Re: Adding wide support to the Ada binding?

[Patrick]

Hi Thomas

Thanks for answering my post !

Since I wrote it, I found out something and I am very happy about it.

As I was saying, I worked very hard to learn Ada in 2012 and I basically 
failed.

I now know why and I now hate Interfaces.C and the -fdump-ada-spec GCC 
switch, they ruined my Ada experience.

If we have Interfaces.C.int it is not compatible with a regular Ada 
integer. The hated library and tool above forces everyone to cast back 
and forth when in fact the regular built in Ada types are already 
compatible with C. In almost all cases Interfaces.C does nothing but get 
in the way.

I learned this from a long time Ada programmer on #ada on freenode but 
no one seems to use this, everyone is using Interfaces.C and 
-fdump-ada-spec dumps Interfaces.C code and it dump a massive amount of it.

If you are interested, I posted to the Ada list here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.ada/aXe3VJ3Q30c

My thread is dying. I am not sure if this is because no one cares or no 
one knows.

Please look at the current Ada ncurses binding, just like the other Ada 
bindings it recreates structs as records and then creates a pointer of 
that record's type. Meanwhile the members of that record/struct are not 
supposed to be accessed by the user, they should use the API.

There is no reason to create records within records within records. A 
pointer of the record's/struct's type can be created without recreating 
the record.

Please see this simple code. I am well on my way to being able to build 
a ncurses Ada binding without Interfaces.C.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
terminal_app.adb


         with ncurses_glue ;
         with ada.strings.fixed ;

         procedure terminal_app is

         package ng renames ncurses_glue ;
         package sf renames ada.strings.fixed ;

         stdscr : access ng.WINDOW ;
         ret    : integer ;
         str    : string := "test 㐴    " & ASCII.NUL ;
         ch     : character ;

         begin

          stdscr := ng.initscr_plus ;
          ret    := ng.addstr(str) ;
          ret    := ng.refresh ;
          ch     := ng.getch ;
          ret    := ng.endwin ;

         end terminal_app ;


-------------------------------------------------------------------
ncurses_glue.ads

         package ncurses_glue is

         type null_record is null record ;

         type WINDOW is access null_record ;

         function initscr_plus
                  return Access WINDOW;
                  pragma Import (C, initscr_plus, "initscr_plus");

         function addstr (arg1 : string)
                  return integer ;
                  pragma Import (C, addstr, "addstr");

         function refresh
                  return integer;
                  pragma Import (C, refresh, "refresh") ;

         function getch
                  return character ;
                  pragma Import (C, getch, "getch") ;

         function endwin
                  return integer;
                  pragma Import (C, endwin, "endwin") ;

         end ncurses_glue ;

-------------------------------------------------------------------
ncurses_c_glue.c


#include <ncursesw/ncurses.h>
#include <locale.h>

void * initscr_plus() {

  setlocale(LC_CTYPE,"");
  initscr() ;
  return stdscr ;
 }

-------------------------------------------------------------------

unicode already works!

It's easy to read, the C API could serve as documentation and with your 
new thread safe support, people could write code that blocks as usual 
for user input but also has tasks writing data to the screen at the same 
time.

Think of the possibilities, people could have stock information, sixel 
graphics or braille graphs plotting away as live graphs or text, while 
also blocking for user input !

I hope to bind most if not all of ncurses over the next few weeks. I 
actually want to use it with GnuCOBOL. This is my favourite language. It 
has an nucrses toolkit built right in. I have been given an experimental 
branch to add more ncurses functionality, hopefully my changes will be 
accepted.

If you would like, I can send all the Ada stuff to you to evaluate ? I 
can also send a build file for the samples I just posted, if you would 
like or if anyone watching this thread wants it?

There is no pressure to include anything in your great project, you 
could just see if you like it.

I am so happy. It was a punishing defeat to leave Ada after investing a 
year with it. Now I feel like I have that year back. I am going to have 
lots of fun blending C, Ada and COBOL

Have a great night-Patrick