geb@amber.Rational.COM (Gary Barnes) (11/01/90)
An Ada reimplementation of the MIT C-based Xlib is available via anonymous ftp on expo.lcs.mit.edu. There are two files: contrib/ada.xlib.README 4Kb contrib/ada.xlib.tar.Z 2.9Mb This Ada version of Xlib is compatible with X11R4. This is a beta release. The release number is 5_6_0. The sources are about 10Mb when they are restored from the tar file. 3Mb of that is PostScript documentation. Makefiles and Imakefiles are included. This is a complete reimplementation of Xlib; it is not an Ada skin over the C libraries. This leads to a more efficient interface, better type safety, proper behavior with Ada tasking, etc. The Ada Xlib was done at Rational and it compiles and runs with the Rational native R1000 Ada compiler (Delta1 (D_10_20_0) and Delta2 (D_12_1_1) versions) and with the TeleSoft TeleGen2 68k Unix compiler (version 1.4) under SunOS (version 4.0.3 or later). It is currently being ported to other targets by a few groups around the world. Included with the source code are PostScript files for three documents. There is a Porting Guide, a Differences Guide, and a full Xlib manual. The Porting Guide details the steps for porting the library to new machine architectures and operating systems. The Differences Guide points out the differences between the Ada and C languages and libraries. The Xlib manual is an Ada "translation" of the MIT manual for the C library. The copyright on the Ada Xlib is the same as for the MIT library. The code is freely redistributable for any purpose. Rational expects to maintain the Ada Xlib in much the same way as MIT maintains the C Xlib. There is a mailing list for interested parties (Xlib@Rational.Com), a mailing list for reporting bugs (Xlib-Bugs@Rational.Com), and an address for requesting changes to the mailing lists (Xlib-Request@Rational.Com). This is just the Xlib layer of the X Window System. There are currently no Intrinsics or Toolkit layers provided. (That's the next project.) Rational will be working with SAIC and Unisys to come up with common Xlib, Intrinsics, and Toolkit interfaces. Gary E. Barnes geb@Rational.Com