[Oberon] counting chars when using a proportional font

[Thomas Frey]

> >Charles Angelich <cangelich at famvid.com> wrote:
> >> 640x480 video display driver:
> >> System track = 36 Oberon10.Scn.Fnt chars
> >> User track   = 63 Oberon10.Scn.Fnt chars
> >
> >Since Oberon10 is a proportional font it makes no sense to
> >count the number of characters.  Or did you mean Courier10?
> 
> It would've "made sense" to have counted these characters 
> before defining the "small display" within Oberon code to be 
> unable to display the entire menu bar within the system track.
Counting of characters never makes sense for proportional fonts.
 
> It would've made sense to count these characters before allowing
> documentation, tutorials, .Tool files, to all be formatted beyond 
> the maximum space(s) available to those using the "small"
> display as defined within Oberon source code.
It can not be the goal to optimize the system for the lowest common 
denominator. (As well as it can not be the goal to optimize for 
the too expensive ultra modern hardware). So 1024x768 is not a
bad choice.

> I have found references to smaller displays within existing Oberon
> modules the problem is that after coding this no one "counted the
> available character space" and ignored the disappearing text off
> the right side of the 640x480 screen display.
> 
> Columnar alignment of fields is basic to a user interface and you
> tell me it makes no sense? I would say ignoring this makes no sense.
Columnar alignement achieved by counting non-proportional characters
ended (for modern systems) with the introduction of graphical user 
interfaces in 1985 or so. (Some DOS and terminal emulator applications 
are still in use today)

> The OS is not ONLY about exercising the hardware.  It is also about
> communication with the USER.
Therefore the original Ceres workstation had a 1024x800 display 
resolution
 
> If using a proportional font as the default for Native Oberon is
> the crutch to justify the inability to do clean standard displays
> then I would submit that a default proportional font was a mistake.
The proportional font is more readable and has a nicer appearance.
--> The OS ins not ONLY about exercising the hardware. It is also 
about communication with the USER.
 
> Options would be:
> 
> #1: auto-detect display sizes and word-wrap the display to fit the
> viewer being used.
> #2: auto-dectect display sizes and incr or decr the font size to
> fit the viewer being used.
> #3: ignore this and continue development of BlueBottle for Pentium
> users at the bleeding edge of technology.

1024x800 was bleeding edge in 1985. Todays bleeding edge display 
resolution is somewhere above 2500x2000 for workstations. 
Btw. Pentium was new, 9 years ago and can not reasonably be called 
bleeding edge of technology. The original Pentium is nowadays older 
than the 8088 was, when the 386 was introduced. Not to mention the
more than linear development of processor speed and system memory.

--Thomas