[Oberon] Re. Platform independent IDE? & spurious formats

[Chris Glur]

-Doug Danforth wrote:
> On how many different operating systems does N-O work?
> (I use the words "operating systems" because I am not really
> interested in the hardware and strongly wish to avoid any
> bit string manipulation to configure the system to a specific
> hardware platform.  Those settings should be "preset" for
> each platform/operating system mix that is supported)

Well I've got it on:
1. native = plain PC, where the file-topics are partitioned into HD
     'partitions'; each HD-partitions having a flat [non-heirarchial dir].
2. DOS-based, where the Obn-files are embedded in a big DOS-file;
3. Linux-based, where the Obn-files are individually [by default in
the dir, from where you started] as linux files and each edit creates
a <fileName>.Bak; but you can, with some inconvenience access
other directories of the Linux system.
4. then I've heard about a/the Win installation;
There might be others.
This is a classical question for the 1st level FAQ.

Since Linux-Aos/BB is now listed for Linux, Solaris and MacOSX,
then perhaps N-O is too ?

BTW for anyone running Linux-ETH-oberon, you *must* use [probably 
several processes of] 'mc' [the clone/improvement of the original
brilliant DOS-Norton-Commander].  It's visual, like N-O.
Not Walt Disney [cartoon based] like Win, but like a spreadsheet, you
'see and select, what you want to process', instead of imagining the
machines state and writing appropriate notes to the little man in
the box.

Here's an example of 'writing a note..' instead of 'see and do'
which is the limit of my piano-playing-showing-off and only
possible because I gave the file a one-letter-mnemonic
name: 'o'.

I want to see [to copy for pasting] that path mentioned in file
 /root/o
The proper way, like with ETH-oberon [get the fileName,
open the file and 'see' to copy] is to use mc: 1. go to dir;
2. open/view-file [by single click or <F3>].
But piano-playing-note-writing [comand line input]can do:
  'cat /root/o'
which is OK if you are prepared to burden your memory with 
the file's name. And lucky the output is only 2 lines, so it won't 
scroll off the screen and be difficult to locate.

What I'm emphasising is that without mc [which integrates
well with ETH-Oberon] Linux-ETHoberon and perhaps
Linux-Aos/BB isn't so convenient.
-----------

> Academia vs Business
> With all of the lovely work going on at ETHZ it continually
> amazes me that there are not more spin-offs to commercialize
> that work.
> 
> Oberon Microsystems was one such effort.  I don't want to
> characterize it as to a success or failure but simply say that
> what they produced is very acceptable from the commercial
> side.  If they had completed their goal of platform independence,
> I believe, they would have been more successful.  One does not
> have to dominate a market in order to be a success.
> 
> So why isn't Bluebottle supported as a shrink wrapped product
> for the major platforms?
-----------

I guess it's not about technology or rational economic decisions.
Like the current global [now correcting] economic behaviour: 
everybody did it because every body else did it.

Although ETH-Oberon remains irrelevant in the PC market,
it may feature in the growing portable/less-power-consumption
market ?
-----------
Treutwein Bernhard wrote:
> Re 1: ETHZ is struggling for industry cooperation, see
> 	"http://www.oberon-industry.ethz.ch/" and
> 	http://www.oberon.ethz.ch/partnerships/index

That sounded interesting, but my 'proper-browser' is
holding text  with diagrams. So I tried with my 
Lixux-ETH-oberon browser [images disabled by default]
and evaluate both pages to be poor, based on the ratio 
of images & java-script to valuable text info.

By contract, MIT's brilliant:
 "http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-10.html"
loads perfectly under Lixux-ETH-oberon, and after I've confirmed
that the contents is more than "Life is better with Coke", I d/l the
diagrams.  And then I multicolour the text while studying it.  And
end up with a personally customised tutorial, where I can 
cutNpaste the text and even the diagrams to other files.

So IMO the 2 http://www.oberon* fail to distinguish themselves
from the multitude of art-school-kiddie derived 'pages', which
I would normally just skip-over.

OTOH, to mention something astounding of ETH-Oberon which 
seems not to be well known: the Scheme and Vinci system is a 
complete Scheme system [which I've only done preliminary 
tests on so far] on top of which is abstracted a remarkable
VHL graphics rendering application.  Together they give a
stunning example of building levels of abstraction.
Scheme is built on top of Oberon and Vinci is built on Scheme.

Has this been carried over to BB/Aos ?

Perhaps Layla is similar to Vinci ?

== Chris Glur.