Re: Success report on Linux/PPC, small Ada problem

[Joe Buck <jbuck at synopsys dot COM>]

Robert Dewar writes:

> > For us GNAT, including the FSF version, is a complete Free Software system
> > for Ada programming, not just a bare compiler.

Joseph Myers writes:
> The references are such as "For information on GLADE, contact Ada Core
> Technologies.".  That's commercial advertising.

Yes, I agree with Joseph on this one, as he says

> Pragma @code{CPP_Class} is intended primarily for automatic generation
> using an automatic binding generator tool. Ada Core Technologies does
> not currently supply such a
> tool; See @ref{Interfacing to C++} for more details.

It's not relevant to the user getting this manual from the FSF what a
company named Ada Core Technologies does or does not supply.  Same
in other places, the references to ACT should be dropped here.

Consider what would happen if, in the main GCC manual, we wrote

For information on GDB, contact Red Hat Software.

Such language has to go.  Robert, I'm afraid you may feel picked on,
but we spent about a year reaming the Cygnus/Red Hat folks for similar
things.  The key is "level playing field".

Another issue is that there is already a GNU project called GLADE,
which is completely different from what ACT is calling GLADE.
See http://glade.gnome.org/ .

Also, the manual should not say that the author is Ada Core Technologies.
People write things, not companies.  It can say "Contributed by Ada Core
Technologies, Inc."

> > Of course, but it is certainly valuable for GCC to run on targets other
> > than GNU, and I have never heard anyone question this before.
> 
> It is valuable, but the value of running on such platforms, relative to
> that of running on free platforms, is less than say five years ago, and
> certainly less than ten years ago when running on non-free platforms was
> more or less necessary.

Here I'm going to disagree with Joseph.  I don't see a reason to be more
severe on GNU Ada than on GNU C.  Joseph, if you want to trim anything
down we shouldn't throw away any technically useful information.