Woo hoo! I can has moderator status! sr is 0b3r0n-133t!<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 10:00 AM, <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:oberon-request@lists.inf.ethz.ch">oberon-request@lists.inf.ethz.ch</a>></span> wrote:<br>
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Today's Topics:<br>
<br>
1. Re: Oberon Day 2011 Recordings (Jack Johnson) (Paul Reed)<br>
2. Re: A2 developers has (sic) no time to look into the forum<br>
(Yaroslav Romanchenko)<br>
<br>
<br>
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Message: 1<br>
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 13:53:33 +0100<br>
From: "Paul Reed" <<a href="mailto:paulreed@paddedcell.com">paulreed@paddedcell.com</a>><br>
Subject: Re: [Oberon] Oberon Day 2011 Recordings (Jack Johnson)<br>
To: <a href="mailto:oberon@lists.inf.ethz.ch">oberon@lists.inf.ethz.ch</a><br>
Message-ID:<br>
<<a href="mailto:97c28195e18bd72ee505dbac4909a7da.squirrel@webmail.gradwell.com">97c28195e18bd72ee505dbac4909a7da.squirrel@webmail.gradwell.com</a>><br>
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<br>
> 1. Re: Oberon Day 2011 Recordings (Jack Johnson)<br>
> I have a few questions about your part of the keynote.<br>
...<br>
> Did you do your UTF-8 integration from scratch or did you look at<br>
> other code for inspiration? Did it require extensive modification, or<br>
> mainly just to Texts? What is your end goal for UTF-8 integration, and<br>
> how do you see that ultimately affecting the simplicity of the system?<br>
<br>
I added UTF string handling as an experiment (with a view to using it in<br>
other projects), and tried various schemes, including UTF-16/UCS-2 and<br>
even UTF-32 before finally settling on UTF-8. I didn't find much code for<br>
inspiration, since most of what's available is in C ;-) but I was very<br>
definitely inspired by the story of the invention of UTF-8 and its<br>
integration into the Plan 9 from Bell Labs operating system.<br>
<br>
UTF-32 is the only implementation where there is a linear mapping between<br>
character length and byte length (UTF-16 has surrogate pairs, which breaks<br>
that), but it is impractical on small systems because of the memory<br>
footprint. UTF-8 performs well in practice, except for some Asian<br>
locales, in which case an alternative encoding would be sensible (and<br>
indeed advised by the Unicode documents).<br>
<br>
Re-implementing Texts using UTF-8 is a really nice exercise (Luca?) :),<br>
since the details of the Text system are so well explained in the book.<br>
Certainly you would have to decide whether Files.Read would read a byte or<br>
a UTF-8 char, and be careful about lengths and byte offsets. I had an<br>
attempt, but ran out of time and will have to return to it [insert apology<br>
to Fermat here]. For the Oberon System demo, it wasn't strictly necessary<br>
so it didn't get in (along with a lot of other things I need to go back<br>
and do properly).<br>
<br>
<br>
> Are you using or have you considered using Oberon-07? How might that<br>
> affect the rest of the original Oberon System code?<br>
<br>
Yes it's all Oberon-07, I'm sorry if that wasn't clear. The main changes<br>
were obvious: removal of SHORTINT, LOOP, and WITH, for example; and this<br>
doesn't really change the text of the book that much, which is the aim.<br>
<br>
<br>
> Have you had chats with Wirth or others about what they might have<br>
> done differently if they could do it all over again?<br>
<br>
:) I'm reminded that they asked Ken Thompson what he would change about<br>
Unix, if he had the chance to go back and do it again. His answer was<br>
that he would add an 'e' on the end of the 'creat' system call.<br>
<br>
I once asked Prof. Wirth, after a retrospective lecture on Pascal, Modula<br>
and Oberon, what he would do differently. He simply said he would have<br>
called them Pascal, Pascal-2, etc.<br>
<br>
> I noted the<br>
> discussion of Objects in Appendix A of Project Oberon and aside from<br>
> the Gadgets implementation it alludes to the idea that if the Objects<br>
> module had existed at the outset it might have further simplified the<br>
> original system.<br>
<br>
This is Prof. Gutknecht's view, yes. Especially since the changes would<br>
have been small, for the power it gives. But with power comes<br>
responsibility, something we're not much good at in software IMNSHO. As<br>
well as simplicity, and elegance, there should also be a clarity test.<br>
That's why the book stands out.<br>
<br>
<br>
> Did you consider resurrecting slim binaries, or does that add more<br>
> complexity than it removes?<br>
<br>
No, and yes. The slim binaries approach relies on the more complex OP2<br>
compiler, with its high-level intermediate representation. I have no IR,<br>
I basically just translate RISC instructions into x86 opcodes (if it's not<br>
a RISC module, eg if it's a device driver). This adds a few hundred lines<br>
at most to the compiler (for x86 and for ARM32 put together).<br>
<br>
<br>
> Are the FPGA-based systems available?<br>
Working on it. The compiler generates code which runs on the FPGA (as<br>
does the Oberon-0 compiler, more-or-less unchanged, from Compiler<br>
Construction). But more hardware needs to be implemented for the system<br>
to be self-hosting, which is the aim.<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
Paul<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
------------------------------<br>
<br>
Message: 2<br>
Date: Tue, 05 Jul 2011 18:16:13 +0400<br>
From: Yaroslav Romanchenko <<a href="mailto:tobject@bk.ru">tobject@bk.ru</a>><br>
Subject: Re: [Oberon] A2 developers has (sic) no time to look into the<br>
forum<br>
To: ETH Oberon and related systems <<a href="mailto:oberon@lists.inf.ethz.ch">oberon@lists.inf.ethz.ch</a>><br>
Message-ID: <<a href="mailto:E1Qe6Q9-0000eW-00.tobject-bk-ru@f193.mail.ru">E1Qe6Q9-0000eW-00.tobject-bk-ru@f193.mail.ru</a>><br>
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<br>
<br>
Sounds like a deal! You are now Global Moderator <a href="http://ofwww.ocp.inf.ethz.ch/forum" target="_blank">ofwww.ocp.inf.ethz.ch/forum</a>.<br>
Congratulations to Soren!<br>
<br>
---<br>
Cheers, SAGE<br>
<a href="http://sage.com.ua/" target="_blank">http://sage.com.ua/</a><br>
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End of Oberon Digest, Vol 90, Issue 5<br>
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