[Oberon] Displays and fonts and RX

[cglur at onwe.co.za]

> >Since 07.02.01, System.Directory on Native Oberon supports 
> >additional flags.  This is currently only documented in
> >http://www.oberon.ethz.ch/native/WebAlpha.html, excerpt below:

OK. System.Directory  *.Tool\fd ~ gives what Charles want { use F1 };
except IMPORTANTLY it should be date ordered.  Reversed is best.
So, further refinements for the next version ?

Charles Angelich wrote:
> Not including documentation within Oberon installs seems to be
> a reocurring theme.

Well yes, that's life.  It's inevitable for documentation to lag with
non-commercial products.  Pity.

> I also added a dot within the ZERO char to assist in reading 
> Oberon source code when the capital "O" is being used along with 
> the "0" (zero) char.  Not pretty really but easier on the eyes IMO.

Then you're aware of the many existing fonts, and that you can choose
the size and boldness you want. Also easily design your own chars. with 
Desktops.OpenDoc FontEditor.Panel ~

Since you're interested in 'appearance' perhaps you can be our 
resident artist ?   Did you look at: FontEditor.Panel -> Shanghai.Scn.Fnt
eg.  chars 20Hex, "3", "4" ? Amazing stuff.  
Is your alpha 2001 FontEditor.Panel also 'eratic' when 'keying' ?
A 'senior' n-o user on c.l.o. tells me that my problems are imaginary.

> btw: What happened to the Syntax#.Scn.Fnt I find in W31.  I like 
> that font!

I don't know/use W31-oberon, but # is not a valid char for a filename.

> 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.

I (and apparently others) like the feel of Oberon10.Scn.Fnt .
When I get a table or an ascii-art-schematic which needs fixed-width
font, I just 'wipe-it' and 'dab' my Courier8.Scn.Fnt text-bit which
is on my personalTool/pallette.   Not easy for 2-button/dumbed-down use.

Paul Reed wrote:
> It strikes me that taking a system like Native Oberon
> and trying to make it usable on 640x480 is like trying
> to make a motorbike by sawing a car in half.

I wonder why I never felt the pain and deprivation ?

When I first intalled V2.3.2 I just selected the default (VGA) and was 
completely satisfied. Same for V 2.3.6.   And when I installed Linux based,
the virtual screen was bigger than the physical, so it slides around when
the cursor hits the edge - most annoying. I'm guessing X-setup would fix
that, but life is too short.  I found the extra area of the linux version
usefull for cramped jobs, like font editing with FontEditor.Panel .

When I started using alpha 2001, I couldn't understand how they would
design the Desktops.OpenDoc's store button to be inaccesable unless Grown
to full screen size ( which crashes .html fetched texts -- which nobody
would admit for 1 year !!).

I strongly beleive in 'information hiding', and considered experimenting
with different VDU settings as opening a can of worms, until Charle's
complaints drew my attention to the possibility.

The fact that the default Oberon10.Scn.Fnt  gives you about 79 chars in
the UserTrack with 640x480, also suggests it's OK.   What am I missing ?

ca> I don't quite understand your need to combine lines.

peter_easthope wrote:
> RX.Tool in Oberon does not mention any means of
> identifying the beginning of a line.  I thought
> of 'RX.SetSearch  c "Begin" {~c} c'.  Logically it 
> should work for any line except the first but fails 
> apparently because it spans two lines.
> 
> From my naive viewpoint, the scope for the 
> matching algorithm should be the entire text.
> Anyone with a thorough understanding of how 
> texts are represented in Oberon can probably read 
> the RX.Mod files and understand why the scope is 
> limited.  (A nice didactic exercise.)

Yes, not being able to work across line boundries is a serious limitation.
And also causes it to crash.
I wanted to make some 'translations' to help automate converting 
WordPerfect files (much legal stuff from Inet uses this).  And they seems
not to have CR and/or LF chars.  So RX.Tool is not usable.


-- Chris Glur.