[Oberon] Oberon Companion was: Help in using an Oberon systems.

[Chris Burrows]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Treutwein Bernhard [mailto:Bernhard.Treutwein at Verwaltung.Uni-
> Muenchen.DE]
> Sent: Saturday, 15 December 2012 12:32 AM
> To: 'ETH Oberon and related systems'
> Subject: [Oberon] Oberon Companion was: Help in using an Oberon systems.
> 
> I fired up my old Native Oberon Alpha installation on an orphaned HP
> Vectra (Pentium 1/133). There is a Book.Tool, which I successfully opened
> with a middle mouse click on Desktops.OpenDoc Book.Tool (after typing
> Book.Tool after the Desktops.OpenDoc, which was in my Sytem.Tool.
> I really don't remember if/what I already configured differently from the
> installation default System.Tool). Book.Tool is an active hyperlinked
> text, which opens the different chapters by clicking on the corresponding
> titles.
> 
> I know this is awful for someone who is still downhill on the steep
> learning curve of the Oberon System.
> 

I didn't recall finding it hard when I first used Oberon in the early 1990's
so I also just went through a similar exercise myself to try to understand
why some people seem to have so much difficulty getting started. 

My conclusions as to why it was not a problem for me at the time are:

1. I bought the three ACM Press Oberon books (and read them!) BEFORE
attempting to use the system.

See Paul Reed's comments back in 2002:

http://lists.inf.ethz.ch/pipermail/oberon/2002/002285.html

Fortunately two of the three ACM books can now be downloaded for those who
are unable to access a printed version.

2. PC systems available in the 1990's were much less complex than those
available today. 

It would not surprise me if just the USB subsystem on this computer I am
using now is several orders of magnitude more complex than the entire Oberon
operating system. 

3. I installed either the native version or only hosted on top of a simple
system i.e. MS-DOS. This minimised the chance of a complex operating system
interfering with its operation!

Regards,
Chris

--
Chris Burrows
Astrobe: Oberon for Cortex-M3 (v4.3 Nov 2012)
http://www.cfbsoftware.com