Meridian Open Ada
Budget version of an Ada compiler for DOS shipped in 1990 by Meridian Systems under the name AdaZ but the name was changed to "Open Ada" after complaints from the The Analytic Sciences Corporation who shipped an Ada PDL too under the name "Ada_Z", and early marketing material and beta versions of the package referred to it name as Reach. Its main claim to fame was that it contained an actual optimising Ada compiler and debugger with mostly complete library for only USD 149, even though it was not fully up to a validatable standard it was very close and also had an excellent DOS interface library.
To cut corners and to supply a simple IDE that was more like what amateur PC developers were used to the company licensed a copy of BlackBeard but renamed it ACE and removed any references to the original BlackBeard name form the product, this gave them a front end that had a rather nifty hypertext help system and a menu system for keywords, but otherwise felt a little backwards next to contemporaries Borland Pascal and TopSpeed Modula-2.
Publisher
License & availability
- Discontinued commercial software, Initial price USD 149, in 1991 hiked up to 499 for the general public and 149 for students.