[Oberon] Re: How I know you're all just playing

[easlab at absamail.co.za]

On Fri, 30 Jul 2004 20:57:03 +0200 (MEST), easlab at absamail.co.za
<easlab at absamail.co.za> wrote:
> > There are countless signs that there is no one else "working"
> > with n-o -- you are all just playing.

Jack Johnson wrote:-
> I hear your frustration, but I think making an accusation is not
> necessarily the best way to obtain help. I believe there is a ton of
> work being done with Native Oberon, just not necessarily the type of
> work you're doing.

The modern curse of political correctness is a drag on original though,
besides the provocation is made 'tounge in cheek'.

> I personally used to do a lot of image manipulation work with earlier
> versions of Oberon, before the days of PhotoShop.
> 
This is difficult to imagine because:
*  Wirth's main fight was against bloat;
*  which is consistent with the development of oberon: compact 
  and suitable for minimum hardware usage.
*  Images are THE example of 'needing big RAM and CPU' !
*  n-o can 'handle' images, and apparently visual stuff is interesting
    to experiment with and for student's projects.    Which is perhaps 
   my definition of 'playing' vs. WORK. i.e. WORK is stuff which you'd 
  prefer not to do.  And because you didn't choose to do it, you want 
  it to be completed soon. i.e. you want productivety.
* n-o would/should never pretend to 'approach' PhotoShop
     [which I've never (intended to) use] ?

> > So I want to search the relevant partition for file(s) containing
> > the strings :  "Store" & "width". This 'uncool' facility is  needed very
> > often for WORK.

> Is it a needed facility or a workflow issue?
> 
I don't understand your words.

> I think there's a perceived need, which has been met through the
> modules of others, but often the 'grep' people are searching for is a
> mental Unixism we bring as baggage to a new system.  I probably
> wouldn't have started with a text search in Oberon (though I also may
> have been unsuccessful).  Personally, I don't think there's anything
> uncool about text searching, but Oberon in general is not heavily
> file-oriented (more document-oriented?), so this lacking feature never
> suprised me.
> 
If a 'document' is a sequence if chars, readable by humans, and you've
collected thousands of them, how will n-o manage without an 
approach which is "file-oriented" ?

> I would suggest using the modules suggested earlier.  It sounds like
> it would be worth your time investment.

I manage. It's just that when I ask myself why doesn't any body else
need the facility of 'finding a set of files which have a set of strings',
the obvious answer is that they aren't doing 'real work'.
[  Imagine if this facility was removed for google !! ]

They are experimenting with images of coloured butterflies;
which is also OK.

== Chris Glur.

PS. while searching I always find previous interesting stuff.
This is apparently from:
Vasile
> And I have "yet another" suggestion.
> The freshly opened frames/documents should get the star marker set by
> default. Then we'll get a chance to "pack more commands" in one mouse
> click. (Using Configuration.DoCommands or ET.Do)

Yes this would be good and,
I think a mouse cord should be allocated to "set star marker".
Then one could [eliminate the key board &] have one's other hand
free to hold the coffee mug or something else.