Ada '83 Language Reference Manual

Copyright 1980, 1982, 1983 owned by the United States Government. Direct reproduction and usage requests to the Ada Information Clearinghouse.

Credits, Creation, and Update History

Since:

Fixed links and markup to corrected noticed problems; updated changed pages to pass the Tidy HTML style checker.

September 1995: "Integrated Ada '83 Reference Manual"

This version of the Ada '83 LRM is the hub of a new "Integrated Ada '83 Reference Manual". This on-line hypertext resource is comprised of special HTML versions of the Ada '83 Language Reference Manual, the Ada '83 Rationale, and the Ada '83 Style Guide that have been cross-referenced via live hypertext links. At the end of most first- and second-level sections of this LRM you'll find sets of links to related sections of both the Rationale and the Style Guide, in addition to extensive internal links to related LRM sections. There are corresponding links from Style Guide sections to related topic areas in the LRM.

For comprehensive information on any language topic a reader can now start from either the Style Guide or the LRM and pull together applicable style guidelines, authoritative descriptions of language constructs, and explanations of the decisions that shaped the language's advanced architecture.

August 1995: New LRM Version for AdaIC

This version of the HTML Ada '83 LRM was created in August 1995 for the Ada Information Clearinghouse. It was derived from an HTML version done by Gregg Hanna when he was at SAIC. I'd like to thank Gregg, but his links are broken; if anyone knows his whereabouts please let me know.

Changes and additions in this version:

Added live-linked "Style Guide references" at the end of most LRM subsections. These were generated from the '83 Style Guide's Appendix A "Map from LRM to Style Guide".
Converted in-line LRM section references into live HTML links.
Converted section headings in the Appendix E Syntax Summary into live links.
Added new section headers and footers.

The rest of the notes below are from Gregg's version 2.4.

Special Thanks To

Lionel Cons': Creator of the fine texi2html that was used in version 1.0 of the HTML LRM.
Larry Wall: Author of PERL, the Practical Extraction and Report Language, which made the required high-octane pattern matching and string replacement much easier.
Magnus Kempe: Maintainer of the Ada WWW Server at EPFL for the nifty picture of Ada Lovelace.
Ada Joint Program Office: Provider of the raw text of the LRM and the usage statement that allows this hyper-document to be created. A fine model for other endeavors, IMHO.

Creation

This HTML Ada83 LRM was generated by passing the source of the LRM through various custom perl scripts written by gregor@kafka.saic.com which added HTML annotations to the file.

Processing was accomplished in these steps:

Place HTML anchors at appropriate points and add HTML cross-references.
Detect and format examples, enumerated lists, bulletted lists, tables, and reference blocks.
Split the single HTML document into separate chapters and fix references.
Sub-divide the still huge index into sub-chapter files.

File Layout

Division of the LRM was necessary due to it's size. The LRM is split into the following parts:

lrm-[01][0-9].html: Chapter files numbered 00 to 15.
lrm-[01][0-9]-[01][0-9].html: Sub-sections for each chapter.
lrm-IDX.html: Main entry point for the index.
lrm-IDX-[A-V].html: File for individual sections of the index.
lrm-IDX-WXYZ.html: The rest of the index.
lrm-FORE.html: The forward.

Sections within each chapter file have anchors which are named the same as the section number. For example LRM section 3.2 has an HTML anchor named "3.2". An URL can be constructed to jump to any section in the LRM, simply append a reference to the appropriate anchor to a reference to the appropriate chapter/subsection file. As an example the aforementioned LRM section 3.2 could be accessed with the URL "lrm-03-02.html#3.2", and section 3.2.1 could be accessed with "lrm-03-02.html#3.2.1".

Changes from 2.3 to 2.4

Fixed links messed up by server reorganization.
Made some minor changes to match stylistic convention.

Changes from 2.2 to 2.3

Fixed "UP" links.
Fixed references within a document.
Added link from old ada_1.html file some people still used.

Changes from 2.1 to 2.2

Split chapters into sub-chapters.
Made icons smaller.
Added alternate representations for icons.
Changed references within a document so it won't reload it every time.
Made named anchors non-null so they finally work.
Updated some header files.

Address any questions or comments to adainfo@sw-eng.falls-church.va.us.