[Oberon] Re. Install your own OS

[easlab at absamail.co.za]

--- easlab at absamail.co.za wrote:

> > Unfortunately maintenace is very uninspiring.
> > > 
> > > Here's a sample triviality:
> > >   SmartDir.Directory SYS:*pop*  \r2
> > > doesn't find that important file which I was

John Drake wrote:
> :  SmartDir.Directory SYS:pop*  \r2
> : finds:
> : pop.absamail.co.za 
> : pop.absamail.co.za.Bak 
> 
> What were you expecting it to find?

Yes but as written:

SmartDir.Directory SYS:*pop*  \r2 == dud
System.Directory SYS:*pop* == OK

> > I use it several times a day.
> > Perhaps because I've got a "recentcy view" of
> > ontology ?
> > Norton's commander & mc are for me also killer-aps,
> > and I always want to have one of the 'file-lists'
> > arranged
> > in reverse 'age' sequence. 
> > Turbo Pascal's IDE also acknowledged this principle
> > [has
> > any body formalised it yet ?] by arranging the
> > file-set,
> > to pick from, as a stack. 
> > I raised this point previously and P. Muller
> > suggested
> > using System.Directory with 'flags' plus the
> > existing
> > sort facility, but unfortunately NO writes  'date' 
> > as: day.month.year, so its not ordered, as it would
> > be if it was: year.month.day .
> 
> I've got a lot of problems with the way Oberon
> System 3 handles dates.  For instance it insists
> on Monday being the first day of the week, whereas
> in the U.S. that is Sunday.  Oberon V4's date
> module is more flexible.  It's easy to change 
> date formats for instance.  Unfortunately for
> System 3 you can't fix the dates module easily
> because it's imported by Strings which is imported
> into the kernel.  That's a BAD design in my 
> opinion.  String is a more basic type than date.  
> So date-to-string, string-to-date converstion
> should be handled in module Dates and NOT
> module Strings.  
> 
> Ok.  Enough of my soapboxing.  There is a way
> to change the Date output format in System 3,
> it's just unecessarily tedious.  In "Oberon.Text"
> there is an option "DateFormat= DD.MM.YYYY".
> You can change this to "DateFormat = YYYY.MM.DD".
> The problem with this is that now ALL of your
> dates will be shown this way!  The Oberon V4
> dates module takes the more sensible step
> of taking a date format string for the date
> to string conversion procedure.  
 
There's no "DateFormat= DD.MM.YYYY" in my " Oberon.Text ".
Perhaps in your Win version ?
If it was in my version I could add another [of the several 
already] Oberon.TextYMD files, with the corresponding 
command: ET.Do YY.MM.DD which calls the 1-linescript:
    System.CopyFiles  Oberon.TextYMD  => Oberon.Text ~
This method is usefull for 'swithing facilities' ie. :
removing your URL when posting to newsgroups,
or switching to another ISP dial-number ...etc.

Of course this all introduces complexity/mess,
which is what I've been ranting against.

Since I've just had a VERY strong example of the need to
separate [file space] the most recent files, I can't understand 
how others don't seem to need it too:
in part of a backup process, I've copied 16 partitons [one
per 'topic'] between 3 IDEs on 2 boxes/MOBOs, and tested
Peter's 'ET-editor default patch'.

Then the ISP would not connect !!

With the thousands of files involved, it's essential to be able to:
1. separate data-files from sys-files eg. via partitions,
2. QUICKLY see ONLY files of the last [few] day[s].

== Chris Glur.