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Project Oberon

projectoberon.com

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Re: Project Oberon

#31

I was going to try Oberon Native again (for the first time since 1996) after getting 9Front to work VMWare Fusion but couldn't find the installer images. I went to the following site: http://www.oberon.ethz.ch/downloads/index but the download links don't work. Does anyone know where it should be?

There's a note at ftp://ftp.inf.ethz.ch/pub/ETHOberon/readme.txt that says they've all been moved to ftp://ftp.ethoberon.ethz.ch/Oberon/

Re: Project Oberon

#32
Be sure to read "Project Oberon, The Design of an Operating System and Compiler" generously published online as a pdf: http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/ProjectOberon.pdf

There are emulators for Wirth's new cpu in JS, Java, C, and Python.

You can run it in the browser from here: http://schierlm.github.io/OberonEmulator/

(Shameless plug: https://github.com/PhoenixBureau/PythonOberon I wrote the Python emulator. It is sloooooooow, but it will boot and draw the screen (after a few minutes...)

Re: Project Oberon

#33
post #11

Oberon had so many good ideas. It's still worth studying. The problem in the 90's: provide executable content across the net for browsers. Java was supposed to provide the portable universal binary code you could load and execute everywhere, except that it did not have the necessary features and was too complicated. Then came Javascript but it was broken mess for long time and needs binary format. There was Juice bac…

The problem with Java binaries on the client, was that the Java applet didn't have direct access to the DOM bindings. Instead, the applet rendered it's own GUI via the plugin, and the look and behavior was inconsistent with the rest of the browser experience. A similar story with activex and flash. It's a mystery why it has taken so long to get to the point where we can target the browser with a statically-checked hi…

> It's a mystery why it has taken so long to get to the point where we can target the browser with a statically-checked higher-level language that has API access to the native browser event loop and dom components the same way that Javascript does it.

We are already there. Compile to JavaScript (or, heck, WebAssembly if that ever becomes feature-complete enough).

Re: Project Oberon

#34
post #31

I was going to try Oberon Native again (for the first time since 1996) after getting 9Front to work VMWare Fusion but couldn't find the installer images. I went to the following site: http://www.oberon.ethz.ch/downloads/index but the download links don't work. Does anyone know where it should be?

There's a note at ftp://ftp.inf.ethz.ch/pub/ETHOberon/readme.txt that says they've all been moved to ftp://ftp.ethoberon.ethz.ch/Oberon/

Thank you!

Re: Project Oberon

#35

Wow, this is excellent. The Oberon and Bluebottle OS materials have always been quite scattered, so someone putting them in a central index is quite convenient. For those unaware, Oberon's main qualities are the fact that it's a full operating system written in a garbage collected Pascal-like language (actually made by the same person who initially wrote Pascal) which uses said language's module system to provide reu…

Is there a screencast available of this “chainable” interface? I haven't seen anything quite like it since The Mother of All Demos in 1968.

Re: Project Oberon

#36

Wow, this is excellent. The Oberon and Bluebottle OS materials have always been quite scattered, so someone putting them in a central index is quite convenient. For those unaware, Oberon's main qualities are the fact that it's a full operating system written in a garbage collected Pascal-like language (actually made by the same person who initially wrote Pascal) which uses said language's module system to provide reu…

Is there a screencast available of this “chainable” interface? I haven't seen anything quite like it since The Mother of All Demos in 1968.

There's not much in the way at all of video demonstrations for it, but I did find this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTIJaKO0iqU

It might be of help.

Re: Project Oberon

#37

I was going to try Oberon Native again (for the first time since 1996) after getting 9Front to work VMWare Fusion but couldn't find the installer images. I went to the following site: http://www.oberon.ethz.ch/downloads/index but the download links don't work. Does anyone know where it should be?

http://www.qemu-advent-calendar.org/ has a qemu image for download if scrol down to day 12

Re: Project Oberon

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> actually made by the same person who initially wrote Pascal Niklaus Wirth, for those interested.

A reminder of how curious it is that PARC had all of Kay's, Smith's and Wirth's handiwork under their belt, all the rudiments of today's PC with mouse-controlled icon WYSIWYG GUIs back in the late 1970s, and never had the imagination to go anywhere viable with it (but give it away as dramatized in 'Pirates of Silicon Valley'). Same could be said of PalmPilot and the smart phone.

I wouldn't call it lack of imagination, and it was all quite viable. Senior management simply punted on listening to anyone.

Re: Project Oberon

#39

Wow, this is excellent. The Oberon and Bluebottle OS materials have always been quite scattered, so someone putting them in a central index is quite convenient. For those unaware, Oberon's main qualities are the fact that it's a full operating system written in a garbage collected Pascal-like language (actually made by the same person who initially wrote Pascal) which uses said language's module system to provide reu…

> highly unconventional user interface that bridges the power of the CLI and the GUI together in this vaguely hypertext-like workspace where you can dynamically live program the UI itself through on-screen text that can serve as an entry point or continuation to perform all sorts of computations, things you'd normally write hacky scripts for. Closest analogue is Xerox's Cedar.

Sounds a lot like Smalltalk's print-it/do-it? I suppose the idea orginated with Oberon?

Re: Project Oberon

#40
post #6

Not accessible for me. Error 404 Not Found Not Found Guru Meditation: XID: 630373509 Does it work for you?

That's a somewhat self-inflicted wound. Your browser is not sending a user-agent, and the site fails to follow RFC2616 Section 14.43 (sending a UA is _optional_).
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