[Grace-general] remarks from a lurker

[Ebert, Rolf]

I have been a long time Ada user, mainly in the beginning 90s.  Ada stayed
my preferred hobby language.  I had never again had the chance to use it
professionally.

Only recently I started reading again on cla.  I was very happy that the
Grace project addresses the major omission, IMHO, of Ada, a big standard
library.  Anyway, I am willing to support this project with my limited time.

Here are a few remarks on the current state of Grace:

1) the requirements on lists and other packages should be listed on the web
pages somewhere.

2) a framework for major subsystems should be provided.  I am thinking about
just the parent package names like graphics, text manipulation, OS,
communication, etc. We should look how other languages with extensive
libraries addressed the problem (Java, Perl, Phython, etc)

3) the function name "singleton" is completely misleading to me.  I am not a
native english speaker and only know the expression from the singleton
pattern (exactly one object of a given class within the complete system).
I'd prefer "+" or "To_List".

4) the "Next" procedure and function should have a default value "Tail" for
the direction parameter.  It seems natural to me, to iterate over a list
from head to tail.  If no default value is provided, at least the sample
code above the iterator routines should be updated to include the direction
parameter.

        Rolf