[Oberon] Native oberon usage outside of G7 societies.

[cglur at onwe.co.za]

Yuri M. Skripkah wrote:
> cocz> Especially since it's so easy to make any character fonts, I imagine
> cocz> that for any left to right script (arabic is right to left), a few scrap
> cocz> PCs to some bright, keen Indian kids for experimenting with n-o 
> cocz> could escalate like a forrest fire.
> I imagine what reimplementation of CHAR, scanner, and all code from
> ASCII to Unicode (16 or 32?) is not so easy. I can't do this - not enough
> knowledges, but anybody, who has ability, may be not has enough
> lifetime?

I'm talking about computers which are used by humans.
The humans are the 'enviroment' within which the combined 'system'
of computer-human operate.
Similarly the humans operate within the enviroment of their society.
The 'system' (entity and it's enviroment) cannot be understood
without acknowledging the enviroment part. 

When you draw a character with pencil on paper, another person
can recognise and use it.  The 'cost' (mostly human interaction) for
getting a new (non latin) script up and usable is minimum, with n-o.

With the existing n-o system a ten year old child can draw characters
of the script that he knows, and his co-scholars can recognise and use
them.   This has to do with psychology and art; NOT bitmaps, fonts
and mathematics.  If the next child thinks he can make the charater(s)
look better, he can change it.   Successive refinement, AND minimum
'cost' to get started !

If you have native native oberon (which seems to be NOT the case,
since we are 'reading from different pages') try:
  1. Desktops.OpenDoc FontEditor.Panel
  2.  Paste Shanghai.Scn.Fnt  in the TextField above the [Load] button
  3.  MM the [Load] button
  4. MM the "20" button on the panel
and see the bit mapped bird.  Children would love to play with this.
...............

> I have some talk with teachers in my city, they say: Oberon?
> Oh,Pascal It's good,very good. But we study linux and really work
> with windows - it's cheap ( thefted or donated-sic! ) and has really Cyrillic.
> What I can say about?  ...

Well of course !
If you could think in terms of heirarchies of SYSTEMS, you would realise
that the cost of the hardware is an essential part of the SYSTEM.

I have been in ex-soviet, and we all know the per capita GDP.
A few old/scrap PCs with n-o could work wonders.   As for every thing
in ex-soviet societies, the problem is psycho-socio, not technical.

Soviet method is centralised and 'top down'.
N-o usage will spread 'bottom up' like a forest fire or virus: two kids
like it and tell their friend ...

How do you expect the Ukrainian teachers to know what n-o can do
with free hardware ?   Even ghost would not accept the need for a
3 button mouse.  Many things in life need to be experienced
before they can be appreciated.

Unfortunately, while I'm talking, the scrap PCs are becoming no longer
available and much of n-o's small size is becoming irrelevant.

-- Chris Glur.