[Plplot-devel] RE: Plplot Ada binding

[Geoffrey F. <fu...@ga...>]

Hello Bernard,

Sorry about the mixed messages, but we've had some more discussion
about your Ada binding submission, and thought it would be useful to
revise our last communication to you on the subject.

First of all, let me just thank you again for your work.  As Alan
mentioned previously, however, none of the current PLplot developers
have any experience with or substantive knowledge of Ada, which leaves
us ill equipped to support--much less extend--the code over the long
term. 

We are in principle willing to add your Ada code to the core
distribution, alongside the other language bindings, in
plplot/bindings/ada.  I say "in principle" because in practice, we
would hope for more than just an initial shot of code when setting up
a new language binding.  What we would really like to see is roughly:
  A) A reliable, available point of contact for the long term.
  B) Configure support
  C) The standard examples implemented.

Are you willing and able to volunteer to serve in the A) capacity?  We
realize B) might be unobvious, we would be willing to help, even help
substantially with this, as long as you are involved.  And for C) we
would really need to rely on you, since none of us knows Ada.  

Note, this does not mean that B) and C) need to happen immediately at
the outset.  There are clearly timelines in all software development
that relate to the personal time availability and extant professional
committments of the contributors, for any OSS project such as PLplot.
Many of our existing language bindings are still in formative stages.
But they are all basically supported by someone who is involved
materially in the PLplot development community, and available to
answer questions from users.  

If you think you could help support the Ada binding for PLplot in a
similar fashion, we'd be happy to create the plplot/bindings/ada
directory, and accept the initial submission.  Besides working on the
code, joining the plp...@li... mailing list
would also be useful.

As a final note, all PLPlot code must be under the LGPL (the "Library
Gnu Public License"), so it would be necessary to add an annotation to
this effect for any new submission such as this.  (Clearer annotation
of all files in the distribution is one of our open tasks).

Please let me know how you feel about this.  If you feel this is too
much commitment, we would understand (we all have pressures in our
respective life situations), but in such a case, Alan's prior
suggestion about setting up an independent project, perhaps at
SourceForge or one of the other OSS sponsor sites, would seem to be
the best option.  As Alan mentioned, even though he is one of our core
developers, he manages one of his own projects, a PLplot binding to
the Yorick language, in this same way, so there is precedant.

Let me know which path you think works best for you.

Best regards,

-- 
Geoffrey Furnish         fu...@ga...