[Oberon] Functionality vs eye-candy

[easlab at absamail.co.za]

It's probably  a year since I [previously] made this appeal ?

Example: it would be good if it was made known how to
move files from a N-O box to another 'terminal' via V24.
Why shouldn't we get the value of the existing V24's labour ?
There is no V24.Tool and the idea that *.Panel should have no
*.Tool nor documentation is absurd. Users don't want to
use Columbus.Inspect and take a refresher course on 
Gadgets macro language.

So how would we acheive this ?
Not in one step but by a process.
Analagously to the 'give a man a fish', you move up the
productivity heirarchy by 'telling him where to find the 
address for the information on how to learn to fish'.

In our case, mechanisms [eg. a repository where small
increments of value-added can accumulate] to successively
refine via user contributions.  Instead of like hardware
degenerating by use, the system [S3 & apps] would be 
continually refined by user contibutions. 
The Wiki concept seems to acheive this ?

Here's an examples of a naive but usefull user contribution, 
which represent some hours labour and will be lost 
[others will have to waste time repeating the effort] 
since/if no working 'user contibution capture mechanism' 
exists:-----------------------

How to transmit "text" from a N-O textFrame via V24.Panel
to another 'terminal' -  N-O or other OS:-

* Desktops.OpenDoc V24.Panel ~ opens the V24.Panel
* Edit the parameters:
   the default of "1 38400 8 1 none" 
would be changed to "2 38400 8 1 none", if as usual port 1 
was used by the mouse and port 2 by the serial connector
- usually for the modem.  The other parameters must match
the peer [other terminal].
* Try to activate the [Open] button. If the System.Log
 indicates "Can not open port, error = 1", apparently 
due to the port being still open from previous [eg. modem
dial up activety], activate your 'private utility' which needs 
to be included in future V24.Mod [next stage of refinement].
Mine looks like:  CRGV24Debug.CloseCOM2 ==
IMPORT  SYSTEM, Input, Out, V24;
...
PROCEDURE CloseCOM2*;
  BEGIN Out.String('Close COM2');
    V24.Stop(1)
  END CloseCOM2;
(* after CloseCOM2, V24.Panel can open and close port(s), repeatedly. *)
------------
*  The text to be transmitted is merely pasted to the 
V24.Panel 's 'panel' and appears at the peer-terminal !
But if the peer terminal is non-oberon, the line termination 
is different/problematic. 
eg. linux > minicom will only have captured the last line.
Apparently because of the lack of <LF> all previous lines 
are overwritten & lost. <other contributers to edit this 
guess: a-la-Wiki ?> 
In that case [Unix or M$ peers] use the appropriate ET.Mod 
commands. eg. to transmit to linux > minicom terminal:
mark the textFrame to be pasted and sent and 
'do' ET.StoreAscii  *
to get a file [which you will want to delete later] with 
suitable line-terminators, which is sent to the peer when 
it is pasted to the panel.

* [Close] button should free-up the ser-port, for eg. re-use by
the modem, before closing the V24.Panel .
===== End of naive text transfer description =====

But how do you transfer [bit perfectly] binary files from N-O ?!

After setting the parameters via the panel,
    < V24Gadgets.'cmnd' 'filename'> would be a nice syntax ?

It's annoying that it's not clear what the existing:
     V24Gadgets.SendSRec V24  #Value P4k.Bin ~
does !

Never mind about the technicolour transparencies, lets 
get some more basic functionality first ?

== Chris Glur.