[Oberon] Nitikin book examples - namespaces

[Chris Burrows]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Duke Normandin [mailto:dukeofperl at ml1.net] 
>Sent: Sunday, 21 November 2010 12:40 AM
>To: Oberon List
>Subject: [Oberon] Nitikin book examples
>
>Hello Oberon World!
>
>Working my way through Nitikin's book. A couple of questions 
>for those of you who have, or have read his book:
>
>1. What the heck is the significance of his Module/Procedure 
>naming convention - he uses OfeWhatever. What's the "Ofe" 
>stand for? Just curious.
>

My guess is that he was influenced by the convention used in Oberon
microsystem's BlackBox framework (formerly known as Oberon/F) where the
first part of a module name (i.e. all characters up to, but not including,
the second capital letter) is used as a "namespace". This is to minimise the
possibility of name clashes between modules that have been independently
developed. 

As for the meaning of Ofe, maybe it stood for "Oberon first examples"? I
can't see any better ideas here:

http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/OFE   

;-)

In BlackBox the namespace goes beyond a convention as it has practical
significance. Oberon microsystems used to maintain a registry of such names
to allow you to avoid using a namespace that was already in use.  

The relevant webpages with the registry and how it is used in BlackBox are
no longer active but they can be retrieved via the Wayback Machine e.g. the
"BlackBox Subsystems" webpage as it looked back in 2003:

http://web.archive.org/web/20030419095632/www.oberon.ch/resources/blackbox/s
ubsystems.html

However, I do not see "Ofe" listed.

Regards,
Chris Burrows
CFB Software
Astrobe v3.2: ARM Oberon-07 Development System
http://www.astrobe.com