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

Source code browser in NO
by Srinivas Nayak 25 Mar '17

25 Mar '17

Dear All, Do we have any source code browser in NO? I see we have Definitions browser in NO. Using Watson, if we create *.Def and *.Def.html, we can browse through Definitions. Anything similar for source code? 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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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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Re: [Oberon] frames, displays and screens;
by peter＠easthope.ca 13 Oct '16

13 Oct '16

From: Andreas Pirklbauer <andreas_pirklbauer(a)yahoo.com> Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2016 14:17:51 +0200 > In essence one can create sev= > eral (separate!) logical display areas that all look like the standard Obero= > n display (works like virtual screens in macOS, i.e. one can just switch fro= > m one to another). OK, thanks. Rather than scroll a big display up-down and left-right on a smaller screen, the user will jump from one logical screen to another. Both scrolling and jumping could be in one system. Eg. arrange your virtual screens vertically (or horizontally) and allow scrolling and jumping up/down (or left/right). > It's just a small experiment to prepare Oberon for a tablet version. Seems you are on the right track. Thanks! ... Lyall E. -- 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 Tel +1 360 639 0202 http://easthope.ca/Peter.html Bcc: peter at easthope. ca

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Re (2): revisions in sources.
by peter＠easthope.ca 13 Oct '16

13 Oct '16

80 or 90% of my previous message was truncated. Trying again with some errors corrected. From: chris at cfbsoftware.com (Chris Burrows), Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2016 18:01:27 +0930 > I can't speak for NO ... My primary interest in Oberon is for use as a personal workstation. At present, many of the workstation functionalities in NO have not been adopted into a FPGA Oberon. >From chris at cfbsoftware.com Sat Sep 17 02:04:36 2016 > Not correct ... My apologies. Will try a restatement. Usually a software package is distributed in it's latest form. Distribution of an old version, with a textual description of revisions for the user to make, is unusual. When the revision list is too long it is infeasible. >From chris at cfbsoftware.com Thu May 7 00:19:29 2015 > That is the intention of the *existing* Oberon Community Platform > from ETH. It has a wiki, forum etc. > http://www.ocp.inf.ethz.ch/wiki/ Yes, OCP is admirable. I've contributed to it. Three significant capabilities are not in the OCP and are available with MediaWiki. Page specific history. Convenient difference display. Page specific discussion. >From joerg.straube at iaeth.ch Wed Apr 20 18:50:55 2016 > I would appreciate a repository of ProjectOberon, where the > community can contribute instead of having independent forks. When two articles in Wikipedia address the same topic they are merged. Sooner or later. Very few competing articles on one topic survive more than a few years before merger. Eventally sanity prevails over ego. > In my point of view, WikiBook doesn't seem to be the best choice for this task. Acknowleged. Better possibilities? Bernhard mentioned difficulty in configuring Sourceforge to archive Oberon source Texts while allowing convenient reading by a human. I can't cite his note at present. Oberon sources appear almost as plain texts. In a few places recent revisions are colored. The visual appearance is easily achieved with HTML. Therefore a question. Would a MediaWiki publication of sources as ASCII or HTML, having the same visual appearance as in Oberon, violate the ETH license? I can't discern the answer. Currently these are the two most relevant forms. https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Subject:Computing https://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:About_Wikisource Hypothetically there might be a MediaOberon which handes a Text without corruption. Regards, ... Lyall E. -- 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 Tel +1 360 639 0202 http://easthope.ca/Peter.html Bcc: peter at easthope. ca

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Parts & paths; was Re (3): A path variable for OLR?
by peter＠easthope.ca 13 Oct '16

13 Oct '16

From: Peter Matthias <PeterMatthias(a)web.de> Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2016 18:57:24 +0200 > If file is not in "WRK:", "SYS:" will be used for reading. "SYS:" > defaults to "." and can be set by "OSYSDIR=/dir". Nice. > Both dirs can be set by FileTools.SetSYS resp. FileTools.SetWRK. Native Oberon has the slightly different arrangement. "OFSTools.SetDefault WRK ~" moves WRK to the front of the search list. An arbitrary number of volumes can be ordered. ** ETHO Behaviour ** Volume containing executables is automatically SYS. FileSystem.Mount WRK1 AosFS <volume1> ~ FileSystem.Mount WRK2 AosFS <volume2> ~ FileSystem.Mount WRK3 AosFS <volume3> ~ OFSTools.SetDefault WRK3 ~ OFSTools.SetDefault WRK2 ~ OFSTools.SetDefault WRK1 ~ makes search path WRK1 WRK2 WRK3 SYS ** OLR analogue ** FileTools.Set SYS <path0> ~ FileTools.Set WRK1 <path1> ~ FileTools.Set WRK2 <path2> ~ FileTools.Set WRK3 <path3> ~ FileTools.SetDefault WRK3 ~ FileTools.SetDefault WRK2 ~ FileTools.SetDefault WRK1 ~ makes search path WRK1 WRK2 WRK3 SYS Regards, Lyall E. -- 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 Tel +1 360 639 0202 http://easthope.ca/Peter.html Bcc: peter at easthope. ca

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Re (2): Re (2): RISC-5; was RISC5
by peter＠easthope.ca 12 Oct '16

12 Oct '16

From: Pablo Cayuela <pablo.cayuela(a)gmail.com>, Mon, 12 Sep 2016 17:33:29 -0300 > I can't find the article on google as easy as with "risc-5" but adding > "risc-5 filetype:pdf" it yields on fifth place this one (also in the page > you added to references of glossary): Correct. My explanation wasn't clear. Googling "risc-5" doesn't find Wirth's PDF document directly. Firefox yields a list of citations, this being third. "Oberon (operating system) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon_(operating_system) The Oberon System is a modular single user single process multitasking operating system .... Glossary[edit]. RISC-5, the CPU of Project Oberon based upon Wirth's RISC architecture. Not to be confused with RISC-V." In the synopsis, the reader can spot RISC-5 and choose to go there. >From the Wikipedia article, Wirth's PDF can be found. Certainly your search for "risc-5 filetype:pdf" finds the PDF. Most readers wondering what RISC-5 is, won't already know that the document exists as PDF and won't know about the filetype search operator. Once http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/FPGA-relatedWork/ is found _via_ the Wikipedia, this term can be searched. site:www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/FPGA-relatedWork/ That lists references to all the documents in the directory. Google caches HTML versions of the PDFs. That can allow many browsers to display the documents directly. Doesn't work easily for Desktops.OpenDoc in PC Native Oberon. I don't know how Desktops.OpenDoc is in FPGA Oberon. This is an instance of the software completeness question. Can Oberon be used to read Oberon documentation? Not yet. Regards, ... Lyall E. -- 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 Tel +1 360 639 0202 http://easthope.ca/Peter.html Bcc: peter at easthope. ca

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Oberon and TLS; was A2.
by peter＠easthope.ca 12 Oct '16

12 Oct '16

Chris, >From lab.eas at gmail.com Mon Jan 18 19:08:45 2016 > Can it handle the <TLS> protocol needed for gmail; As I understand, you intend an Oberon workstation. Native Oberon on a PC or Oberon as a subsystem of another system. You require non-local communication to be within TLS. Possible with a little elaboration. * PC Native Oberon Years ago Guenter Feldmann implemented SSL for Oberon. That might work for receiving mail from a smarthost. I haven't tried. As Oberon is distributed, authentication is absent from SMTP; an obvious snag for sending to some smarthosts. In addition to your workstation, set up a router system. A Linux router works nicely. It should have a firewall such as provided by Shorewall. Nowadays it can be a machine fitting in the palm of your hand. The Oberon workstation sends a message to the Linux router using port 25; no TLS. The MTA on the router forwards the message under TLS. The default MTA in Debian Linux is Exim4. It works here. For receiving mail, install stunnel on the router. Communication between Oberon and the router is through port 110 without TLS. Between the router and smarthost TLS is provided by stunnel. In the example in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stunnel substitute POP3 for SMTP. * Oberon subsystem running on another system. This is the above arrangement running on one machine rather than two. The Oberon subsystem sends messages to localhost and retrieves from localhost. Regards, ... Lyall E. -- 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 Tel +1 360 639 0202 http://easthope.ca/Peter.html Bcc: peter at easthope. ca

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Type guard: unnecessary?
by Srinivas Nayak 08 Oct '16

08 Oct '16

Dear All, In the Programming in Oberon (Tutorial) rev. 5.10.2015, in section 23.2 last paragraph we read: "The simple designator p.radius would not be acceptable, because p is of type Figure." In section 23.4 last but one paragraph we read: "The further facility of the type guard is merely one of convenience." Is type guard not necessary? 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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Embedded Project Oberon on a breadboard
by Chris Burrows 06 Oct '16

06 Oct '16

We have now successfully ported the Astrobe Embedded Project Oberon RISC5 system running at 50MHz to Digilent's latest Cmod A7-35T board. This is a breadboard friendly 48-pin DIP form factor board built around a Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA which can be loaded in a standard socket and used in embedded systems: http://store.digilentinc.com/ This free version of the Astrobe system uses the latest RISC5 Project Oberon sources and is compatible with the May 2016 revision of the Oberon report. The board is configured for use with the Opus-Two microSD adapter card which was designed by one of our Astrobe users. You can find more information and register in advance for the download at: http://www.astrobe.com/RISC5 It is expected to be available in October 2016, Regards, Chris Burrows CFB Software http://www.astrobe.com

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