[Oberon] Oberon for a C++ user.

[Skulski, Wojciech]

Lars:

> I'm not a component pascal blackbox expert and I could be mistaken, but so
> far from reading the help, for example finding mouse x y coords after a
> click, seems to require message handling code.

I recommend to look at the actual example. The gory detail becomes apparent when actually doing some mouse handling and the screen graphics. Dig into it. You will learn how it is done. I recommend looking at the graphics package Gr which I wrote about fifteen years ago and I still use it occasionally. 

http://www.zinnamturm.eu/downloadsDH.htm --> scroll down to Gr, download and install the package, read the documentation, exercise the menu items (without even understanding what kind of scientific problem it is addressing), and finally open the code and read through it. 

Gr will show you quite a few nontrivial techniques. IMHO it is an ideal package to study because it is relatively small, but it is not a demo. It is a serious piece of software for doing serious work. It has been used by students, engineers, and by myself.

At the same time Gr is sufficiently non-ideal to demonstrate a somewhat messy design of the real life software motivated by real life needs.

As a final remark, I do believe that for its purpose (waveform display) Gr is more robust, faster, and better suited than a lot of widespread mainline graphics software accompanied by thick books. Till recently I thought that Gr was a closed chapter. I am now changing this assessment. Comparing some popular graphics software with Gr I am coming to the conclusion that within its application area Gr is better suitable despite being frozen for some fifteen years.

The only concern that I have about Gr (or any other BB software) is lack of Linux port. But I have heard that Wine works, though I never used Wine myself.

Thank you,
Wojtek