Some time back, Alan suggested that I make what amounts to a new, third, Ada binding, and I agree that this is a good idea.
Of the two Ada bindings which I have called "thick" and "thin," the thin binding adheres to the C API of PLplot, using the same subroutine names, argument lists, and data structures including type names. The thick binding differs in several ways. The subroutine names have been changed to be more pleasing to programmers from the Ada culture, the data structures have been changed to be more Ada-like thus requiring a shorter learning curve, argument lists have been modified by removing array dimensions since Ada has true arrays which include their beginning and ending indices and thus their sizes, many constants (mostly integer) have been given names (e.g. one can use "Red" instead of "1" but "1" still works--see xt12a.adb), and a number of high-level "easy-plotters" have been included which in part exploit Ada's ability to have variable argument lists and which take care of much of the PLplot set-up (look in the early parts of plplot.ads). Because of the new subroutine names in the thick binding, some programmers may find it annoying to deal with two names for each subroutine when using the documentation and this is the crux of Alan's suggestion, which was to make what amounts to a new thick binding but which uses the traditional PLplot subroutine names. I'm willing to make a version of the thick binding that substitutes the traditional PLplot subroutine names for the names that I used in the thick Ada binding for those Ada programmers who find it more convenient to look up things in the PLplot documents that way, but note that: (a) I have carefully kept the traditional subroutine names in a comment immediately before the new names in the thick binding, plplot.ads (specification) files as well as the plplot.adb (body) files specifically for ease of looking up function names. I use them all the time and it's not that big of a deal. (b) I doubt that there will be many Ada programmers using the thin interface. Consequently, I feel that the examples should use only the data structures from the thick interface, because those are the data structures that Ada programmers will be using in their coding. To summarize: The plan is to make a quasi-third Ada binding which is exactly like the current thick binding except that the subroutine names are the traditional PLplot names. There will be two example files for each example, one written to the thick binding and one written to the new binding. The naming conventions are e.g. for Example 1, xt01a.adb is written for the thick binding and x01a.adb is written to the new binding. Coding for the Ada examples should use Ada constructs and functions as needed. (See the other note from me today relating to the sprintf problem from a few days ago.) Once an example is complete for one binding, the corresponding example can be automatically generated by a series of string substitutions for subroutine names on the source--that's how I plan to generate the new binding as well. Jerry ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
