[Oberon] Experimental Oberon

Skulski, Wojciech skulski at pas.rochester.edu
Tue Nov 28 07:58:45 CET 2017


> I am thinking, what all shall we loose,
> if we use Oberon with today's mouse usage pattern?
> Any functionality loss?
> Any productivity loss?

All Oberons, dead or alive, were and are using the three button mice and interclicks. Even though true three button mice are hard to get, the ones with the middle scroll wheel hardly substitute for the originals, and interclicks are like learning chords on a guitar. The problem is that all Oberons out there were/are using this stuff.

So the EO will be the first one to depart. That's great. But then, Pieter is just releasing the new version. Is he going to change it? 

Does the change affect applications? Is the mouse handling restricted to one module per System, or is it scattered among many modules in each System?

Imagine that Gadgets will get ported to EO. So the situation will be quite like everywhere else, with the EO serving as the "text layer" (like DOS), and Gadgets serving as a graphical windows manager (like Windows 3.11). Not a bad idea at all. But then, are gadgets handling the mouse in all possible places? That would be interesting. Or is there a mouse protocol defined in the System that the higher layer is using? 

I hope for the former, but remembering all these mouse tracking loops I will not be surprised with the latter. 

I still think that modernizing mouse handling is a great ides, for the lack of three-button mice in computer stores. I am just curious, what this change is telling us about the System architecture. 

W.


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