[Oberon] Re. Blackbox open source available

[John Drake]

--- Dan Parnete <dan.parnete at fastwebnet.it> wrote:

> John Drake wrote:
> 
> >Here's the reason.  Recently I've been doing a 
> >lot of work with V4 due to it's ODBC support.
> >  
> >
> John,
> 
>     There is ODBC support even for ETH Oberon. I'm
> using it with a 
> Sybase SQL Anywhere database and it works fine.

I should have been more specific.  ODBC was in 
Sys 3 for Windows version 2.3, but it's not in
version 2.5 or later (PlugIn Oberon and WinAOS).
While I still have the old version loaded on my
machine, I don't use it very often.  I tried
to port ODBC to version 2.5, but the code to
interface DLLs in System 3 has changed.  If
you've got ODBC working in version 2.5 I'd love
to see it!

>     Turning back to BlackBox, I don't really like
> it's old Windows 
> style. But the application framework (or component
> builder as they call 
> it) is very strong. I suppose ETH team will never
> invest time in that 
> direction. Looking back to the Gadgets, is evident
> that author didn't 
> intend it for data presentation interface. The lack
> of a combobox or of 
> any kind of dropdown listbox, or the mess of a grid,
> or of the TextField 
> right justify, witch make numbers difficult to read
> in column fashion, 
> are clear signs.

Well I should point out that there is a 
"SpreadSheet Gadget" which allows you to left, 
center and right justify the cells.  You can
find it here:

ftp://ftp.inf.ethz.ch/pub/ETHOberon/Contrib/Misc/

I'm not sure why ETH doesn't have this 
listed on the "contributions" HTML page as 
it's a very practical gadget.  Maybe that's 
just an oversight.

http://www.oberon.ethz.ch/software/

As for the author of the Gadgets system, I think
the author meant it as a starting point.  The
problem over the years has been two-fold.

1) Writing gadgets isn't a easy task.  Thus
"end user" programmers haven't filled in the
gaps.

2) The infrastructure for code sharing in the
Oberon community is abysmal.  (Case in point
the SpreadSheet gadget is "hidden" at the
ETH contribution site.  You're not going to
find it unless you know where to look, or
your simply browsing through the entire
ftp contribution hiearchy.  The same goes
for my own XMLRPC contribution).

For a good example of code sharing, check
out the REBOL and Euphoria communities.

http://www.rebol.com
http://www.rebol.org
http://www.rapideuphoria.com

>     I like BlueBottle look&feel. I like BlueBottle
> at all. Great ideas, 
> great job, compliments to all of them. But I can't
> use it. I'm not a 
> system developer, unfortunately, and writing
> software is not just a 
> hobby for me, unfortunately. So if we want a RAD, or
> Component Builder, 
> or Application Framework, or whatever you want to
> call it, we have to 
> build it out of the ETH team. An we must hope
> BlueBottle will be ported 
> on Linux, Mac and most of all ARM/Xscale.

I believe there is an ARM/Xscale port already.  See:

https://www.mail.inf.ethz.ch/archive/oberon/2004/001407.html

Yes, Linux and Mac ports are needed.  There was some
discussion on that here a while back.  (I'm currently
not using either Linux or Mac so I can't help on
that.)

>     Oberon community is not a normal open source
> one. There are no 
> parallel open projects, just private contributors.
> It gravitates around 
> ETH team, waiting at the window. Probably the most
> important step in 
> growing the spirit of this community is to purpose
> and open such a 
> project. And if the target will be an application
> framework plus a 
> database, I'll be on the list.
> 
> Dan Parnete

I agree.  It's more a case of "released source"
than "open source".  A research/student project
gets "released" and other people dink with it.
Our bug fixes don't get folded back into the
original release.  Students/falculty move away
and nobody's left maintaining/updating said
project.  (I realize I'm making a gross
generalization here.  Obviously some projects
like Native Oberon and BlueBottle get updated.)
Case in point, I mentioned I've been using
the Linz V4 ODBC package.  But I noticed a bug
in it such that you can't use variable names
that include digits.  (Really odd).  Ok, I can
fix this, even post it on a website, but what
happens when the next unsuspecting soul
downloads the original from Linz?  Same for
the RXA bug I mentioned here a while back.
How can we make sure the distributions that
new users will download gets fixed?

On the flipside the OOC (optimizing Oberon
Compiler) and the companion product Visual
Oberon are open source projects from the
ground up.

I appreciate the hard work done at ETH and
Linz.  I just wish there was someway to
make sure the non "accademically interesting"
work gets done.

Regards,

John M. Drake


		
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