March 2016 - Oberon - mailman3.inf.ethz.ch

Re: [Oberon] Concurrency support in Oberon
by John R. Strohm 25 Nov '16

25 Nov '16

No, Oberon has no concurrency support in the language. The Oberon system provides a simple event loop, that allows programmers to do simple round-robin run-til-done scheduling. --- sinu.nayak2001(a)gmail.com wrote: From: Srinivas Nayak <sinu.nayak2001(a)gmail.com> To: ETH Oberon and related systems <oberon(a)lists.inf.ethz.ch> Subject: [Oberon] Concurrency support in Oberon Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2016 20:27:05 +0530 Dear All, We had Pascal, We came to its successor Modula-2. Then we came to its successor Oberon. But do we still have the concurrency programming support in Oberon, which was present in Modula-2? With thanks and best regards, Yours sincerely, Srinivas Nayak Home: http://www.mathmeth.com/sn/ Blog: http://srinivas-nayak.blogspot.in/ -- 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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Re: [Oberon] Availability of OberonStation
by Chris Burrows 14 Nov '16

14 Nov '16

> > From: Oberon [mailto:oberon-bounces@lists.inf.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of > Ken Boak > Sent: Monday, 18 January 2016 7:29 PM > To: oberon(a)lists.inf.ethz.ch > Subject: [Oberon] Availability of OberonStation > > Have any of the list had experience of the Oberon system on the > Xilinx Artix-7 - specifically on the $99 Arty board - is this a > preferred platform? > It is likely that I have had the most experience on the Xilinx Artix-7 seeing as I ported our 'embedded' subset of ProjectOberon to the Arty board ;-) I agree with Walter. Oberon-07 is an ideal language for developing embedded applications. I'm not sure what you mean by 'preferred platform'. The Arty (Artix-7) and the Pippistrello (Spartan-6 LX45) development boards are the only two I have found so far that have sufficient BRAM to run embedded ProjectOberon without external SRAM. Saanlima's Pippistrello is about $50 more than the Arty. However, the Pippistrello does have a built-in SD Card socket and can also be used as an ProjectOberon Workstation development system with Saanlima's optional Oberon SRAM 'Wing'. There are many simpler FPGA boards available but all the ones I have found use less-capable FPGA devices with insufficient BRAM. The Arty and the Pippistrello have more features than are needed for embedded Oberon applications like those on the ARM Cortex-M3/M4 boards that we support. However, I guess that doesn't matter for those who are designing their own boards and just want an off-the-shelf reference system to use for prototyping / proof of concept. If on the other hand you want to run the complete Project Oberon 'workstation' system with VGA / HDMI, keyboard and mouse. You will need a board with external SRAM like the OberonStation. An Arty would not be suitable for this purpose. > Finally, and perhaps best addressed to Chris Burrows - I see that > you have produced packages for the ARM M3 and M4 Cortex - mainly NXP. > Do you have any aspirations to port to Cortex M7 - such as the $50 > STM32F7 Discovery Platform - which has a great selection of useful > hardware on-board? > There used to be an clear distinction between the simple 8-bit microcontroller at one end of the spectrum and the 64-bit PC at the other. In recent years the two have started to converge. The embedded systems are becoming more powerful; the PCs are becoming smaller and less power-hungry - the distinction is blurring. The STM32F7 Discovery Platform seems to me to be more a miniature PC than a high-power embedded system. While we remain focused on supporting embedded systems we are unlikely to be targeting it, Regards, Chris Chris Burrows CFB Software http://www.astrobe.com/RISC5

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Oberon language family and the master.
by Srinivas Nayak 05 Sep '16

05 Sep '16

Dear All, I am referring to http://www.oberon.ethz.ch/archives/languagearchive/genealogy. Here we see that Oberon language from its birth has gone through several revisions. Many times either NW or others have added new features to it if they feel a need of it. Or removed existing features, if they found it unnecessary. After all these iterations, Oberon might have got time tested. So today, can we say, whatever is present in Oberon-7 is time tested; and one doesn't need to add or remove anything from it; and this is the state-of-the-art; and is simple but not simpler? If so, one wouldn't worry about Oberon V, Oberon X, Active Oberon, Action Oberon, Object Oberon, Concurrent Oberon etc. etc. With thanks and best regards, Yours sincerely, Srinivas Nayak Home: http://www.mathmeth.com/sn/ Blog: http://srinivas-nayak.blogspot.in/

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oberonstation vs. a $9 computer
by skulski＠pas.rochester.edu 14 Jul '16

14 Jul '16

Lars: It is sort of funny that one can use the low price as an argument. How much do you value your time? Let's say it is $5 per hour, way below minimum wage. How much time will you spend on getting anything done with any piece of hardware, be it Arduino, RPi, Beagle Bone, or Oberon Station? Are you going to achieve anything meaningful in less than 10 hours? If so then I will consider hiring you for $50 per hour. The low price does indeed matter if you will use the hardware in a finished product. They are talking of a disposable computer. If you are going to basically throw it away after a single use (provided that you environmental soul lets you do it), then indeed $9 matters. But if you are going to do any development or experimentation with the HW, then you will likely spend hundreds of hours doing so. Then it does not matter if you invest $9, $90, or even $900 into your hardware. Almost any such amount is dwarfed by the cost of your time. Oberon Station is a development platform. The valid question is "development of what?". The initial dollar investment in the development hardware is not that important in this case. W. > The oberon station is tempting, but with Raspberry Pi at $35 > or the C.H.I.P computer for $9.00... that has USB, > and WIFI that works like any wifi, the oberon station > is really priced way out of the market. If the > oberonstation was around $50 more people would buy. > How can you possibly compete with the C.H.I.P. > for $9.00.

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paint.mod attached
by scrutinizer 18 Apr '16

18 Apr '16

paint.mod attached let me know if you need some sample .pict files > Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2016 21:26:47 +0100 > From: Tomas Kral <thomas.kral(a)email.cz> > To: oberon(a)lists.inf.ethz.ch > Subject: [Oberon] Oberon Paint.Mod > > Hi, > > I am curious about drawing programs for Oberon system as I am reading > PO.Applications chapter, describing Draw.Tool implementation. > > I have also seen a Clown picture at > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon_%28operating_system%29 > > It shows Paint.Tool commands apparently coming from a Paint.Mod > > Paint.Mod does not seem part of Oberon System, I am just curious where > it originates? > > Cheers Tom >

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Essential facility missing.
by eas lab 16 Apr '16

16 Apr '16

I often ask myself: "what am I doing wrong? How do others manage?" If you've got a directory containing 222 files, that you were working with yesterday: why would you want the dir-listing to be sorted alphabetically, instead of <stack-like> by recency? When you put sugar in your coffee, it entails 3 items: sugar-bowl, teaspoon, coffee-cup. Are illiterates who can't sort the 3 items alphabetically, unable to do the task? Even an insect that takes food down its hole, uses the stack-based method: * bring the food to near the hole and leave it, to free up fighting ability; * go to the hole to check that it's not occupied; * go back to fetch the food; * enter the hole with the food. If people are working with 4-files, surely they don't identify the files by their alphabetic ordering?! They associate some aspect of the characters-in-the-name with a concept. For me: color is the most direct association mechanism. ML takes <the redundancy of names> to its logical conclusion: each expression is just known as "it". So with 'piping systems', as the data is transformed "it" doesn't need names at each stage. The (n-1)th "it" goes-in and the (n)th "it" comes out. Re. the economy of effort via piping: if ETHO hadn't stuck with their absurd date format, you could do: SYS:*\d == SYS:A.text.gadget 29.07.2002 02:07:39 285 |RotateLeft(1,WhiteCharSeparatedTokens) ==29.07.2002 02:07:39 285 SYS:A.text.gadget |Sort == Dir Listing in recency order. How is it possible that ETHO can't do the essential <recency listing> ? System.Directory SYS:*\d == SYS:A.text.gadget 29.07.2002 02:07:39 285 SYS:ABC.bmp 06.05.2004 04:37:39 977462 System.Directory SYS:*\ft 29.07.2002 02:07:39 SYS:A.text.gadget 06.05.2004 04:37:39 SYS:ABC.bmp System.Directory SYS:*\t 29.07.2002 02:07:39 SYS:A.text.gadget 06.05.2004 04:37:39 SYS:ABC.bmp System.Directory SYS:*\f SYS:A.text.gadget SYS:ABC.bmp System.Directory SYS:*\df 29.07.2002 02:07:39 285 SYS:A.text.gadget 06.05.2004 04:37:39 977462 SYS:ABC.bmp == Chris Glur.

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Standalone BlackBox programs was: GUI programming in Oberon.
by Treutwein Bernhard 11 Apr '16

11 Apr '16

Lars, >>> There is no way to ship a standalone exe GUI program, Wrong. Please check before you set such a statement in the wild. >How did you ship an exe standalone? modify the blackbox source code, or >use a different compiler? There are several way, the basic one is documented in the "Platform-Specific Issues". BlackBox.exe itself is created with BlackBox. See "Linking BlackBox Applications" in the Document mentioned above. Moreover you can pack a complete filesystem in the exe, see <installed directory>/Dev/Spec/PackedFiles.odc -- Bernhard >-----Original Message----- >From: Lars [mailto:noreply@z505.com] >Sent: Monday, February 29, 2016 1:36 AM >To: ETH Oberon and related systems >Subject: Re: [Oberon] GUI programming in Oberon. > >On Sat, February 27, 2016 8:54 pm, Douglas G. Danforth wrote: >> On 2/27/2016 7:07 PM, Lars wrote: >> >>> There is no way to ship a standalone exe GUI program, >>> >> Not true. I have written a number of .exe programs developed in >> BlackBox for >> paying customers. > >Well, you can even sell applications that run inside the blackbox >environment. > >How did you ship an exe standalone? modify the blackbox source code, or >use a different compiler?

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Oberon with strings, Eberon
by Lars 11 Apr '16

11 Apr '16

Found an oberon programmer who "gets it".. i.e. spinach https://github.com/vladfolts/oberonjs/wiki/Eberon-Strings Have to research this. I'm posting it to the list to make it more known that there are people who know of the string problem and aren't denying it. With all these forks of oberon, it's the same problem as standard pascal. You have about 200 different versions of pascal floating around, because standard pascal was castrated and circumscribed in its standard form. So people extend it which fragments the community into hundreds of forks.

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Oberon Splines.Mod
by Tomas Kral 05 Apr '16

05 Apr '16

Hi, Now reading more about Draw.Tool, PO.Application chapters describe basic shape primitives, a line, rectangle, circle, ellipse, also Spline curves. Splines.Mod however seems missing on RISC.img, I also searched old ETH archives, and not found in sources there nor in Project Oberon 2005. It seems left as homework for a careful reader, right? Cheers -- Tomas Kral <thomas.kral(a)email.cz>

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On Oberon Sources
by Srinivas Nayak 04 Apr '16

04 Apr '16

The biggest confusion right now I have is, why Oberon didn't use simple ascii text files? None of Oberon files are open-able as plain ascii file! Which extension in file name says that the file is a plain ascii file? With thanks and best regards, Yours sincerely, Srinivas Nayak Home: http://www.mathmeth.com/sn/ Blog: http://srinivas-nayak.blogspot.in/

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