5 ms·

Project Oberon Emulator in JavaScript and Java

39 points by cylinder714 11y ago

gcb0 11y ago
had never heard of this. and i do follow osnews cult. the UI reminds me of plan9
- kwhitefoot 11y ago
  Should be the other way about as Oberon came before Plan9.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    Is it documented that p9 took inspiration from Oberon ? even if it seems obvious.
    - jff 11y ago
      Yes, Oberon is referenced here: http://research.swtch.com/acme.pdf http://research.swtch.com/acme.pdf
- jff 11y ago
  Plan 9's Acme editor was influenced by Oberon, as I recall.
david-given 11y ago
For me, on Chrome Linux, typing into the editors is a bit problematic because pressing BACKSPACE navigates away from the emulator. There was a copy of Oberon for Linux bundled on my original Infomagic CD set back in the 90s. I played with it a bit, but without documentation there wasn't much I could do, and it was closed source and so doomed to die. To me, Oberon looks like the Wirth version of Kay's Smalltalk system, where they both developed an all-in-one GUI system, from scratch, with completely different philosophies. It be interesting to do a detailed comparison of how they differ and why...
- dirkt 11y ago
  There was a link to a paper giving a retrospective on Oberon on HN some days ago, and that made me want to play around with it. After trying an older now unsupoorted variant from the ETH site which segfaulted, I downloaded Oberon Linux Revival (http://oberon.wikidot.com/ http://oberon.wikidot.com/), and it worked for me. All files are kept in a single directory, and this includes the complete source (.Mod files), so you can browse these from Linux after dealing with the line endings (e.g. convert \r to \n using tr). There's no native Linux source, everything is written in Oberon. X11 is surprisingly accessed using the wire protocol directly. Actually, about half of the Oberon system must even be compiled first (using the "recipe" in OLR.Gadgets.Tool) before these programs can be used in Oberon. There's also documentation in form of a "book" (Desktops.OpenDoc Book.Tool) which explains the system on various levels, including the Oberon language. The font size turned out to be too small on my screen (because the bitmapped screen fonts where made for different hardware), and the fonts are hardlinked from the documents, so I shuffled the *.Scr.Fnt files about two sizes down and everything was readable. I also replaced Default.Pal with Light.Pal for better contrast. You can use the OWEIGHT and OHEIGHT environment variables to set the window size. All in all, the "TUI" (textual user interface) is really nice. There are indeed similarities with Smalltalk, Emacs, or the Plan 9 ACME system philosophy (which is probably not surprising, all of those take a "integrated modifiable system for coders" approach).
  - david-given 11y ago
    Hmm, that crashes for me --- SIGBUS shortly after trying to mmap .Xauthority? I wonder how much RAM it needs. Would this make a useful tiny operating system for homebrew computers, I wonder?
joshstrange 11y ago
Pressing backspace in the emulator navigates backwards (in page history) which makes this impossible to use/play with.
- kencausey 11y ago
  It seems to be fine in Firefox 40.0.2 on Windows. Edit: Although I find I cannot use the mouse pointer at the far right of the canvas, for example to click the boxes which I assume are "close pane".

39 points by cylinder714 11y ago

gcb0 11y ago

had never heard of this. and i do follow osnews cult. the UI reminds me of plan9

kwhitefoot 11y ago
Should be the other way about as Oberon came before Plan9.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  Is it documented that p9 took inspiration from Oberon ? even if it seems obvious.
  - jff 11y ago
    Yes, Oberon is referenced here: http://research.swtch.com/acme.pdf http://research.swtch.com/acme.pdf
jff 11y ago
Plan 9's Acme editor was influenced by Oberon, as I recall.

david-given 11y ago

For me, on Chrome Linux, typing into the editors is a bit problematic because pressing BACKSPACE navigates away from the emulator. There was a copy of Oberon for Linux bundled on my original Infomagic CD set back in the 90s. I played with it a bit, but without documentation there wasn't much I could do, and it was closed source and so doomed to die. To me, Oberon looks like the Wirth version of Kay's Smalltalk system, where they both developed an all-in-one GUI system, from scratch, with completely different philosophies. It be interesting to do a detailed comparison of how they differ and why...

dirkt 11y ago
There was a link to a paper giving a retrospective on Oberon on HN some days ago, and that made me want to play around with it. After trying an older now unsupoorted variant from the ETH site which segfaulted, I downloaded Oberon Linux Revival (http://oberon.wikidot.com/ http://oberon.wikidot.com/), and it worked for me. All files are kept in a single directory, and this includes the complete source (.Mod files), so you can browse these from Linux after dealing with the line endings (e.g. convert \r to \n using tr). There's no native Linux source, everything is written in Oberon. X11 is surprisingly accessed using the wire protocol directly. Actually, about half of the Oberon system must even be compiled first (using the "recipe" in OLR.Gadgets.Tool) before these programs can be used in Oberon. There's also documentation in form of a "book" (Desktops.OpenDoc Book.Tool) which explains the system on various levels, including the Oberon language. The font size turned out to be too small on my screen (because the bitmapped screen fonts where made for different hardware), and the fonts are hardlinked from the documents, so I shuffled the *.Scr.Fnt files about two sizes down and everything was readable. I also replaced Default.Pal with Light.Pal for better contrast. You can use the OWEIGHT and OHEIGHT environment variables to set the window size. All in all, the "TUI" (textual user interface) is really nice. There are indeed similarities with Smalltalk, Emacs, or the Plan 9 ACME system philosophy (which is probably not surprising, all of those take a "integrated modifiable system for coders" approach).
- david-given 11y ago
  Hmm, that crashes for me --- SIGBUS shortly after trying to mmap .Xauthority? I wonder how much RAM it needs. Would this make a useful tiny operating system for homebrew computers, I wonder?

joshstrange 11y ago

Pressing backspace in the emulator navigates backwards (in page history) which makes this impossible to use/play with.

kencausey 11y ago
It seems to be fine in Firefox 40.0.2 on Windows. Edit: Although I find I cannot use the mouse pointer at the far right of the canvas, for example to click the boxes which I assume are "close pane".