT_HANDLER as the file DH.ADA. Integration of these and other independently-written packages is now taking place with a high degree of success. I feel that this object-oriented mindset is key to this success, and Ada is instrumental in supporting it. Rick -------