[Oberon] Texts

[Srinivas Nayak]

Loved these points...


On 04/30/2018 05:56 PM, Andreas Pirklbauer wrote:
> In the late 1980s we even had cheat sheets for the various interclick
> combinations pinned to the whiteboard in the Ceres computer room at ETH.
>
> That tells you everything!
>
> When even CS students needs such a cheat sheet (because they forget
> the various interclick combinations from one week to the next) or, worse,
> when even the basic task of scrolling through a text document presents
> a challenge for some, you know there is something is wrong with the UI ;-)


On 04/30/2018 04:26 PM, Paul Reed wrote:
> But I think Bernhard's point is a good one, the Oberon text format
> was always a barrier for someone who simply wanted to have a browse, e.g.
> at the code, without setting up a system.
>
> We tried to fix that in the FPGA-based revision in 2013: all the code for
> the software and the hardware is in ASCII text format on Prof. Wirth's
> home page at https://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ and mirrored/zipped
> at http://projectoberon.com.
>
> Ironically, Bernhard's observation that it was easier to ask someone than
> sit down with the documentation, is exactly the criticism in chapter 1 of
> Project Oberon, of the systems Wirth was using while on sabbatical in
> California.


On 04/30/2018 01:26 PM, Treutwein Bernhard wrote:
> may be it was personal communication with me, I personally think that it
> was the combination of an unusual user interface and the problem that
> the documentation was mainly available in Oberon Text format. It means
> that you have to master the user interface to have access to the docu, which
> explains you how to use it. It was not a problem, when you could ask your
> collegue sitting beside you in the computer lab, but it is a problem if you
> want to do it by your own ...


On 04/29/2018 03:09 AM, peter at easthope.ca wrote:
> In the last year or two someone wrote to the effect: one of the
> reasons Oberon never caught widespread attention and use is the Text
> rather than simple ASCII text.  [I've searched the archives and not
> found the statement.  Might have been a personal message.  Anyone
> remember?]