July 2011 - Oberon - mailman3.inf.ethz.ch

Re: [Oberon] Oberon Day 2011 Recordings (Jack Johnson)
by Paul Reed 06 Dec '11

06 Dec '11

> 1. Re: Oberon Day 2011 Recordings (Jack Johnson) > I have a few questions about your part of the keynote. ... > Did you do your UTF-8 integration from scratch or did you look at > other code for inspiration? Did it require extensive modification, or > mainly just to Texts? What is your end goal for UTF-8 integration, and > how do you see that ultimately affecting the simplicity of the system? I added UTF string handling as an experiment (with a view to using it in other projects), and tried various schemes, including UTF-16/UCS-2 and even UTF-32 before finally settling on UTF-8. I didn't find much code for inspiration, since most of what's available is in C ;-) but I was very definitely inspired by the story of the invention of UTF-8 and its integration into the Plan 9 from Bell Labs operating system. UTF-32 is the only implementation where there is a linear mapping between character length and byte length (UTF-16 has surrogate pairs, which breaks that), but it is impractical on small systems because of the memory footprint. UTF-8 performs well in practice, except for some Asian locales, in which case an alternative encoding would be sensible (and indeed advised by the Unicode documents). Re-implementing Texts using UTF-8 is a really nice exercise (Luca?) :), since the details of the Text system are so well explained in the book. Certainly you would have to decide whether Files.Read would read a byte or a UTF-8 char, and be careful about lengths and byte offsets. I had an attempt, but ran out of time and will have to return to it [insert apology to Fermat here]. For the Oberon System demo, it wasn't strictly necessary so it didn't get in (along with a lot of other things I need to go back and do properly). > Are you using or have you considered using Oberon-07? How might that > affect the rest of the original Oberon System code? Yes it's all Oberon-07, I'm sorry if that wasn't clear. The main changes were obvious: removal of SHORTINT, LOOP, and WITH, for example; and this doesn't really change the text of the book that much, which is the aim. > Have you had chats with Wirth or others about what they might have > done differently if they could do it all over again? :) I'm reminded that they asked Ken Thompson what he would change about Unix, if he had the chance to go back and do it again. His answer was that he would add an 'e' on the end of the 'creat' system call. I once asked Prof. Wirth, after a retrospective lecture on Pascal, Modula and Oberon, what he would do differently. He simply said he would have called them Pascal, Pascal-2, etc. > I noted the > discussion of Objects in Appendix A of Project Oberon and aside from > the Gadgets implementation it alludes to the idea that if the Objects > module had existed at the outset it might have further simplified the > original system. This is Prof. Gutknecht's view, yes. Especially since the changes would have been small, for the power it gives. But with power comes responsibility, something we're not much good at in software IMNSHO. As well as simplicity, and elegance, there should also be a clarity test. That's why the book stands out. > Did you consider resurrecting slim binaries, or does that add more > complexity than it removes? No, and yes. The slim binaries approach relies on the more complex OP2 compiler, with its high-level intermediate representation. I have no IR, I basically just translate RISC instructions into x86 opcodes (if it's not a RISC module, eg if it's a device driver). This adds a few hundred lines at most to the compiler (for x86 and for ARM32 put together). > Are the FPGA-based systems available? Working on it. The compiler generates code which runs on the FPGA (as does the Oberon-0 compiler, more-or-less unchanged, from Compiler Construction). But more hardware needs to be implemented for the system to be self-hosting, which is the aim. Cheers, Paul

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Reliable/predictable LNO installation.
by easlab-absa 12 Jul '11

12 Jul '11

According to the ftp dir & readme the nearly decade old lno020127.tgz is indeed the latest LNO. I badly need a reliable LNO, to be able to access my 10 years accumulation of work on a dozen [one per classification-subject] N-O partitions, from Linux. Linux/LEO is my work-horse. When I look at all the logs of how I eventually got LNO running or partly running, in various PCs with various Linux installations and configurations, I see that it seems very fragile. Unlike N-O or LEO. Interestingly, I recently got the FrameBuffer version running; but with strange colours, which changed to near-invisible, when I switched out and back to a different task. Of course with ETHO, you can just 'wipe' the screen to any other colour/font, which has a good-sample, viewable any where on the screen. And since I use multi-colour/font, one of them was viewable. But life is difficult enough without extra acrobatics to make a crippled system usable. On the same PC and OS-version as the strange-colours FrameBuffer LNO version, the X version had normal colours, but the keys mapped wrongly. Eg. asdf mapped to jkkl. Are there other users who can successfully run LNO on multiple PCs? Thanks, == Chris Glur.

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Re: [Oberon] Oberon Digest, Vol 90, Issue 5
by Søren Renner 07 Jul '11

07 Jul '11

Woo hoo! I can has moderator status! sr is 0b3r0n-133t! On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 10:00 AM, <oberon-request(a)lists.inf.ethz.ch> wrote: > Send Oberon mailing list submissions to > oberon(a)lists.inf.ethz.ch > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > https://lists.inf.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/oberon > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > oberon-request(a)lists.inf.ethz.ch > > You can reach the person managing the list at > oberon-owner(a)lists.inf.ethz.ch > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of Oberon digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: Oberon Day 2011 Recordings (Jack Johnson) (Paul Reed) > 2. Re: A2 developers has (sic) no time to look into the forum > (Yaroslav Romanchenko) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 13:53:33 +0100 > From: "Paul Reed" <paulreed(a)paddedcell.com> > Subject: Re: [Oberon] Oberon Day 2011 Recordings (Jack Johnson) > To: oberon(a)lists.inf.ethz.ch > Message-ID: > <97c28195e18bd72ee505dbac4909a7da.squirrel(a)webmail.gradwell.com> > Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 > > > 1. Re: Oberon Day 2011 Recordings (Jack Johnson) > > I have a few questions about your part of the keynote. > ... > > Did you do your UTF-8 integration from scratch or did you look at > > other code for inspiration? Did it require extensive modification, or > > mainly just to Texts? What is your end goal for UTF-8 integration, and > > how do you see that ultimately affecting the simplicity of the system? > > I added UTF string handling as an experiment (with a view to using it in > other projects), and tried various schemes, including UTF-16/UCS-2 and > even UTF-32 before finally settling on UTF-8. I didn't find much code for > inspiration, since most of what's available is in C ;-) but I was very > definitely inspired by the story of the invention of UTF-8 and its > integration into the Plan 9 from Bell Labs operating system. > > UTF-32 is the only implementation where there is a linear mapping between > character length and byte length (UTF-16 has surrogate pairs, which breaks > that), but it is impractical on small systems because of the memory > footprint. UTF-8 performs well in practice, except for some Asian > locales, in which case an alternative encoding would be sensible (and > indeed advised by the Unicode documents). > > Re-implementing Texts using UTF-8 is a really nice exercise (Luca?) :), > since the details of the Text system are so well explained in the book. > Certainly you would have to decide whether Files.Read would read a byte or > a UTF-8 char, and be careful about lengths and byte offsets. I had an > attempt, but ran out of time and will have to return to it [insert apology > to Fermat here]. For the Oberon System demo, it wasn't strictly necessary > so it didn't get in (along with a lot of other things I need to go back > and do properly). > > > > Are you using or have you considered using Oberon-07? How might that > > affect the rest of the original Oberon System code? > > Yes it's all Oberon-07, I'm sorry if that wasn't clear. The main changes > were obvious: removal of SHORTINT, LOOP, and WITH, for example; and this > doesn't really change the text of the book that much, which is the aim. > > > > Have you had chats with Wirth or others about what they might have > > done differently if they could do it all over again? > > :) I'm reminded that they asked Ken Thompson what he would change about > Unix, if he had the chance to go back and do it again. His answer was > that he would add an 'e' on the end of the 'creat' system call. > > I once asked Prof. Wirth, after a retrospective lecture on Pascal, Modula > and Oberon, what he would do differently. He simply said he would have > called them Pascal, Pascal-2, etc. > > > I noted the > > discussion of Objects in Appendix A of Project Oberon and aside from > > the Gadgets implementation it alludes to the idea that if the Objects > > module had existed at the outset it might have further simplified the > > original system. > > This is Prof. Gutknecht's view, yes. Especially since the changes would > have been small, for the power it gives. But with power comes > responsibility, something we're not much good at in software IMNSHO. As > well as simplicity, and elegance, there should also be a clarity test. > That's why the book stands out. > > > > Did you consider resurrecting slim binaries, or does that add more > > complexity than it removes? > > No, and yes. The slim binaries approach relies on the more complex OP2 > compiler, with its high-level intermediate representation. I have no IR, > I basically just translate RISC instructions into x86 opcodes (if it's not > a RISC module, eg if it's a device driver). This adds a few hundred lines > at most to the compiler (for x86 and for ARM32 put together). > > > > Are the FPGA-based systems available? > Working on it. The compiler generates code which runs on the FPGA (as > does the Oberon-0 compiler, more-or-less unchanged, from Compiler > Construction). But more hardware needs to be implemented for the system > to be self-hosting, which is the aim. > > Cheers, > Paul > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Tue, 05 Jul 2011 18:16:13 +0400 > From: Yaroslav Romanchenko <tobject(a)bk.ru> > Subject: Re: [Oberon] A2 developers has (sic) no time to look into the > forum > To: ETH Oberon and related systems <oberon(a)lists.inf.ethz.ch> > Message-ID: <E1Qe6Q9-0000eW-00.tobject-bk-ru(a)f193.mail.ru> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > > Sounds like a deal! You are now Global Moderator > ofwww.ocp.inf.ethz.ch/forum. > Congratulations to Soren! > > --- > Cheers, SAGE > http://sage.com.ua/ >

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Re: [Oberon] Oberon Day 2011 Recordings (Jack Johnson)
by Luca Boasso 06 Jul '11

06 Jul '11

> Re-implementing Texts using UTF-8 is a really nice exercise (Luca?) :), > since the details of the Text system are so well explained in the book. >From mid September I will be graduated so I will have more time and I would like to help on Texts implementation. Let me know :)

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Re: [Oberon] A2 developers has (sic) no time to look into the forum
by Søren Renner 05 Jul '11

05 Jul '11

Make me a moderator and I will hunt out and destroy spam without mercy.

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Re: [Oberon] ETHNO Documentation in the OCP Wiki
by peasthope＠shaw.ca 04 Jul '11

04 Jul '11

From: Bernhard Treutwein <Bernhard(a)wildwein.de> Date: Sat, 02 Jul 2011 18:03:07 +0200 > Also we might give NO on SourceForge some more life ... My thinking is to give the first priority to documentation in the ETH wiki. I suppose *.Mod revisions can go there also. In effect at least, SourceForge should mirror ETH. Makes sense or no? Regards, ... P. -- Telephone 1 360 450 2132. bcc: peasthope at shaw.ca Shop pages http://carnot.yi.org/ accessible as long as the old drives survive. Personal pages http://members.shaw.ca/peasthope/ .

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Re: [Oberon] Oberon Day 2011 Recordings (Jack Johnson, Luca Boasso)
by Paul Reed 03 Jul '11

03 Jul '11

> 1. Re: Oberon Day 2011 Recordings (Jack Johnson) > Paul, is any of your code publicly available? Not for a while yet; will update you via this list. > 1. Re: Oberon Day 2011 Recordings (Luca Boasso) > Will you upload also the presentation slides of the speakers? Working on it; will update you via this list. Cheers, Paul

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Oberon Day 2011 Recordings
by Paul Reed 03 Jul '11

03 Jul '11

Video recordings of the talks and panel discussion at last month's Oberon Day 2011 in Zurich are now available. They can be streamed or downloaded from the ETH Zurich Multimedia Portal: see http://www.oberonday2011.ethz.ch for further details.

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Re: [Oberon] Oberon Day 2011 Recordings
by Luca Boasso 02 Jul '11

02 Jul '11

Thank you for the video recordings! I was an amazing and instructive day! Will you upload also the presentation slides of the speakers? Thanks Luca

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OCP forum
by Yaroslav Romanchenko 02 Jul '11

02 Jul '11

Hi folks! Looks like A2 developers has no time to look into the forum. Comunity activity is very low, but spamers activity only grows... --- Cheers, SAGE http://sage.com.ua/

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