5 ms·

Oberon Workstation on the Mac App Store

127 points by MaysonL 11y ago

pjmlp 11y ago
Nice idea to bring Oberon back to life. Although I am a little sad to see this is based on the Original Oberon, and not on System 3 with its Gadgets framework: http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/native/WebScreen.html http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/native/WebScreen.html http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/eve/Leonardo.png http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/eve/Leonardo.png http://info.tuwien.ac.at/hsk/sefi/papers/schaufel.htm http://info.tuwien.ac.at/hsk/sefi/papers/schaufel.htm http://www.statlab.uni-heidelberg.de/projects/voyager/ http://www.statlab.uni-heidelberg.de/projects/voyager/
- BruceM 11y ago
  I've occasionally wanted to run System3 again. I wonder what it would take (for OS X)...
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    You can run it as part of AoS, as System 3 Kernel module is remapped to Active Oberon Kernel module. http://www.ocp.inf.ethz.ch/wiki/Documentation/Front http://www.ocp.inf.ethz.ch/wiki/Documentation/Front But Active Oberon fails to run on modern hardware, the best you can do is a VM, and even then builds tend to be scarce. http://www.ocp.inf.ethz.ch/forum/index.php/topic,692.0.html http://www.ocp.inf.ethz.ch/forum/index.php/topic,692.0.html
willvarfar 11y ago
Amazing what fits in 2.8MB :D I recall playing with it in the late 90s (it was old then) and being blown away by how much 'better' than Windows NT (which I was using at the time) it was. I've always liked Pascal (being from the Turbo Pascal European Coverdisk Generation). I'm going to have to download this and give it a spin :)
- pjmlp 11y ago
  The worst part is that we suffered a 20 year VM detour, and only now are returned to having AOT compilation to native code in safe languages. At least in what concerns mainstream languages. After ETHZ research, only Singularity and Midori seem to have tried the same approach.
  - insulanian 11y ago
    > The worst part is that we suffered a 20 year VM detour, and only now are returned to having AOT compilation to native code in safe languages. Which languages are you referring to?
    - pjmlp 11y ago
      20 years ago the Oberon variants, Modula-2, Modula-3, Ada, Delphi, Eiffel, Visual Basic 6 were all AOT compiling to native code with their canonical toolchains. Than Java and .NET became widespread, and the return to VM craziness started, like the early days of P-Code VMs. Now 20 years later Microsoft finally supports .NET Native (ngen was only meant for faster startups) and has AOT in mobile phones since version 8. Google replaced Dalvik with ART and Oracle is finally following the commercial JDKs in AOT support for Java 10+. Then we have the new kids on the block, Swift, Go, Rust, D, Nim, OCaml, Haskell, ATS.
nickpsecurity 11y ago
I'd like to see such apps let users do for Oberon Workstation what this person did for Windows 3.1: http://www.networkworld.com/article/2223927/opensource-subnet/why-this-linux-user-is-now-using-windows-3-1.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2223927/opensource-subne... You could have a lightweight, safe platform you do everything in that's sync'd to various devices. A bit of popularity might get more work into it. Remember, though, that A2 Bluebottle is the most recent Oberon system probably with the most features. I could be wrong on last part. It worked fine (and fast!) in VirtualBox.
zeeshanm 11y ago
I downloaded but I am lost. Where do I exec the help command? http://imgur.com/TccpbXS http://imgur.com/TccpbXS
- i_don_t_know 11y ago
  I haven't downloaded it yet, so I don't know. Have you tried - the normal Help in the Apple menu bar? - typing: System.OpenFile Help.Text and "middle-clicking" on System.OpenFile? - typing: System.Help and "middle-clicking" on System.Help? I don't know how familiar you are with the Oberon system. The machines had a three-button mouse and you executed commands by middle-clicking. On the Mac that's usually emulated by ctrl+left-click or option+left-click or command+left-click. A command is: ModuleName.ProcedureName written anywhere, for example, the menu bars are really just normal text boxes that can be edited like any other text box.
- jhbadger 11y ago
  For those who are interested in using the system, get a copy (either physically from a library or search for one of the PDFs scattered around the net) for Martin Reiser's 1991 book "The Oberon System: User Guide and Programmer's Manual". It describes a version of the system which is quite similar.
SixSigma 11y ago
Plan9's Acme text editor [1] was based on ideas from Oberon. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_%28text_editor%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_%28text_editor%29 That's my screenshot :) Acme is available for Unix likes via plan9port [2] and for Windows via Acme-sac [3] (Inferno running with Acme instead of the window manager) [2] https://swtch.com/plan9port/ https://swtch.com/plan9port/ but also see your distro's package system, it might be in there already [3] https://code.google.com/p/acme-sac/ https://code.google.com/p/acme-sac/
jkleiser 11y ago
What a great surprise! I look forward to re-learn this system and language. I'm glad Oberon isn't dead. I just discovered this http://oberon.vishap.am http://oberon.vishap.am and this https://github.com/BlackBoxCenter/blackbox https://github.com/BlackBoxCenter/blackbox.
- jcbeard 11y ago
  This is awesome, I was just digging through some Oberon literature the other day (well, two weeks ago). Love it!

127 points by MaysonL 11y ago

pjmlp 11y ago

Nice idea to bring Oberon back to life. Although I am a little sad to see this is based on the Original Oberon, and not on System 3 with its Gadgets framework: http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/native/WebScreen.html http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/native/WebScreen.html http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/eve/Leonardo.png http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/eve/Leonardo.png http://info.tuwien.ac.at/hsk/sefi/papers/schaufel.htm http://info.tuwien.ac.at/hsk/sefi/papers/schaufel.htm http://www.statlab.uni-heidelberg.de/projects/voyager/ http://www.statlab.uni-heidelberg.de/projects/voyager/

BruceM 11y ago
I've occasionally wanted to run System3 again. I wonder what it would take (for OS X)...
- pjmlp 11y ago
  You can run it as part of AoS, as System 3 Kernel module is remapped to Active Oberon Kernel module. http://www.ocp.inf.ethz.ch/wiki/Documentation/Front http://www.ocp.inf.ethz.ch/wiki/Documentation/Front But Active Oberon fails to run on modern hardware, the best you can do is a VM, and even then builds tend to be scarce. http://www.ocp.inf.ethz.ch/forum/index.php/topic,692.0.html http://www.ocp.inf.ethz.ch/forum/index.php/topic,692.0.html

willvarfar 11y ago

Amazing what fits in 2.8MB :D I recall playing with it in the late 90s (it was old then) and being blown away by how much 'better' than Windows NT (which I was using at the time) it was. I've always liked Pascal (being from the Turbo Pascal European Coverdisk Generation). I'm going to have to download this and give it a spin :)

pjmlp 11y ago
The worst part is that we suffered a 20 year VM detour, and only now are returned to having AOT compilation to native code in safe languages. At least in what concerns mainstream languages. After ETHZ research, only Singularity and Midori seem to have tried the same approach.
- insulanian 11y ago
  > The worst part is that we suffered a 20 year VM detour, and only now are returned to having AOT compilation to native code in safe languages. Which languages are you referring to?
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    20 years ago the Oberon variants, Modula-2, Modula-3, Ada, Delphi, Eiffel, Visual Basic 6 were all AOT compiling to native code with their canonical toolchains. Than Java and .NET became widespread, and the return to VM craziness started, like the early days of P-Code VMs. Now 20 years later Microsoft finally supports .NET Native (ngen was only meant for faster startups) and has AOT in mobile phones since version 8. Google replaced Dalvik with ART and Oracle is finally following the commercial JDKs in AOT support for Java 10+. Then we have the new kids on the block, Swift, Go, Rust, D, Nim, OCaml, Haskell, ATS.

nickpsecurity 11y ago

I'd like to see such apps let users do for Oberon Workstation what this person did for Windows 3.1: http://www.networkworld.com/article/2223927/opensource-subnet/why-this-linux-user-is-now-using-windows-3-1.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2223927/opensource-subne... You could have a lightweight, safe platform you do everything in that's sync'd to various devices. A bit of popularity might get more work into it. Remember, though, that A2 Bluebottle is the most recent Oberon system probably with the most features. I could be wrong on last part. It worked fine (and fast!) in VirtualBox.

zeeshanm 11y ago

I downloaded but I am lost. Where do I exec the help command? http://imgur.com/TccpbXS http://imgur.com/TccpbXS

i_don_t_know 11y ago
I haven't downloaded it yet, so I don't know. Have you tried - the normal Help in the Apple menu bar? - typing: System.OpenFile Help.Text and "middle-clicking" on System.OpenFile? - typing: System.Help and "middle-clicking" on System.Help? I don't know how familiar you are with the Oberon system. The machines had a three-button mouse and you executed commands by middle-clicking. On the Mac that's usually emulated by ctrl+left-click or option+left-click or command+left-click. A command is: ModuleName.ProcedureName written anywhere, for example, the menu bars are really just normal text boxes that can be edited like any other text box.
jhbadger 11y ago
For those who are interested in using the system, get a copy (either physically from a library or search for one of the PDFs scattered around the net) for Martin Reiser's 1991 book "The Oberon System: User Guide and Programmer's Manual". It describes a version of the system which is quite similar.

SixSigma 11y ago

Plan9's Acme text editor [1] was based on ideas from Oberon. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_%28text_editor%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_%28text_editor%29 That's my screenshot :) Acme is available for Unix likes via plan9port [2] and for Windows via Acme-sac [3] (Inferno running with Acme instead of the window manager) [2] https://swtch.com/plan9port/ https://swtch.com/plan9port/ but also see your distro's package system, it might be in there already [3] https://code.google.com/p/acme-sac/ https://code.google.com/p/acme-sac/

jkleiser 11y ago

What a great surprise! I look forward to re-learn this system and language. I'm glad Oberon isn't dead. I just discovered this http://oberon.vishap.am http://oberon.vishap.am and this https://github.com/BlackBoxCenter/blackbox https://github.com/BlackBoxCenter/blackbox.

jcbeard 11y ago
This is awesome, I was just digging through some Oberon literature the other day (well, two weeks ago). Love it!