December 2013 - Oberon - mailman3.inf.ethz.ch

Re: [Oberon] Re (2): Project Oberon: New Edition
by eas lab 26 May '14

26 May '14

Some ideas on HCI: we techies overlook it's importance; which is demonstarted by stupid notation like "a better experience". What's that ? It needs to be analysed. There's a Swiss HCI specialist who AFAIK is/was associated with ETHO. Focus on the human psychology, not the computer hardware. Although we all differ, some basic evolved human attributes are: short-term memory limited to ca. 3 items; recognision is mot limited by memory. This automatically leads to the menu-concept, which TUI has. We all learned to read and are forced to exercise it in daily life, so menu-items are conveniently: recognisable test-strings. Lifting your arm to point to a screen, is only for short/baby tasks. Perhaps with mobile-devices you can rest your arm. Although the reflexive chording-at-the-mouse position can't be equaled, probably <verb> <noun>...<noun> notation can be efficient. Many tasks can use this. Like: verb:ReplaceAllUntilNextVerb To From1 ...FromN But can mobile devices conveniently/accurately select a text-stretch? ---------------- The other essential capability, where ETHO excels is multiple files simultaneously visible/accessible. Most non-trival tasks needs 4,5,6 files visible/accessible at once. == Chris Glur. On 12/22/13, peasthope(a)shaw.ca <peasthope(a)shaw.ca> wrote: > Claudio and everyone, > > From: Claudio Nieder <private(a)claudio.ch> > Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2013 02:40:43 +0100 >> ... unnecessary fragmentation. > > Yes, fragmentation is probably the biggest obstacle to efficient > use of computing. > >> Some people on this list care mostly about the TUI and are happy >> having that with any other kind of OS running beneath of it. >> Others might even hate the TUI because the mouse-interclicks >> cannot be translated to touch screens ... > > There is a very simple and effective way of integrating the familiar > Oberon TUI with the gestural touchscreen approach. The result, I > believe, is more powerful than any extant interface. > > I have a description of this interface and am working on a prototypical > implementation. To avoid pre-emption of the ideas by commercial > interests, details have not yet been published. > > Best Regards, ... Peter E. > > -- > 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 12 > Tel +1 360 639 0202 Bcc: peasthope at shaw.ca http://carnot.yi.org/ > > > -- > Oberon(a)lists.inf.ethz.ch mailing list for ETH Oberon and related systems > https://lists.inf.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/oberon >

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Project Oberon, 2013 Edition
by Paul Reed 01 Apr '14

01 Apr '14

Hi Oberoners, As some have already now noticed, Prof. Wirth and I have tidied up and added some new material to his home page, including a pre-release of a new version of the Project Oberon book. The system in the new edition runs on a computer implemented on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), removing in particular the dependency on the defunct NS32032 processor in the original book. The version of the Oberon language used to implement the new system in its entirety is based on Oberon-07, separate material for which is also already available on Prof. Wirth's site http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/. The new Project Oberon documents should not be considered final and will continue to be updated substantially over the next few months. Best regards, Paul Reed

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Re: [Oberon] PNG Encoder codec
by F. Necati Ecevit 26 Mar '14

26 Mar '14

FreeImage (V3.15.4) wrapper library for WinAos and LinuxAos is now available at; https://www.ocp.inf.ethz.ch/svn/ocp/trunk Happy Christmas and new Year. - Necati.

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Re: [Oberon] WITH removal in Oberon-07
by Paul Reed 13 Mar '14

13 Mar '14

> Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2013 22:52:05 +0100 > From: "Frans-Pieter Vonck" <fp(a)vonck.nl> > Subject: Re: [Oberon] WITH removal in Oberon-07 Hi Frans-Pieter, > i watched your presentation at MEDIA OberonDay2011. > Am I right that you made an ARM emulator first. No. The virtual machine is RISC, as in Prof. Wirth's Compiler Construction book (published in English in 1996 and updated on his home page http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/) > And did you use this emulator to ran Oberon System07 on top of it? It's not called System07, but it's basically the original system in the Project Oberon book, modified to compile under Oberon-07, run inside a RISC virtual machine executing on a bare-metal PC. > You showed a Spartan FPGA. I scanned through the Verilog ARM code. But > that seems a to big leap to me. I don't know what Verilog code you are referring to here. The Spartan-3 board only has 500K gates and 1MB of external static RAM, so it's much smaller and simpler than a typical ARM system. But ideal for Oberon. > Do you think it is possible to run [The Oberon System, compiled in Oberon-07] on an of the shelf > board with a Cortex M3 processor? I don't see why not, but most small ARM boards don't have a video framebuffer. The Raspberry Pi does, but it's a complicated board, as I've said before. The Oberon inner core (Kernel, FileDir, Files, Modules) and even the text system do not actually require a framebuffer display, so you could build a hybrid system. Using a simple FPGA board allows us to avoid the vast and irrelevant complexity inherent with most ARM System-on-Chip (SoC) systems; but since field-programmable gate arrays are so flexible, they will never be as cheap or as fast as a dedicated ARM. That's life. :) HTH Paul

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Can ETHO be ported to ARM?
by eas lab 13 Jan '14

13 Jan '14

No, not the <language>, but the unique interface of S3/V4. What matters is the human-interface. That's what determines your productivety [maximum gain for minimum pain]. Not needing to switch between awkward F-keys and the screen, and having easy access to multiple text-files together, and each text-view having <what the bottle does, written on the bottle, instead of in the filing cabinet>. Porting ETHO to linux [both S3 & V4] was a killer app:. you get the Inet capability of *nix together with the superior human-interface of ETHO, plus you can view *pdf, LaTex..etc. on the same screen. For tricky problems, needing simultaneous views of: email/s, USEnet/s, your test-logs EHO is unbeaten, especially with the text colouring facilities, which help extract the meaning of difficult explanations. Because opeing/closing a new ETHO-for-linux takes a second, it's viable to have several copies running in the various dirs, which are handling current problems. Real life doesn't allow fixing one problem at a time. Can those of us who want to escape the WinTel monopoly, hope to use ARM based CPUs with an ETHO-like interface, by a porting of the existing/proven code? == Chris Glur. PS. LNO's inability to easily navigate the dir-tree, limits its utility.

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Re: [Oberon] Oberon Digest, Vol 115, Issue 15
by Luca Boasso 11 Jan '14

11 Jan '14

This is a really nice Christmas present indeed! I'm planning to buy a Spartan 3 starter kit to try it out. Does anybody know which model work best? There are several model available (Spartan-3AN, Spartan-3E, ...) http://www.xilinx.com/products/boards_kits/spartan.htm I was reading chapter "14 Building and maintenance tools" to understand how to boot and configure the FPGA. It looks like the verilog source files(RISCTop.v, RISC.v, Multiplier.v, Divider.v, FPA dder.v. FP.Multiplier.v, FP.Divider.v, dbram32.v, RS232R.v, RS232T.v, SPI.v, XGS.v, PS2.v, RISC.ucf ) are missing from the website, and also the Oberon0 module. Do you know where I can find those files? Thank you Luca On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 1:00 PM, <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. Project Oberon: New Edition (Treutwein Bernhard) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2013 09:07:14 +0000 > From: Treutwein Bernhard > <Bernhard.Treutwein(a)Verwaltung.Uni-Muenchen.DE> > Subject: [Oberon] Project Oberon: New Edition > To: "'oberon(a)lists.inf.ethz.ch'" <oberon(a)lists.inf.ethz.ch> > Message-ID: > <78A8BD6765DCF048A628A51C3FBD1D761887788C(a)MXS2.zuv.uni-muenchen.de> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > Xmas surprise: Project Oberon is approaching a new edition, see http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ProjectOberon/index.html > especially an update of the hardware FPGA instead of NS32000. > -- > Bernhard > > > > ------------------------------ > > -- > Oberon(a)lists.inf.ethz.ch mailing list for ETH Oberon and related systems > https://lists.inf.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/oberon > > > End of Oberon Digest, Vol 115, Issue 15 > ***************************************

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Oberon / Lola -> VHDL / Verilog Hardware Description Language
by greim 09 Jan '14

09 Jan '14

Hi, many thanks to your comments to my suggestions, regarding Oberon as HDI. Some remarks: 1* theoretical, you may write a compiler that is translation an Oberon style HDL to the configuration file for any FPGA. In practice this would need 1000 man-year i guess. So some Oberon -> (VHDL or Verilog) compiler would by the only practical way. Chisel as far as i remember has less the 10.000 lines of code. 2* many thanks for the hint to LOLA. As far as i could download the whitepaper its in principle what i suggested. Its designed in 1995 for standard GALs. Actual FPGAs are much more complex. So a LOLA2 working as described in 1* would be one possible solution i guess. Regards Markus Greim

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Export of scalar/non scalar variables.
by Alexey Veselovsky 04 Jan '14

04 Jan '14

Hi! In Oberon language report 2013 there is rule: > Variables cannot be exported, with the exception of those of scalar types in read-only mode. But there is no definition for scalar type. Also in Project Oberon 2013 (which uses Oberon-07/13) module ORS exports array variable: MODULE ORS; TYPE Ident* = ARRAY IdLen OF CHAR; VAR id*: Ident; END ORS. Array of char - scalar? Thanks, Alexey.

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Export of scalar/non scalar variables.
by Alexey Veselovsky 01 Jan '14

01 Jan '14

Hi! In Oberon language report 2013 there is rule: > Variables cannot be exported, with the exception of those of scalar types in read-only mode. But there is no definition for scalar type. Also in Project Oberon 2013 (which uses Oberon-07/13) module ORS exports array variable: MODULE ORS; TYPE Ident* = ARRAY IdLen OF CHAR; VAR id*: Ident; END ORS. Array of char - scalar? PS. Merry Christmas! Thanks, Alexey.

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Oberon ->(Chisel?) -> Verilog
by greim 30 Dec '13

30 Dec '13

Hi , i am very surprised and impressed about the "Oberon 2013 edition" project. The future is embedded as you may see for example at all the hype around Arduinio and RasperryPi and of course all SmartPhone Aps. The problem is that all this embedded devices around are programmed mostly by "stupid" electronic engineers (like me for more then 30 years) and that the information sciences are focused on the big irons (also a modern PC is a big iron) for decades. Its a fantastic decision of Professor Wirth to use a FPGA instead of any ARM or similar 32bit device! The only ugly spot or missing link in this project is the Verilog language, but i know that VHDL and Verilog are the only real world tools for this job.. BUT i like to make a hint to the Chisel project (http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ProjectOberon/index.html) . They expanded SCALA (an up-polished JAVA) as a front-end for Verilog. From the CHISEL/Scala code they are generating Verilog and C++ code for the simulation. So porting/making a kind of Chisel to Oberon would be the missing link in the whole project. So anybody out there knowing both language good enough? Is there any chance to do this? Regards Markus Greim

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