TeleUSE/Ada

TeleUSE/Ada is a full-featured User Interface Management System (UIMS) designed to meet the special needs of Ada developers. It provides specific support needed by large Ada GUI projects and ensures that these programs comply with the Department of Defense (DoD) mandate that all GUI applications be written in Ada. TeleUSE/Ada addresses the entire GUI lifecycle, helping you create an interface that is easy to modify and maintain well beyond the design and development phases.

From the World Leader in Ada Solutions

Thomson Software Products is a leading developer and supplier of Ada development environments, with additional emphasis on consulting, training and services. These tools are designed to improve the quality of software applications and the productivity of programmers using open systems. Thomson Software Products' software engineering tools are renowned for their reliability, performance and integration of industry standards.

TeleUSE/Ada Highlights

Layered Approach to GUI Development for flexibility and increased reuse
The Power of TeleUSE for creating superior GUI applications
The Dialog Manager Advantage - minimize callback code and make debugging easier
High-quality Ada Code Generation at the push of a button
Automatic Build Process generates main files, make files and invokes compiler and binder
Ada Motif Bindings to OSF/Motif are included
Support for Large Ada GUI Projects through support of the entire development lifecycle

TeleUSE/Ada radically reduces the learning curve associated with Ada development, helps engineers deliver mission-critical GUIs in a fraction of the time required currently, vastly improves product maintenance, and fosters teamwork and widespread reuse. In short, TeleUSE/Ada is the solution companies need to help them complete the shift to object-oriented software methodologies-and to fully realize the rewards of this new approach.

Click here to see a TeleUSE system diagram.

Layered Approach to GUI Development

TeleUSE/Ada generates all of the application's GUI code in Ada. No C code is generated and a C compiler is not required to run the toolset. This ability to generate Ada code results, in large measure, from the flexibility of the powerful TeleUSE architecture, which mirrors the layered Seeheim Model of GUI development. This model divides an interface into three parts: the presentation layer, which contains the static set of X and Motif resources that comprise the visible portion of the GUI; the dialog layer, which provides direct access to the application code; and the application layer. In TeleUSE, the presentation and dialog layers are specified independently as high-level, language-independent constructs, which means that the files generated at these layers can be reused in diferent language contexts--and converted to Ada when appropriate.

The Full Power of TeleUSE

TeleUSE/Ada offers all the capabilities and power of TeleUSE. With the TeleUSE Visual Interactive Presentation (VIP) Layout Editor, you can interactively define the GUI's screen displays, and create widget templates--reusable objects of screens, partial screens, or groups of screens. To build the dynamic dialog layer, which contains the callback routines needed to manipulate the presentation layer and interface with the application code, you can either write the callback code directly in Ada or use TeleUSE's Dialog Manager to create dialog scripts. If you elect the former method, the TeleUSE Dialog Editor allows you to define, locate, and edit Ada callbacks in Ada files, and a set of TeleUSE/Ada bindings enable Ada dialog code to interface to TeleUSE convenience routines.

The Dialog Manager Advantage

The TeleUSE Dialog Manager offers tremendous benefits to a developer building an Ada GUI. First, it uses an event-driven model to handle callbacks from the user interface, thereby dramatically reducing the amount of callback code required and making dialog scripts much easier to write and maintain than Ada dialog files. Dialog scripts can call Ada application subprograms directly. And the Dialog Debugger allows you to identify GUI dialog problems faster than you would using Ada dialog files and a general purpose Ada debugger. In fact, you can use the Dialog Debugger to debug dialog scripts at the same time that you use an Ada debugger to debug application code.

High-quality Ada Code Generation

Once you have used TeleUSE to create the GUI, Ada source code can be automatically generated to implement the interface, compile the code, and link it with the Ada application. The generated Ada code uses STARS-compatible Ada bindings to interface to the X, Xt, and Motif library functions in C. TeleUSE/Ada also supports the option of generating C source code from the presentation and dialog layers, should you so desire.

An Automatic Build Process

The TeleUSE UI Builder automates the build process by generating and maintaining main files and make files and by invoking the Ada compiler and binder to build the final executable. Ada-specific options allow you to specify the Ada main unit, to describe the Ada compiler and environment, and to invoke a special main loop for tasking.

Ada Motif Bindings to the OSF/Motif Toolkit

Ada developers can build a graphical user interface to their Ada application with Ada bindings to the OSF/Motif GUI toolkit. These STARS-compliant bindings provide complete Ada access to the OSF/Motif and X libraries.

Support for Large Ada GUI Projects

As a full-featured UIMS, TeleUSE/Ada supports the needs of large Ada GUI projects in the areas that are most important to you and your colleagues:

Full Lifecycle Support - From Rapid Prototyping to Maintenance

With TeleUSE/Ada, you can modify and enhance interface templates and modules as easily during maintenance as during prototyping and development. Powerful tools enable new project members to analyze a GUI's structure and behavior when researching unfamiliar interfaces. And TeleUSE/Ada offers mechanisms for documenting your application by attaching descriptive comments to every widget, template, and module.

Structured programming principles

TeleUSE/Ada allows for independent specification of the presentation and dialog layers and management of the application layer. This modularization of the overall development task enables projects to be split among team members and allows for both top-down and bottom-up development methods.

Configuration management

TeleUSE/Ada supports the use of RCS or SCCS source control systems, saves session information so that you can start where you left off, and manages GUI files through a configuration file that automates the build process. The product not only supports full compatibility with industry standards, such as X and OSF/Motif, but enables you to enforce adherence to corporate standards by controlling widget templates and interface modules.

Object-Oriented Methodology, Reusability, and Portability

With TeleUSE/Ada, widget templates are instantiated in the same way as Ada generics, and templates and interface modules can be reused within and across GUIs. So that TeleUSE-developed GUI applications can be ported to any platform with the needed compilers, the product provides interface source code and license-free library sources.

World-Class Support from Thomson Software Products

Thomson Software Products offers a full range of consulting services should you need more than just technical support. At Thomson Software Products, we are committed to making your project a success.

For more information call 1 (800) 833-0085, ext. 244, or send mail to info@thomsoft.com

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