Talk:Ada Programming/Archive 4

Dangling Pointer in Ada Programming: Contributing
There used to be a page describing how to contribute: guidelines, templates, etc., titled "Contributing". Where has this gone? The link from the top page seems dead.

I wanted to learn the reason why someone had removed links to the "&" operator using Ada/operator... or Ada/delimiter... markup. (A no comment change.)

gb 17:54, 6 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The Contributing page has been deleted without proper reason! See Staff lounge.


 * Thanks for the pointer. 84.62.134.145 23:21, 9 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't know the reason for removing those links, we should ask the user who made it. ManuelGR 12:19, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Software Engineers Handbook:Language Dictionary:Multi-paradigmed:Ada
Anybody to help me finish this page. The chapters and there content are standardized across the many languages - I have copied the C++ entry and now it needs to be converted to Ada ASAP. Just do one chapter at atime so prevent duplication of effort.

--Krischik T 09:10, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Reference source code to be deleted from Wikisource
Pattern_match_knuth_morris_pratt_fixed_test.adb has been marked for eventual deletion. Is it interesting for our book? There could be other Ada source code fragments marked for deletion in Wikisource:Category:Source code. Would they be appropiate for a sample source code appendix? ManuelGR 20:06, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Navigation templates
You could easily roll all your navigation (levels 1-3) templates into one using the template. See Template:Recipesummary for an example (maybe somewhat muddled, but it works). Kellen T 22:50, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Info box
Our new Infobox Template:Ada_Programming/Infobox &mdash;the preceding unsigned comment is by Krischik (talk &bull; contribs)


 * You can also add it as a drop down box to the main page of the book if you like (see Final Cut Pro). In its current form, its only designed as an example of the various functions an infobox could provide. If more people start to use it, I'll update it by making the layout prettier, adding links to the printable version and PDF file, and cleaning up the code. --haginძaz 13:52, 12 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I see the drop down box overlaping the "Ada Programming" title in Mozilla Seamonkey under Linux. I suppose it depends on the browser and the font size, and could happen to others, so I think it isn't the best place to display the info box next to the title. ManuelGR 19:26, 12 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Indeed. prehehaps a more classic approach like in would be better. We should ask the author and prehaps remove the box until the problem is resoved. --Krischik T 09:47, 13 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I decreased the spacing so that now it works at 800x600 on SeaMonkey (using Windows) with standard font size. Increasing the font size ruins the rest of the page (and makes the main page of both Wikibooks and Wikipedia nerarly unbrowsable), so I don't think anyone would use it. Check this revision to see if it works. Again, I only designed it as an example of a possible use of a book info template, so it's far from perfect. --haginძaz 18:15, 13 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I still see it overlapping using Seamonkey. It looks ok using Konqueror, though. Font size seems to depend both on browser and platform, so it isn't a good idea to design the page with a given expectation about font width. ManuelGR 10:56, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

By the way, the show/hide TOC no longer works. Might be it related with a customization done for supporting drop down infoboxes? ManuelGR 11:00, 14 May 2006 (UTC)


 * In MediaWiki:Monobook.js, the navigation bars are still labled experimental. So I guess we shouldn't use them until the bugs are worked out. --haginძaz 16:05, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

including the book on a CD to publicize free textbooks
Howdy,

Plaudits, everyone, for your hard work on this book, which I think is an example of the best work that anyone's done on wikibooks to date. I'm the author of a free online textbook myself, and I'm working with the state Public Interest Research Groups' Affordable Textbooks Campaign, http://www.maketextbooksaffordable.com, to try to spread the word about free and low-cost textbooks. As part of that effort, I'm working on putting together a promotional CD to act as a showcase for 20 of the best free textbooks that are currently available. I would like to include your book on the CD. The complete list of proposed books is given at the end of this post, along with the criteria I used for selecting them. The decision on which books to include was my own, and does not imply any endorsement by PIRG. Because a number of the books on the list are under licenses that only allow redistribution for noncommercial purposes, the CD will be noncommercial.

Although your book is available under the GFDL license, which allows redistribution, I thought I should check with you first to see whether distributing your book on the CD is something you'd approve of.

I also want to try to address any practical concerns you might have about having your book on the CD. Although I find it flattering when people redistribute my own book, one problem is that they sometimes don't bother to keep their copy up to date. To address this potential issue, I've written software that will automatically download the latest version of your book on a regular basis. The following information is what I have for your book right now:

title     Ada Programming author    Krischik et al.  license    GFDL web page  http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming PDF       http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikibooks/en/8/8d/Ada_Programming.pdf

If the book ever becomes available in print, please let me know, and if possible provide a URL to which the CD could steer interested users to buy a printed copy.

I was unable to find an image of your book's cover. If you could provide one, I could use it to make a thumbnail image for the book's file on the CD.

I plan to make the collection available online as an ISO image, which anyone could then download and burn onto a blank CD. I hope to get this done over the summer, and hand out copies to students and colleagues at the beginning of the fall semester. It would also be possible to produce copies with professional-quality labels and jewel boxes (but depending on the way the business arrangements were set up, it might be necessary to eliminate from that version of the CD any books that are under a license that forbids commercial use). This kind of thing has been done successfully with open source software CDs by organizations such as theopencd.org.

Please let me know what you think, and don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions. I'll be on vacation from June 21 to July 14, and probably will not be able to answer e-mail received during that time until I get back. However, e-mail is still the best way to reach me, since I may not get around to checking this discussion page. My address is crowell06 at lightandmatter dot com.

--Bcrowell 23:10, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

---

Criteria for selecting the books to go on the CD:

- It's a finished, high-quality book designed for practical use in the classroom.

- It's available under a license that allows it to be redistributed freely.

- It's available in PDF format (or in a format such as PostScript that can be converted to PDF).

- It's available from a public URL that can be freely accessed by an automated script, so that the version of the book offered on the CD can be kept up to date automatically.

- The topic is not too esoteric.

---

Angelo, Liberte license:     BY-NC-SA web page:    http://www.lightandmatter.com/french/ url:         http://www.lightandmatter.com/french/french.pdf

Beck, First Course in Complex Analysis license:     noncommercial web page:    http://math.sfsu.edu/beck/papers/complex.analysis.html url:         http://math.sfsu.edu/beck/papers/complex.pdf

Beezer, First Course in Linear Algebra license:     GFDL web page:    http://linear.ups.edu/ url:         http://linear.ups.edu/download/fcla-oneUS-0.75.pdf

Clark, Elementary Abstract Algebra license:     noncommercial web page:    http://www.math.usf.edu/~eclark/#ELEMENTARY_ABSTRACT_ALGEBRA url:         http://www.math.usf.edu/~eclark/Elem_abs_alg/Elem_abs_alg.ps

Clark, Elementary Number Theory license:     noncommercial web page:    http://www.math.usf.edu/~eclark/#ELEMENTARY_NUMBER_THEORY url:         http://www.math.usf.edu/~eclark/elem_num_th_book.ps

Crowell, Simple Nature license:     CC-BY-SA web page:    http://www.lightandmatter.com/area1sn.html url:         http://www.lightandmatter.com/simple.pdf

Downey, How to Think Like a Computer Scientist, C++ Version license:     GFDL web page:    http://greenteapress.com/thinkcpp/ url:         http://greenteapress.com/thinkcpp/thinkCScpp.pdf

Downey, How to Think Like a Computer Scientist, Java Version license:     GFDL web page:    http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkapjava/ url:         http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkapjava/thinkapjava.pdf

Eck, Introduction to Programming Using Java license:     GFDL web page:    http://math.hws.edu/javanotes/ url:         http://math.hws.edu/eck/cs124/downloads/javanotes4.pdf

Hefferon, Linear Algebra license:     ? web page:    http://joshua.smcvt.edu/linalg.html/ url:         ftp://joshua.smcvt.edu/pub/hefferon/book/book.pdf

Keisler, Elementary Calculus: An Approach Using Infinitesimals license:     BY-NC-SA web page:    http://www.math.wisc.edu/~keisler/calc.html url:         http://www.math.wisc.edu/~keisler/keislercalc1.pdf

Krischik, Ada Programming license:     GFDL web page:    http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming url:         http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikibooks/en/8/8d/Ada_Programming.pdf

Magnus, Forall X: An Introduction to Formal Logic license:     BY-NC-SA web page:    http://www.fecundity.com/logic/index.html url:         http://www.fecundity.com/logic/download.php?format=pdf

Mauch, Introduction to Methods of Applied Mathematics license:     pd  web page:     http://www.its.caltech.edu/~sean/book.html url:         http://www.ama.caltech.edu/~seanm/applied_math_letter.pdf

McAfee, Introduction to Economic Analysis license:     BY-NC-SA web page:    http://www.introecon.com/ url:         http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~mcafee/Classes/Intro/IEA152.pdf

Meyers, How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python license:     GFDL web page:    http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/ url:         http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/thinkCSpy.pdf

Osborne, Bargaining and Markets license:     ? web page:    http://ww2.economics.utoronto.ca/osborne/bm/ url:         http://ww2.economics.utoronto.ca/osborne/bm/viewpdf.php?enc_filename=bargmkt.pdf

Pilgrim, Dive Into Python license:     GFDL web page:    http://diveintopython.org/ url:         http://diveintopython.org/download/diveintopython-pdf-5.4.zip

Snell, Introduction to Probability license:     GFDL web page:    http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/teaching_aids/books_articles/probability_book/book.html url:         http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/teaching_aids/books_articles/probability_book/amsbook.mac.pdf

Thide, Electromagnetic Field Theory license:     noncommercial web page:    http://www.plasma.uu.se/CED/Book/ url:         http://www.plasma.uu.se/CED/Book/EMFT_Book.pdf


 * It is nice to hear about this project. As one of the "Ada Programming" authors you have not only my consent (implied by the GFDL license) but also my support. The conditions for redistribution are perfectly detailed in the license so there is nothing more to say about it.


 * I think you should distribute the examples sources package from https://sourceforge.net/projects/wikibook-ada/ alongside with the book.


 * There isn't a cover image as such although all our pages are illustrated with the following Ada's portrait: Image:Ada_Lovelace_1838.jpg


 * Alternatively you could use this other one, if you like it better: Image:Ada_Lovelace.jpg


 * A final question, do you plan to provide the book in HTML version apart from the PDF one? The book is highly hyperlinked, but the PDF version is just a printout using CUPS virtual PDF printer, so this feature would be lost.


 * Regards. (Sent via e-mail, but copied here for public discussion) ManuelGR 19:49, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Please
check out and fix the layout with JavaScript off. --212.30.72.108 18:55, 26 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The problem I see is about the infobox drop down which is outside our control, but I will report your concern in the infobox project. ManuelGR

For non-programmers
It is almost impossible for a non-programmer to understand the basic concepts written in the beginning of this work for some basic words and ideas aren't defined. There should be a way to introduce terms like package, implementation, implementation-defined and some other words to non-programmers to help them understand this language and catch on to programming. Lincher 02:05, 5 November 2006 (UTC)


 * True, while for keywords we have little introductions like Ada Programming/Keywords/package they are not allways linked and not allways perfect. For technical terms line implementation-defined we have nothing. I propose a new hirachie Ada Programming/Term/implementation-defined. --Krischik T 09:46, 5 November 2006 (UTC)


 * For technical terms we could also link to Wikipedia, unless they are terms very specific to Ada, in which case a local glossary would be a great idea. Regarding implementation-defined, it does not exist in Wikipedia, but surprisingly undefined behaviour does. ManuelGR 19:27, 5 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I have added a few words to the introduction, please comment. Can't say whether this is the right place, as we have hypertext. But an introduction should be cohesive? gb 18:52, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

ambiguous grammar
This sentence is on the front page, under Programming in the large:

For example, compared to programs written in C, programs written in Ada 83 contain ten times fewer bugs, and cost twice less to develop in the first place

what does 'twice less' mean? half? quarter? $2 less?


 * This sounds too much like showing-off anyway, for my taste at least. Given that the publisher (IBM) Rational is known as a vendor of Ada compilers, this fact will add an unfortunate bias to just mentioning the mentioned study as a proof. Even when there are facts in the study. So I suggest some wording changes, making this more matter-of-fact. (I can't do this myself, I couldn't construct adequate phrases.)

gb 18:15, 23 November 2006 (UTC)