[Oberon] Portability.

[Treutwein Bernhard]

>Many of the modules in S3 and A2 had the comment (** portable *)
>following the module name.  The comment has been removed from some
>more recent sources. Examples:

a late answer: afaik, that label was used to mark modules, where the OMI/Slim Binary 
code was portable across platforms.

If you do not know what OMI/slim binaries were: Michael Franz created this 
portable object file format when Apple made the move from 68K to PowerPC 
and thus created so called "fat binaries" containing machine code for both 
types of CPU. OMI/slim binaries are a representation of the program as
an adaptive compressed abstract syntax tree combined with a compiling 
loader. This is very similar to the Graal & Truffle project going on currently 
around Java platform, which is interestingly promoted in Linz by a group 
around Hans-Peter Mössenböck. You can find more information at 
http://www.ssw.uni-linz.ac.at/Research/Projects/JVM/Truffle.html.
I found OMI/slim binaries fascinating, but apparently Michael Franz did 
not document the adaptive compression and thus it was very difficult (or 
almost impossible) to extend it with new constructs (see note just before 
the list of language reports on the old ETH pages archived here: http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/compiler/index.html#report). 

If somebody knows more, or knows it better, please correct me.
--
  Bernhard