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

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 V4 sources moved
by Claudio Nieder 08 Apr '13

08 Apr '13

Hi, by the way, sources for some platforms are missing, e.g. DECstation, SiliconGraphics. I received a long time ago from Aubrey McIntosh sources for a MIPS compiler which seem to belong to the DECstation Oberon, but before I upload them I wanted to see if I can get the complete set of sources. claudio -- Claudio Nieder, Talweg 6, CH-8610 Uster, Tel +4179 357 6743, www.claudio.ch

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Configuration.DoCommands versus ET.Do
by peasthope＠shaw.ca 01 Apr '13

01 Apr '13

Hello, Configuration.DoCommands and ET.Do appear to have similar functionality. Can anyone explain why both are needed? After using NO for years I still have no difficulty finding an unfamiliar feature. Thanks, ... Peter E. -- 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 12 Tel +13606390202 Bcc: peasthope at shaw.ca http://carnot.yi.org/ "http://members.shaw.ca/peasthope/index.html#Itinerary "

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Oberon V4 sources moved
by Claudio Nieder 28 Mar '13

28 Mar '13

Hi, some of you might knowm that I hosted on http://claudio.ch/V4 the sources for several Oberon V4 system. The sources have now been moved to a sourceforge project at https://sourceforge.net/projects/oberon/ to give easier access to them and so that a Wiki is associated with them allowing additional informations to be added by anybody. My thanks go to Bernhard Treutwein for suggesting this move and to Robert Lichtenberger for allowing his project - on which he also hosts his Oberon V4 for Linux - to be used for this. claudio -- Claudio Nieder, Talweg 6, CH-8610 Uster, Tel +4179 357 6743, www.claudio.ch

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ETHO Display structure.
by eas lab 11 Mar '13

11 Mar '13

Someone recently was asking about the Aos Display structure. With some much appreciated pointers from Paul Reed I was able to extract the following confirmation of the unexpected complexity of the algorithm to GetCharAtCursor:-- TextFrames.LocateChar [with my comments] shows # first use the Y-coordinate to get the line LocateLine(F, y, loc); LOOP # consult the library re. the bitmap of the char just read R.lib.GetObj(R.lib, ORD(ch), obj); # to see how many 'pixels' wide it is dx := obj(Fonts.Char).dx; # if adding this char/brick to the line exceeds the X-coordinate # THEN you've 'arrived' ELSE accumulate the X-coordinate # and get the next char/brick INC(pos); ox := ox + dx; Texts.Read(R, ch) So it needs to step through each variable-width-char of the row, consulting the <manufacturers spec> about the char's width, to add the char-width to the accumulating line-length, until exceeding the X-coordinate. What I actually wanted was 'the last char read', which is still in the global ch, immediately after TextFrames.LocateChar exits; which i've used and confirm/tested. TextFrames.LocateChar in fact updates a RECORD which has the position/index in the corresponding Text. So you'd normally just read-the-Text-at-position to get the Char. I can't see how to use LocateChar, without modifying the existing TextFrames.Mod Firstly because LocateChar is not exported and also because, I want to just grab the global ch immediately LocateChar exits, instead of going indirectly via the position in <Text that TextFrames> was reading. And I don't know how my module would get the Text that TextFrames is reading. What are the rules/guidline for extending existing code? I've never worked 'in a team'. == Chris Glur.

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Re (2): Re (2): OLPC XO computer
by peasthope＠shaw.ca 11 Mar '13

11 Mar '13

From: eas lab <lab.eas(a)gmail.com> Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2013 00:56:13 +0200 > ... I don't understand how Linux does ppp connecting, and > then LEO 'takes over'. LinuxAos and LEO are applications in the host system, analogous to a Web browser. If the Web browser can use an Ethernet or PPP connection then LinuxAos and LEO should also be able to use it. "ip route show" will tell what routes are available. PPP via a dial up modem can be started by the user or configured to connect on demand. Regards, ... Peter E. -- 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 12 Tel +13606390202 Bcc: peasthope at shaw.ca http://carnot.yi.org/ "http://members.shaw.ca/peasthope/index.html#Itinerary "

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Re: [Oberon] Re (2): OLPC XO computer
by Jack Johnson 08 Mar '13

08 Mar '13

On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 6:29 AM, <peasthope(a)shaw.ca> wrote: > From: eas lab <lab.eas(a)gmail.com> >> SMTP plus TLS. I need that desperately to better manage gmail. > > In my setup TLS is provided by the underlying system. If you're having SSL or TLS grief, I can't agree more. Using stunnel to encrypt a known working protocol is pretty painless, and easy to get creative with. -Jack

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Re (2): Re (2): OLPC XO computer
by peasthope＠shaw.ca 08 Mar '13

08 Mar '13

From: Jack Johnson <knapjack(a)gmail.com> Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2013 08:06:17 -0900 > If you're having SSL or TLS grief, ... No problem with TLS here. Refering to http://carnot.yi.org/NetworkExtant.jpg , Cantor and Dalton reach the ISP via the OpenVPN tunnel, which is encrypted with a static key. The connection from Joule to the ISP doesn't use TLS; it's plain old HTTP, SMTP, POP3 & etc. Chris has an ISP which requires TLS on every connection? If my ISP imposed such a requirement, the first step would be try to satisfy it with the configuration of Joule alone. Regards, ... Peter E. -- 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 12 Tel +13606390202 Bcc: peasthope at shaw.ca http://carnot.yi.org/ "http://members.shaw.ca/peasthope/index.html#Itinerary "

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Re (2): OLPC XO computer
by peasthope＠shaw.ca 08 Mar '13

08 Mar '13

From: eas lab <lab.eas(a)gmail.com> Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2013 15:05:06 +0200 > You didn't say if you're using <LEO> or > http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/~fld/UnixAos/ You didn't open http://carnot.yi.org/ExampleSystems.html#OLPC . It's plain text and not too big. Surely you can open that even with a poor telephone modem connection. There is a link to the Downloads page at the ETH which has a link to the uni-bremen.de you cited. > SMTP plus TLS. I need that desperately to better manage gmail. SMTP and POP3 work. Just sent and retrieved a test message. Fullscreen Oberon => underlying Debian Linux => Linux system at home via OpenVPN => ISP and ISP => Linux system at home via OpenVPN => underlying Debian Linux => Fullscreen Oberon. In my setup TLS is provided by the underlying system. This message also sent from that system. (!) Aos has IMAP but I can't comment on that. SMTP and POP3 suffice here. > I want someone else to 'walk in front' for a change. The little Changelog.txt shows that work is ongoing. Nevertheless the system is useable. You just need to find a way to get the 37 MiB file & install it. Maybe you can help Guenter a little by reporting a bug. Regards, ... Peter E.

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