December 2003 - Oberon - mailman3.inf.ethz.ch

Oberon Database
by Dan Parnete 19 Sep '05

19 Sep '05

Hello, I have read this list archives, the documentation inside the distributions, some extra found on the web and I understood. Database is a Tabu word in this community, and is better to not talk about. There is no trace in any distribution (excluding the commercial BlackBox) and the new Bluebottle project doesn't intend to implement one. Ok. It's a choice of live. But don't tell me none of you never needed to put some data altogether. I can't believe nobody extended at list the Library code to more flexible collections management. I saw some database projects started long time ago. Where are this implementations? In other words: if I need a database, have I write it myself? Dan

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Re: [Oberon] Support for Realtek RTL-8139 with Native Oberon
by frey＠inf.ethz.ch 05 Jan '05

05 Jan '05

> I'm running Native Oberon on a Pentium-II class machine. > How can a network card such as, Realtek RTL-8139 be > configured in Native Oberon ? PCITools.Scan was able to > detect this card as a PCI device. The driver is currently only available for the new Bluebottle OS. http://bluebottle.ethz.ch It should not be too difficult to make a Native Oberon driver out of the Bluebottle OS driver. But... I have no time to do this myself. --Thomas Frey

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A pseudo-problem?
by Vasile Rotaru 04 Feb '04

04 Feb '04

Hi, all I don't know whether the following code is correct or not, but both Compiler.Compile and PC.Compile choke on it. (The first with a trap, the second with a criptical report "PC.Compile not done (10/10)".) CONST digits = 10; ops = 5; TYPE Button = .. DigitBtn = .. OpBtn = .. (* auxiliary type used for grouping related items *) Buttons = RECORD digits : ARRAY digits (* constant *) OF DigitBtn; ops : ARRAY ops (* constant *) OF OpBtn; END Of course I may change the name of constants (digits => numOfDigits), but still there must be either a error reported or an .Obx/.Obj file at the end. Regards, Vasile

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Bluebottle contributions
by Thomas Frey 01 Jan '04

01 Jan '04

Hi are there more code contributions for Bluebottle like WebDAV that could/should go into the (new) AosContributions.zip for the next release ? If so, please contact me before January 15, 2004 to discuss the details. --Thomas

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Re: [Oberon] Files - search | Edit.
by shark＠gulfnet.sd64.bc.ca 30 Dec '03

30 Dec '03

Chris G. said, > Having multiple partitions helps much. Alexander replied, > ... Windows with it's well grouped files in directories. Native Oberon also has installable filesystems. FAT filesystems and Linux filesystems can be mounted in NO and both types are hierarchical. That is what you want isn't it? Regards, Peter E. http://carnot.pathology.ubc.ca/

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Re: [Oberon] re. Literate Programming Light
by shark＠gulfnet.sd64.bc.ca 30 Dec '03

30 Dec '03

Chris & others, cg> Here's what I was recently thinking about ............. Many ideas! Sorry that I can tackle only one. cg> ? linux has got p2c [pascal to C translator]; why not c2p ! Andreas Distelli replied to the C to Oberon question years ago. According to my understanding, the biggest factor is that the syntax of a C-like language is more elaborate than the syntax of a Pascal-like language. Many of the syntactical constructs in Pascal translate directly to constructs in C. Various iteration structures for example. Conversely, C allows structures which do not translate directly to Pascal. A translator would need to analyse the meaning of such C text and make appropriate Pascal. Translating a numerical algorithm could be relatively easy. Translating a system dependent feature could be difficult. Perhaps a partial translation is worthwhile. Ie. do the easy translation and leave the tricky stuff as C text in comments. Have you ever seen an EBNF specification of C or C++? I have not and am not even sure it is feasible to make. In any case, you probably want to have that before making a c2p. The conclusion I recall is that the best approach is to comprehend a C implementation properly and then to write good Oberon code on that basis. Of course a partial c2p translator could help with the comprehension part. Incidently, EBNF specifications exist for few of the many programming languages and protocols. Regards, Peter E. http://carnot.pathology.ubc.ca/

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re. Literate Programming Light
by easlab＠absamail.co.za 24 Dec '03

24 Dec '03

Edgar wrote:- > a while ago we had the topic of literate programming which has the > aspect of mixing code and documentation. > Now I have the task of working with a lot of C code. > I'm thinking about adding Oberon outlines, panels and perhaps other > objects as comments.OTOH I still need the pure C code. > So I imagine a EditTools.StoreOx (OberonUnix) which stores a file > Work.ox which has Gadgets in it to a pure ascii file Work.c with e.g. '/*o*/' > for every Oberon object it contains and a Work.Lib. > 'EditTools.LoadOx Work.ox' would merge these files again in a Text it opens. > So my question is whether you think this would be simple ? > Is it easy to store objects to a library or would it be even better to write > them to a Texts file ? Sorry that I don't know enough about the details of 'objects to a library', but any contribution to the problem of 'commenting code' is a massive contribution, with wide applications. Here's what I was recently thinking about 'working with a lot of C code': ? linux has got p2c [pascal to C translator]; why not c2p ! ? why not just have 'templates' for visual comparison, to help ? ? why not just have 'templates' to program in general, since there are basically few needed/valid constructs. Because of the disease of bloat and complication creep, which Wirth fought for decades. ? why must I have a hundred keys and select an 'R' and select an 'E' ..P,E,A,T ! In fact selecting a 'REPEAT' is also absurd, since only the unit: 'REPEAT <stuff> UNTIL' is valid. ---- This thinking leads to what is apparently called 'visual programming'. NB. a watershed in computing was spreadsheets: where each stage of programming was the selection from the small set of possibilities. ? why pretend that there are a near infinite set of possibilities, when there are only 6; which can be presented on a menu. The reason is what I call 'the little man in the box syndrome': in the beginning days of computing, the hackers liked to think -pretend that there was a 'little man in the box, with whom you could communicate'. Since he couldn't yet speak [they are still working on this] you typed a message to him and he typed one back [to your TTY] in ENGLISH ! Programmers who have learned [invested effort] in 'their jargon', protect their investment - there is, often fierce, resistance to dumbing down the act of coding. The literature tells that there are problems with 'spreadsheet style programming' [I'm still tying to find which] and we know that what I advocate is old hat and never went anywhere. ---- OTOH analysing "what makes Sys 3 so productive" shows:- * mouse cording moves routine cognition to sub-concious level * the frames and their commands are well designed/evolved. * Watson and Columbus use the powerfull concepts of i) hyperlinking, ii) never force the user to CREATE when he can just SELECT. ---- The absurd persistence of 1950's notation for assembly programming is remarkable, and shows the inertia to change. Consider:- 1. natural language: input from portA; invert the input; and output to portB 2. 'symbolic' notation: W <- portA not W -> W W -> portB 3. typical [copyrighted] mnemonics: movf portA,W comp movw portB Every time you look at a new assembly language mnemonics listing you/I have to translate the meaning via the 'symbolic' notation. So why don't they just/ONLY use the symbolic-notation ? Inertia ! Decades ago, I needed an assembler for an 8-bit chip, and built one using the self-documenting symbolic style: A+B -> A instead of eg., Add B,A Now I'm investigating a menu-style assembler. Why should you construct the 7 char string "A+B -> A", when you are conceptually selecting 3 steps ? Perhaps a 'panel' with operator [about 10] buttons, and ListGadget (or 2) for operands ? [ My argument is less valid for complicated architectures]. ------------- An application which I can't live without is Nortons commander: DOS > WINxx and cloned to mc for linux, confirms the power of just navigating a tree and selecting valid selections, instead of remembering archane syntax. An yet there are many (the majority) who prefer to 'write messages to the little man in the box'. ------------- So yes, some revolutionary ideas are needed to break the inertia against documenting/automating coding. == Chris Glur. PS. this is about software engineering, not oberon ? The direction of oberon should be guided by principles of software engineering, which is guided by 'human cognition'.

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Re (3): [Oberon] WebDAV and WinAos: Progress Report
by edgar＠edgarschwarz.de 22 Dec '03

22 Dec '03

Hi Vasile, thanks for your work ! Vasile Rotaru <vrotaru(a)seznam.cz> wrote: > Getting the AosIO to compile on NO was as simple as copying it to a NO > partition and running Compiler.Compile. But this module by itself is > pretty useless. What you will use in real life are some Readers/Writers > on top of a file, a connection, etc.. Something like, AosFS.OpenWriter > (writer, file, pos). I guess what you need to make the port of WebDAV to > NO as painless as possible is yet another module IOFactory.Mod with > procedures like this: > > OpenFileReader(...); > OpenFileWriter(..) > OpenConnectionReader(..) > > etc. What kind of Writers/Readers do you really need? I guess the Writers/Readers I relly need are either in AosFS or my own code inherited from AosIO. > XMLObjects.Mod > XML.Mod > XMLScanner.Mod > XMLParser.Mod > and some tweaking all those modules compiles. The first three without > any modifications. (Any others XML files needed?) Should be enough. > XMLScanner and XMLParser still use Files.Rider-s for the input but I > guess this will do no harm. For the client side on NO this should be ok. > So, may be the easy part is done... After having a look at what some modules are importing I found one thing which obviously still needs some work. Bluobottle has AosIP, AosDNS, AosTCP which is different from the way NO is doing TCP/IP. But here it would be a decision to be made either to orchestrate e.g. WebDAVClient.Mod with $IF's or making some wrappers around NetSystem to get AosIP, AosDNS, AosTCP. Perhaps a look at what Felix has done for WinAosOberon could give some ideas. Regards, Edgar -- edgar(a)edgarschwarz.de "http://www.edgarschwarz.de" "http://www.edgar-schwarz.de/forum/oberon" Running Active Oberon Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler. Albert Einstein

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Literate Programming Light
by edgar＠edgarschwarz.de 22 Dec '03

22 Dec '03

Hi, a while ago we had the topic of literate programming which has the aspect of mixing code and documentation. Now I have the task of working with a lot of C code. I'm thinking about adding Oberon outlines, panels and perhaps other objects as comments. OTOH I still need the pure C code. So I imagine a EditTools.StoreOx (OberonUnix) which stores a file Work.ox which has Gadgets in it to a pure ascii file Work.c with e.g. '/*o*/' for every Oberon object it contains and a Work.Lib. 'EditTools.LoadOx Work.ox' would merge these files again in a Text it opens. So my question is whether you think this would be simple ? Is it easy to store objects to a library or would it be even better to write them to a Texts file ? Cheers, Edgar -- edgar(a)edgarschwarz.de "http://www.edgarschwarz.de" "http://www.edgar-schwarz.de/forum/oberon" Running Active Oberon Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler. Albert Einstein

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WinAos 1.06, AosTCP/UDP running.
by Felix Friedrich 19 Dec '03

19 Dec '03

Hy everyone, Besides the Aos/Oberon stuff, I have good news for all those who still need an FTP or HTTP server (and client) running in windows: Just use this recent Aos/Oberon system and you have it for free (just as in the native Aos system): The new version 1.06 alpha of Win Aos Oberon is now available, see http://www.bluebottle.ethz.ch/WinAos . All recent bugfixes are included. - have heavily worked on the network section: AosTCP and AosUDP is running flawlessly. The VNC server, VNC client, FTP server, HTTP server and Oberon clients also do well. Have tested the (Aos native) WebDAV server and client of Edgar Schwarz, it is also running from within WinAos. See Projects.Tool. I have gone through days of cruelty for this. - some corrections to the timer in AosActive had to be done to make the timers garbage collectable, some corrections in AosKernel and AosActive to make GC not hanging in AosActive. [which also took me some days and many nerves.] - as in the native Aos distribution the sources are now also arranged in (the subdirectories) AosWin32Src AosSysSrc AosAppsSrc AosOberonSrc AosGadSrc AosOberonAppsSrc Felix. -- Felix Friedrich Institut für Biomathematik und Biometrie GSF - Forschungszentrum für Umwelt und Gesundheit, GmbH Ingolstädter Landstraße 1, D-85764 Neuherberg Tel: ++49 89 3187 2436 email: friedrich(a)gsf.de --

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