Celestin Apprentice 2/Apprentice-Release2.iso/Information/Languages/Oberon/Oberon-FAQ⁄system

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From: [e-mail] (Mike Gallo)
Subject: Comp.lang.oberon FAQ (monthly) 3/3
Expires: Tue, 11 Oct 1994 00:00:00 GMT
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Date: Mon, 12 Sep 1994 05:34:31 GMT
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Summary: This posting contains a list of Frequently Asked Questions (and their answers) about Oberon.  It should be read before posting to the Comp.lang.oberon newsgroup.
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Archive-name: Oberon-FAQ/system

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Many FAQ lists, including this one, are available by anonymous ftp from
rtfm.mit.edu in the /pub/usenet/news.answers directory.

Although I have aimed for accuracy, there is no guarantee that the
information in this document is error-free.  Neither the FAQ maintainer nor
anyone else associated with this document assume any liability for the
content or use of this document. If you find any errors, please report them
to the address below.

Thanks to all who have contributed!  Further additions, corrections, and
suggestions are welcome.

[e-mail]

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Comp.lang.oberon Frequently Asked Questions: The Operating System


Copyright 1994 Michael Gallo
(c) 1994 Michael Gallo


This is one of three documents that attempt to answer somefrequently asked
questions (FAQs) about Oberon.  This text concerns the Oberon system, while
the other two are about general topics and about Oberon the programming
language.


THE OBERON SYSTEM

>From "The Oberon Guide"
    For the present, we focus on the system Oberon, beginning with a brief
overview of its design principles. The underlying dynamic model is extremely
simple. There exists a single process acting as a common carrier of multiple
tasks. This process repetitively interprets commands, which are the official
entities of execution in Oberon. Commands are atomic actions operating on the
global state of the system. Unlike customary interactive programs, they
rigorously avoid direct dialogs with the system user.

Besides "single-process multitasking" and execution of commands in lieu of
programs, the Oberon System also features automatic garbage collection,
dynamic loading and unloading of memory resident modules, text as a built-in
abstract data type, tools for editing text and graphics, and program
development tools.

>From "Oberon: A Glimpse at the Future"
    The result is a system that provides efficiency and reliability rather than
offering inflated size, which dramatically increases the probability of bugs
and flaws.
    What is most astonishing about Oberon is its smallness. The core operating
system including the Oberon compiler occupies only 131 KB, which is smaller
than most [Microsoft(tm)] Windows utilities.


OBERON SYSTEM 3 and GADGETS

>From "Oberon System 3 - A Realm of Persistent Objects"
    We soon decided to realize our ideas by developing System3, an evolutionary
version of the original Oberon system. From our vision and from examples like
the one in Figure 1 it followed immediately that System 3 needs to be settled
one important step beyond the ordinary state of object-oriented programming
because it needs to be able to manage hundreds or even thousands of
persistent objects and components that can appear in extensive variety,
including at least character patterns, formulae, all kinds of figures,
pictures, gadgets and widgets. What was obviously needed is a central object
management and some concept like object library.

>From "The GADGETS User Interface Management System"
    The GADGETS user interface management system (UIMS) is a graphical user
interface to the Oberon system. Although it is based on the representation
model of windowing user interfaces such as X Windows and Presentation
Manager, GADGETS is a conceptual departure from the conventional graphical
user interface (GUI). Several features such as the separation of application
code and user interface, the interactive modification of user interfaces
while applications are executing, the automatic generation of default user
interfaces for applications, and the simplification of user interface
programming have been incorporated into GADGETS.  The result is smaller,
easier to build application programs with a high level of integration between
each other and the Oberon system.  The GADGETS UIMS is extensible and
provides a prototyping environment for alternative man-machine interaction
styles.  The high level of integration of GADGETS with the Oberon system
makes the addition of graphical user interfaces to existing Oberon
applications a relatively easy task.

Regarding the Leda document preparation system, [e-mail] (Erich
Oswald) wrote on 15 Aug 1994:
    There's nothing more to the demo version of Leda than what you get with
System 3 release 1.5.  Since we've given the sources away to A+L for further
development, we're not investing time in Leda any more (except maybe for bug
fixes).
    The full version of Leda can be ordered from: A+L AG, Daederiz 61, CH-2540
Grenchen, Fax [phone]


DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF OBERON

"Is Oberon System version X compatible with version Y?"

According to [e-mail] (Dr. Josef Templ),
    The Oberon ancestry is as follows: Oberon = V1 ( V2  V4 | System3 )
    The main difference between V1 and V2 is the introduction of an extensible
text model and the text editor Write.  The main difference between V2 and V4
is the unification of the two text editors Edit and Write.  In order to avoid
confusion with System3, the direct successor of V2 is not named V3 but V4.
The main difference between V2 and System3 is that System3 introduced (a year
later) a more general object model (not restricted to text elements) and the
notion of persistent object libraries.  Many programs port between the
different versions without any changes.  Some programs need simple textual
substitutions, and only very few need a considerable amount of re-engineering
(e.g. Write, Script).

"What version of the Oberon language is implemented in Oberon System Z?"

On 20 May 1994, [e-mail] (Dr. Josef Templ) wrote:
    All Oberon system versions are implemented with the (pure) Oberon message
records and handlers, not with Oberon-2 methods.  This is because the viewer
system, where messages are mainly used, need utmost flexibility and
extensibility.  Oberon-2 methods trade flexibility for speed.  Most compilers
distributed with those systems, however, support the Oberon-2 extensions, in
particular the Windows version, all the Unix versions, and hopefully in the
near future the Mac version.


ETHOS

(* Can someone pass along a description of ETHOS?  Thanks! *)


HERMES

>From "Adding Concurrency to the Oberon System"
    Concurrency was not supported in the original Oberon system. We have argued
that, although the Oberon experience has demonstrated that concurrency is not
needed to support interactive applications in a system with a multiple window
user interface, concurrency is nonetheless desirable in a single user system.
We have demonstrated that it can be introduced without a significant increase
in size or complexity by developing the Concurrent Oberon system. Since all
interfaces remained the same or were extended, the semantics of the Oberon
loop were preserved. Concurrent Oberon is completely compatible with the
standard system [version 4] and all applications run without change.


ULM OBERON SYSTEM

[e-mail] (Andreas Borchert) writes:
    In the past five years I've developed an own Oberon-System from scratch
which has only the language in common with the ETH Zurich Oberon Systems.
This Oberon System runs under UNIX and may be used like other traditional
compilers & libraries.  That means that you don't get a graphical user
environment or an operating system.
    The package contains all sources and is ready-to-run for Sun3 workstations
running SunOS 4.1 or 4.1.1 (probably it will run on 4.0.3 but surely not on
3.5 or earlier).  You'll find also a file named LANGDIFF in that directory
which summarizes the differences between our compiler and those of ETH
Zurich.
    Well, I know that Sun3s are fairly obsolete machines and so I'm now going to
port the whole stuff to SPARCs & Solaris 2.x. But this will not be available
before Spring 1995.


AVAILABILITY

The original project was launched and carried out by N. Wirth and J.
Gutknecht for the Ceres workstation.  Since then, ETH has ported versions of
the Oberon system to many other platforms.
    Markus Daetwyler ([e-mail]) and Marc Sperisen
([e-mail]) have ported Oberon to the Linux operating system.
    Currently, there is no port for OS/2.

ETH Oberon
[e-mail]:/Oberon
    DECstation: updated Apr 12 11:55
    HP700: updated Jul 20 08:17
    MacII: updated Apr 12 11:05
    RS6000: updated Jul 27 10:49
    SPARC: updated Apr  7 12:30
    SPARC/Solaris2: updated Nov 26  1993
    SiliconGraphics: updated Apr 12 16:14
    Windows: updated Sep  2 17:20

    System3/DOS: updated Aug 29 13:10
    System3/SPARC: updated Aug 17  1993

Linux-Oberon (Oberon ver. 4)
[e-mail]:/Oberon/Linux
    Linux: updated Jul 22 12:31

Ulm's Oberon System
[e-mail]:/pub/soft/oberon/ulm/sun3


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sources cited in the FAQ list that are not listed in the following
bibliography are electronically available in PostScript and/or Oberon text
formats from ETH Zrich.  They can be acquired by anonymous ftp from
ftp.ethz.ch:/Oberon/Docu.

"Designing a System from Scratch" by N. Wirth; Structured Programming; 10,1
(January 1989) 10-18.

"The Oberon System" by N. Wirth and J. Gutknecht; Software: updated Practice
and Experience; 19,9 (September 1989) 857-893.

The Oberon System: updated User Guide and Programmer's Manual by M. Reiser;
ACM Press; 1992.  This was reviewed in Computing Reviews articles 9109-0679,
9209-0651, 9209-0652, and 9207-0443.

Project Oberon: updated The Design of an Operating System and Compiler by N.
Wirth and J. Gutknecht; ACM Press 1992.

"Implementing an Operating System on Top of Another" by M. Franz; Software:
updated Practice and Experience; 23,6 (June 1993) 677-692.

"Adding Concurrency to the Oberon System" by Spiros Lalis and Beverly
Sanders;  Proceedings of the Conference on Programming Languages and System
Architectures. J. Gutknecht, ed. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 782.
1994.

Hermes: updated Supporting object oriented distributed programming in a
network of personal workstations by Spiros Lalis; Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology (ETH Zrich); 1994.

Insight ETHOS: updated On Object-Orientation on Operating Systems by Clemens
A. Szypeski; 1994.