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<h4>FLTK Ada Binding</h4>

<p>Git repository: <a href="/cgit/cgit.cgi/fltkada">Link</a><br>
Estimated status: 40-45% complete</p>


<h5>25/6/2017</h5>

<p>FLTK, or by its full name the <a href="http://www.fltk.org/" target="_blank">Fast Light Toolkit</a>,
is a graphical widget toolkit noteworthy for being so lightweight that it is commonly statically linked.
Projects that make use of it include the <a href="http://www.dillo.org/" target="_blank">Dillo</a> web
browser, the <a href="http://flwm.sourceforge.net/" target="_blank">FLWM</a> X window manager, and the
<a href="http://www.equinox-project.org/" target="_blank">Equinox Desktop Environment</a>. There are
bindings for it in several languages, including Python, Perl and Ruby, but not Ada. Until now!</p>

<p>This is a spinoff from Adapad, and so despite not yet being complete it can be at least guaranteed to
be enough to write a text editor. It's a thick, loosely coupled binding, accomplished by first exporting
the interface to C, then importing that to Ada. Attempted usage of the internal C interface as a binding
on its own is not supported.</p>

<p>A typical FLTK Hello World program in Ada:</p>
<div class="precontain">
<code>
with
    FLTK.Widgets.Groups.Windows,
    FLTK.Widgets.Boxes;

function Hello_World return Integer is

    My_Win : FLTK.Widgets.Groups.Windows.Window :=
        FLTK.Widgets.Groups.Windows.Create (100, 100, 200, 200, "Untitled");

    My_Box : FLTK.Widgets.Boxes.Box :=
        FLTK.Widgets.Boxes.Create (50, 50, 100, 100, "Hello, World!");

begin

    My_Win.Add (My_Box);
    My_Win.Show;

    return FLTK.Run;

end Hello_World;
</code>
</div>

<p>Aside from reworking the types to better fit the strongly typed philosophy of Ada, the entire library has
been structured to avoid explicit heap usage. As you can see from the above example, the intended use is to
declare FLTK objects on the stack. Allocation and deallocation of the C++ internals is handled automatically.</p>

<p>A few other minor changes were involved, such as requiring widgets to be explicitly added to a group rather
than implicitly being added to the last group not yet ended. At the moment the package specifications should
provide sufficient information to allow programmers to work with the library.</p>

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