Ada Bindings Working Group
		   Formed at Tri-Ada'93


On Wednesday, 22 September 1993, at approximately 12:30, the Ada
Bindings Working Group (ABWG) met for the first time, for the purpose
of organizing and determining their mission and work plan for the near
future.

Bill Loftus was elected ABWG's first chairman.

ABWG's mission is:

	To identify and disseminate issues and recommendations for the
	creation of Ada bindings to software systems.

ABWG's goals include the standardization and publication of package
specifications (with commercial vendors supplying bodies to those
specifications).

ABWG established three subgroups to investigate Ada bindings to several
interfaces of special interest to its members:  Common Graphical User
Interfaces (GUIs), Microsoft Windows, and OMG's CORBA.  Eric Worth of
ESL volunteered to be chairman of ABWG's OMG CORBA subgroup.  We also
hope that we can still affect the Ada binding to Microsoft Windows.
The Common GUI subgroup will investigate Ada interfaces for the major
GUIs to determine if a GUI-independent interface can be developed,
perhaps coming up with a common set.

Besides investigating Ada bindings to these interfaces, ABWG will
address the subject of a general way to develop Ada bindings.  We
identified four areas of importance: (1) binding technology, (2) how to
write a binding, in general, (3) how to move from other (existing)
language bindings to Ada, and (4) "thin" versus "thick" bindings.

In order to be effective in the development of Ada bindings for evolving standards, 
we want to try to affect them during their standardization
process -- not after they have become standards, when it may be very
difficult to develop an effective Ada binding.

We would like to increase the number of other systems accessible to Ada.

One of the action items resulting from our first meeting is to solicit
what people would like to have Ada bindings to.

We would also like to maintain an open list of companies that
produce/provide Ada bindings; we can start with the AdaIC's list.

At ABWG's first meeting, SERC announced that they have made publicly
available their Xt/XLib Ada bindings and have forwarded them on to the
GNU Ada9X project.

Anyone who is interested in the work of ABWG can send an email message
to ABWG-Request@AJPO.SEI.CMU.Edu with the following information:  name,
company name and address, phone number, FAX number, email address(es),
and subgroup interest(s).