December 2007 - Oberon - mailman3.inf.ethz.ch

Windows CE
by "Hürlimann Bruno" 26 Dec '07

26 Dec '07

Hello Is it possible, to set the Aos or an older Oberon on Windows CE, if nessesary without mouse-support? Greetings Bruno

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i loved the old compiler's blazing recursive descent speed.
by Søren Renner 18 Dec '07

18 Dec '07

Why is Paco, which we must use on newer BB releases, so much slower? Is there a benchmark that I can run? Can I tune it?

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Oberon webserver?
by Frans-Pieter Vonck 16 Dec '07

16 Dec '07

Hi Peter Easthope, I would like to set up a AOS webserver. I noticed from your postings on the oberonlist and your website that you have a lot of experience with Native Oberon and AOS. Could you give me some advice on what network PCI-cards to use? I'm sharing some experiences on my dormant weblog http://www.xs4all.nl/~vonck67 Would be nice to serve it from my own system. Greetz, Frans-Pieter Vonck Jesse Owenshof 69 1034 WT Amsterdam Netherlands fp(a)vonck.nl

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Excerpted from Croquet mailing list with question.
by Søren Renner 14 Dec '07

14 Dec '07

ITEM: XML space description LEAD: David A. Smith DESCRIPTION: A common space description file format in XML to allow the open source and QWAQ clients to read stored copies of each other's worlds. Minimizing the size of objects being replicated is important so that spaces may be saved compactly and new user joining the replicated space can do so quickly. In practice this means meshes and textures should be referred to by name in the replicated space, and fetched by each client independently of joining the space. By fetching these large objects independently of the replicated space, clients can maintain locally cached copies which speeds joining the space. An XML description of the space also simplifies programatically generating space descriptions, and aids in integration with various search engine technologies. Moreover, an XML-based space description also allows for the possibility of a croquet browser written in another language or based on a different code base. However, this implies changes to the rendering engine since we would be moving textures/mesh definitions outside the replicated space. QWAQ's forums have shown that this approach has many virtues. Ultimately we might want to use an extended version of Collada - but the first step would be to align the Open source and QWAQ code bases so we can read each other's world definitions. ----------------- ITEM: Robust Jabber client: LEAD: Mark McCahill DESCRIPTION: Improve current Jabber client to include SSL TLS support (perhaps via OpenSSL plugin?). This work can happen in the open source arena and is relatively independent of changes to space description formats. The current Jabber client does not support SSL transport level security and needs to - since most Jabber servers require SSL TLS. Supporting an open standard IM/Chat is a key for interoperability with the chat world, and ideally would allow cross world chat with other environments (such as Second Life) should those worlds decide to do the right thing and support a standards based chat protocol for inter world chatting. We also need this work so that we can advertise presence outside Croquet using an open standards-base approach ---------------------- Question: Should we make a voxel raytraced chat application? The Croquet and SL/OpenSim projects are attracting much interest, and I happen to have some raytracing code lying around...

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server bluebottle down?
by Frans-Pieter Vonck 09 Dec '07

09 Dec '07

Is the bluebottle site down? Greetz, Frans-Pieter

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Linked list of binary trees plus what ?
by Chris Glur 08 Dec '07

08 Dec '07

The EditKeys utility which effectively allows defining 'hot-keys' [macro definitions of user chosen strings are activated by the <insert> key] seems worth investigating. In order to understand certain parts of the manual/Tool Eg.: "Text stretches are pushed on a parameter stack when processed. Built-in functions may pop parameter(s) from that stack. ^0 pops a parameter and causes textual insertion. ^1 pops a parameter and inserts the corresponding ascii character. ..etc.", I looked at the source code. But the data-structures confuse me. Here are some:-- SequenceDesc = RECORD next: Sequence; <-- linked list sym: INTEGER; cmd: CHAR; def: Definition; stretch: Texts.Buffer END; DefinitionDesc = RECORD left, right: Definition; <-- binary tree in: BOOLEAN; trig: Ident; <-- ARRAY IdentLen OF CHAR seq: Sequence END; It seems to me that 'Sequence' is a linked list of Definitions with nodes: sym, cmd, stretch. And that Definition is a binary tree. But the confusing/un-natural thing is that Definition's nodes have also further Sequence-linkedLists ! Q - is this correct ? I'm guessing that the data structures employed are those which naturally occur for macro/compilers/?? Can anybody give me a clue of how to better understand this application ? It originates from 1992 and the full use of it's features may be very usefull. == Chris Glur.

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Re (2): OFS directory-format documented ?
by Chris Glur 04 Dec '07

04 Dec '07

Bernhard wrote: > got my mail to your gmail account returned... Yes, with N-O needing\able-to enter all manually there's mistakes. That's why I'm enthusiastic about EditKeys.Tool for macros. > not very long ago I bought two twin CF-Card to > IDE adapters each for about 10 EUR including > shipping & handling from Honkong to Germany > via Ebay. Although they say that they ship to > the European Community, but I guess that they > may ship also to South-Africa, so you could > try it. This is a 5-Pack of Dual CF-IDE > Adapters: > > "http://cgi.ebay.de/5X-Doppelseitig-CF-C.... ]CF Karte wird bei jeder Seite(Frontseite und Rückseite) als ] Master oder Slave erkannt. So depending on which 'side' you insert the CF, it's recognised as slave or master ? ]Stromversorgung über Notebook-IDE-Kabel Yes, one with a notebook-IDE-adaptor would be great. But they don't list these ? Or would one use an extra notebook-IDE-adaptor to standard-IDE-adaptor first ? That's problematic because you want only small adaptors inside the notebook. Perhaps this would be cabled so that the bigger standard-IDE-adaptor side would be outside of the notebook ? In my case I'd bring the cable out via an existing hole. How long is the cable ? How small a diameter hole can it pass through ? For my standard boxes which are all open with the IDE-cables lying free to interplug IDEs, CFs sound good ? ================ > > In fact for a big-directory all the 'arg-words' are > > multiples of 29; and the 1st chronologically entered > > File's arg-word: 5829; equals 201*29. Ben wrote: > I can't answer your more general question about documentation of the > on-disk format of OFS, but the book Project Obeorn provides some > insight into the magic number 29: > > Quote: > 3. Sector pointers are represented by sector numbers of type > LONGINT. Actually, we use the numbers multiplied by 29. This implies > that any single-bit error leads to a number which is not a multiple of > 29, and hence can easily be detected. Thereby the crucial sector > addresses are software parity checked and are safe (against single-bit > errors) even on computers without hardware parity check. The check is > performed by procedures Kernel.GetSector and Kernel.PutSector. > > Source: > Project Oberon "Edition 2005", Page 174 > http://www.oberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/ProjectOberon.pdf Yes *.pdf is a curse. Many viewers can only step-pages, so getting to pg 174 is a problem. I usually [when possible] convert pfd -> txt -> ETH-Oberon format; where I can colour the text as I analyse it. Under linux: gv can go directly to pg 174 [of 441 tolal !], and there's a utility which can 'translate page n...page n+1 to text'. But it all adds to the confusion, compared with using N-O when you just need to look [& imagine it opening] at the fileID. Also it seems that Wirth's description doesn't much correspond to the later ETH-oberon file system, which seems mostly to be the creation of Pieter Muller. Perhaps HIS desertation contains some info ? I'll google. Empirically my hard labour has discovered: -- Partitions.ShowBlocks <device#partn> 1031 33 will show a directory-format starting at Block 1032. But not strictly alpha-sorted, as they are when initially Storing to a clean partition ? Bytes 32..35 [%20..23] of the 40 byte directory entry gets you to the block adr. of the bytes 0..31 fileName. And by using Desktops.OpenDoc Calculator.Panel to [Bytes 32..35] * 8/29 + 1024 you see the actual file plus its 'header'. So: IDE0#42 1032 00000000 8D A3 1E 9B 03 00 00 00 57 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........W....... 00000010 44 65 6C 61 79 4E 73 6E 61 6B 65 2E 42 61 6B 00 DelayNsnake.Bak. 00000020 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 00000030 9F AB 00 00 means file: DelayNsnake.Bak can be found from the 'arg': '9F AB' which is in Intel/reverse order. Hence %AB9F = 43935 and 43935 * 8/29 + 1024= 12120 + 1024 = 13144 And: Partitions.ShowBlocks IDE0#42 13144 33 shows: IDE0#42 13144 00000000 86 1D A7 9B 44 65 6C 61 79 4E 73 6E 61 6B 65 2E ....DelayNsnake. 00000010 42 61 6B 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 Bak............. 00000020 00 00 00 00 04 00 00 00 11 07 00 00 46 D4 00 00 ............F... 00000030 A2 67 01 00 9F AB 00 00 BC AB 00 00 D9 AB 00 00 .g.............. 00000040 F6 AB ....... = which is a 1Kb header And:IDE0#42 13145 00000000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 00000010 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 00000020 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 00000030 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 F0 01 B9 05 00 00 01 4F ...............O 00000040 62 65 72 6F 6E 31 30 2E 53 63 6E 2E 46 6E 74 00 beron10.Scn.Fnt. 00000050 03 00 ....... = shows %38 bytes followed by the actual file. Using eg. ET.* to cut off these first %38 bytes, recovers the file with it's font & colour info, provided the file [inevitable for small or newly entered files] is in consecutive blocks. ! But discovered this shows the wrong size for System.Directory x*\d which could corrupt the system ! ============= I'm putting this to Edgar's wiki in the hope that a fuller description of the current ETH-Oberon file/directory format be eventually exposed. Q- is AOS/BB's file system different from N-O's ? Thanks for any feedback, == Chris Glur.

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