[Oberon] Re. USB

[John Drake]

--- easlab at absamail.co.za wrote:

> Stauber  Sven Philipp wrote:

> > >Will this knowledge be available for NO ?
> > 
> > No. It can, however, be used under Oberon when
> running Oberon
> > Bluebottle.
> 
> Doesn't Bluebottle use the Oberon syntax ?

Pretty much.  Active Oberon syntax is different
from Oberon-2 in several key respects.  But the
default Native Oberon compiler is very close
to Active Oberon.  The lastest version even
includes DELEGATES.  (The lack of that was 
a major problem when I started trying to port
XML to Windows Plugin Oberon which uses the
same compiler as Native Oberon.)  Native
Oberon doesn't include any of the keywords
used for multithreading in Active Oberon.
Looking the the USB source I only noticed
one Active object.

> NB. I wrote "knowledge". Ie. algorithm can easily be
> ported, independant 
> of interface/appearance, which should have been
> factored-out.

Certainly it's possible, just like it was 
possible to "tease" out the XML code and
use it under Native Oberon.  But that wasn't
easy.  I took that on because I wanted to use
XML under Windows Plugin Oberon both for
using WebDAV and for writing my own XMLRPC
client.  If WinAos had been available then
I might not have bothered.  I guess what
I'm saying is there isn't a ready pool of
people willing to do stuff just for the sake
of doing it.  I got some help from Edgar
when I was porting XML, but then that was
also helping him to get his WebDAV on a
wider platform.  There wasn't anyone from
ETH that piped in and said "Great idea!
I'll stop what I'm doing and help you port
XML to a platform that I'm not really 
using."

If you're interested in seeing USB running
under NO then at this point you need to
prepare yourself to take lead on the
project.  I don't mind helping and there
are others who might not mind helping.
I did look at the source.  It's a doable
project.

> Does Bluebottle still use the funny/awkward system
> programming 
> syntax like:
> 	SYSTEM.PORTIN(p, SYSTEM.VAL(CHAR, t));   ?

That syntax was defined by N. Wirth when he first
specified the Oberon language and it still remains.
I didn't seen any "SYSTEM.PORTIN" calls in the Aos
USB source, but SYSTEM.VAL is used as is SYSTEM.ADR.


> What about someone writing a translator to use an
> intuitive syntax:
> 	t -> Port(p);  or eg: Byte(t) -> Mem(m);   ?
> 
> == Chris Glur.

Feel free to take that on as a project.

Regards,

John M. Drake


		
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