3 ms·

Although the zoom idea is cool it’s nothing new. There have been many ui attempts at this like the zenzui ui in 2007. It was a rat race to find the best ui for

by egfx 6y ago

Although the zoom idea is cool it’s nothing new. There have been many ui attempts at this like the zenzui ui in 2007. It was a rat race to find the best ui for these emerging devices called smartphones back in the day https://youtu.be/r12eUXJNbl8 https://youtu.be/r12eUXJNbl8

coldtea 6y ago
>Although the zoom idea is cool it’s nothing new. Well, Oberon OS is much older than 2007 tho... More like 1987.
- 1wd 6y ago
  The initial Oberon OS is indeed from 1987, but there are many Oberons. The original Oberon GUI was the everything-is-executable-text one, not the ZUI. The ZUI was part of Thomas M. Frey's work for his dissertation "Bluebottle : A Thread-safe Multimedia and GUI Framework for Active Oberon" [2] (Bluebottle OS) submitted in 2005. This was built on top of Pieter J. Muller's work for his dissertation "The Active Object System" [1] (AOS) submitted in 2002. There are many more ETH (PhD and student) projects based on Oberon before and after (ARM Oberon, WinOberon, UnixOberon, Oberon.NET, ...) mainly in Jürg Gutknecht's group. [1] https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/handle/20.500.11850/147091 https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/handle/20.500.11850/... [2] https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/handle/20.500.11850/72739 https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/handle/20.500.11850/...
  - Grumbledour 6y ago
    Thanks, this is really helpful! Since there seems to be no central point of information on the myriad versions of oberon and no official website at eth anymore, it's really hard to get the lay of the land and find out which version does what and why.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      You can have some additional info here, include lots of nice screenshots. https://progtools.org/article.php?name=oberon&section=compilers&type=tutorial https://progtools.org/article.php?name=oberon&section=compil... In a couple of years, all Oberon related knowledge will be left collecting dust in university libraries and digital archives.
      - lproven 6y ago
        There is an active project to document Oberon (both language and OS, in its various versions) on Wikibooks: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Oberon https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Oberon I personally am intermittently working on the Wikipedia articles for Oberon (language and OS) and Bluebottle OS. Contributions, links etc. very welcome.
        pjmlp 6y ago
        Thanks for the heads up. I can gladly contribute the screenshots I took while using A2.
  - alexisread 6y ago
    ...and A2 was perfectly positioned to be used as a smartphone OS instead of Android (2007)- compiled modules with GC, multithreaded ZUI etc in 2005. It's a shame really but I guess developer familiarity trumps architecture:(
- vidarh 6y ago
  The zoomable UI idea dates back to at least the 70's. Here's one variant [1]. That said, it's a design space that is poorly explored with plenty of room for different variants. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2012/5/24/3040959/dataland-mits-70s-media-room-concept-that-influenced-the-mac https://www.theverge.com/2012/5/24/3040959/dataland-mits-70s...

by egfx 6y ago

coldtea 6y ago

>Although the zoom idea is cool it’s nothing new. Well, Oberon OS is much older than 2007 tho... More like 1987.

1wd 6y ago
The initial Oberon OS is indeed from 1987, but there are many Oberons. The original Oberon GUI was the everything-is-executable-text one, not the ZUI. The ZUI was part of Thomas M. Frey's work for his dissertation "Bluebottle : A Thread-safe Multimedia and GUI Framework for Active Oberon" [2] (Bluebottle OS) submitted in 2005. This was built on top of Pieter J. Muller's work for his dissertation "The Active Object System" [1] (AOS) submitted in 2002. There are many more ETH (PhD and student) projects based on Oberon before and after (ARM Oberon, WinOberon, UnixOberon, Oberon.NET, ...) mainly in Jürg Gutknecht's group. [1] https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/handle/20.500.11850/147091 https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/handle/20.500.11850/... [2] https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/handle/20.500.11850/72739 https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/handle/20.500.11850/...
- Grumbledour 6y ago
  Thanks, this is really helpful! Since there seems to be no central point of information on the myriad versions of oberon and no official website at eth anymore, it's really hard to get the lay of the land and find out which version does what and why.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    You can have some additional info here, include lots of nice screenshots. https://progtools.org/article.php?name=oberon&section=compilers&type=tutorial https://progtools.org/article.php?name=oberon&section=compil... In a couple of years, all Oberon related knowledge will be left collecting dust in university libraries and digital archives.
    - lproven 6y ago
      There is an active project to document Oberon (both language and OS, in its various versions) on Wikibooks: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Oberon https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Oberon I personally am intermittently working on the Wikipedia articles for Oberon (language and OS) and Bluebottle OS. Contributions, links etc. very welcome.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        Thanks for the heads up. I can gladly contribute the screenshots I took while using A2.
- alexisread 6y ago
  ...and A2 was perfectly positioned to be used as a smartphone OS instead of Android (2007)- compiled modules with GC, multithreaded ZUI etc in 2005. It's a shame really but I guess developer familiarity trumps architecture:(
vidarh 6y ago
The zoomable UI idea dates back to at least the 70's. Here's one variant [1]. That said, it's a design space that is poorly explored with plenty of room for different variants. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2012/5/24/3040959/dataland-mits-70s-media-room-concept-that-influenced-the-mac https://www.theverge.com/2012/5/24/3040959/dataland-mits-70s...