[Oberon] Nitikin book examples - namespaces

[Duke Normandin]

On Mon, 22 Nov 2010, Chris Burrows wrote:

> >-----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 no longer active but they can be retrieved via the Wayback Machine e.g. the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.

I gave up and settled on "Oberon for example" :D

-- 
Duke