mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) (06/21/91)
Thought you might be interested in this. The June 1991 issue of Ada Strategies, one of those expensive newsletters, reports about a product you might have seen advertised or discussed (I think in InfoWorld) called AccessMac. This program allows - without extra hardware - an IBM PC disk drive (3.5", of course), to format, read, and write disks in Macintosh format (such capabilities have existed on the Mac side for a while now). The program, developed in the U.K., is written in Ada using the Janus compiler. I will post the full story when the AdaStrategies publier sends me an ASCII file of the text over the weekend. I will, of course, add this to my list of nongovernmental Ada successes. We can finally answer "yes" when folks ask whether Ada has been used to develop any mass-market software, especially on IBM-PC or Mac equipment. This is, I think, a first. I don't think it'll be the last, and hope that the American software industry is not going to leave it entirely to the Europeans. A less-mass-market product developed in Ada is a PC-based CAD package written in France. The name escapes me, but I will try to track it down. Its developer describes it as AutoCAD-like. Another interesting story is the one from Thomson-CSF, a French company that builds air traffic control systems in Ada. The Copenhagen Airport one is, I think, up and running, as is one in Kenya. The Netherlands and Switzerland versions are under development. I'll post more details as I get them. The bottom line is: if you're scared of Ada, don't fly into Europe in a few years. (The American FAA is also building its new traffic-control system in Ada; it just seems to be taking longer than the European ones. And IBM is the prime contractor, not Thomson). Mike Feldman