[Oberon] BlackBox Status: 15-Nov-2014

[Douglas G. Danforth]

BlackBox Status: 15-Nov-2014

I see that we have been remiss about keeping the BlackBox and Oberon 
communities informed about the status of BlackBox.

We have done a lot of work putting together a "tool chain" that 
automates the process of generating BlackBox releases.

The tool chain is running on a server in Switzerland hosted by EDIS.
We are also using GIT and REDMINE.

There are two Forums running on the server.
One is for the Community.
The other is for voting members of the Center.

I am the current Chair of the Center (until Jan 2015).
The chair serves for 6 months and then a new Chair is chosen.

There are currently 11 voting members of the Center.
If you wish to make decisions about technical issues concerning BlackBox 
then send me
and email, danforth at greenwoodfarm.com, and we will consider your request 
for joining
the center.

Oleg's concern about Russian language is being addressed.  We are 
extending Component Pascal
identifies to 16 bit Unicode which will support most of the world's 
languages including Cyrillic.

Helmut Zinn has done a masterful job at collecting together bugs 
reported by OberonCore and implementing them in his version of 
BlackBox.  We are in the process of verifying his code and weaving those 
changes into the next official release of BlackBox.

I hope this gives you a better sense of what is happening with regard to 
the support, development, and future of BlackBox/Component Pascal.

Best regards,
Doug Danforth