Re. [Oberon] USB support & digital camera, mouse buttons

[cglur at onwe.co.za]

Peter Easthope wrote:
> Small digital cameras are becoming
> affordable and most include a USB
> cable.  USB technology is unfamiliar
> to me.  Can anyone mention whether 
> Oberon or Bluebottle can communicate
> with a camera thru USB.
> 
I have no knowledge of USB, except to guess that it is a standard
protocol like RS232, and therefore since n-o alpha supports Ubs,
it will handle a camera like anything else.
The Usb.Tool is big, and Watson.ShowDef Usb.Obj is more 'complicated'
than Watson.ShowDef V24.Obj  's output.

It seems that with Usb you can/must mess with interrupts ?
If so, it adds a nasty level of complication.
If not you can test/exercise it like the (non-mouse-used) ser-port.
Just put an extra mouse on the non-mouse-used ser-port and
write a few lines of code to initialise and read the ser-port and trace
it via Out.Hex.  I've got some code that I used to investigate a voice
modem if you need a hand up.   You shouldn't try writing video
drivers before doing simpler experiments.  Use successive refinement.
After you've done RS232 and UBS 'experiments' you will better
cope with a video driver.

***********************************
> I wonder whether the command 
> functionality of ML,ML can be turned
> off permanently.  The mouse configur
> -ation viewer in Oberon0 mentions 
> that F8 toggles this capability but
> it appears not to remain off in the 
> fully installed alpha 23.06.2002.  
> I don't see the question mentioned 
> in configuration strings.

CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS !?!	

The good news: it immediately removes a problem that I've repeatedly
  complained about.

The bad news: I can't expect to get simple answers from this mailing
  list, nor c.l.o.

Subconciously, I couldn't believe that the MS-aping modification
had been forced on us, with out an escape.  Although I kept 'yanking
the chain' I got no response - from you people.

Related to this matter: the F8 toggle also removes the icon in the
'Desktops.OpenDoc type' viewers, allowing more of the nameplate
to be viewable, but still the [Store] button is not accessible in the
user-track.  A [Grow] is needed and (as Peter Easthope=the only
other person acknowledges - as I remember ?) this causes a crash
for fetched *.htm(l) viewers.

Again I can't believe that the alpha design makes the [Store] button
inaccesable without a [Grow].  Has this also got a secret key ?

How would you feel to find out that you'd been driving for the
last 2 years with the hand break on !?

-- Chris Glur.