6 ms·

Oberon (2009)

99 points by olaf 13y ago

asdfs 13y ago
Eagle Mode (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6yPQKt3mBA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6yPQKt3mBA) uses the zoomable UI concept and takes it to an extreme.
- itchitawa 13y ago
  That's how it should be! Pity it's probably actually a pain to use in real life :P
  - Jtsummers 13y ago
    That would be awesome to see on a modern tablet device. The gesture interface already exists and people are accustomed to it. It would be neat to see a demo of it at least. Thinking about it, while not implemented for the whole experience, are there any apps that do this? To some extent Safari on OS X does this now (since what version, I'm not sure). While you can zoom in and around a page, you can also zoom out when the page is at 100% and get a view of all the open tabs. iPad with its multitasking control is similar (swipe up with 4 fingers to see all tasks, tap on one to switch to it). A photo app would, as demonstrated, be an appropriate use, same with the calendar. Instead of having to hit buttons to move up the hierarchy allow the users to pinch-to-zoom instead.
- X4 13y ago
  WOW, WOW, WOW!!!!! Thank you for posting this!! I'm just emerging it: emerge -av x11-wm/eaglemode
davidy123 13y ago
After reading the article I thought Oberon might be really interesting, then I watched the linked Youtube video.
sirsar 13y ago
To launch applications or execute commands, you first type them somewhere (anywhere, it doesn’t matter), and then middle-click them Has anyone used this extensively? I'm extremely skeptical about the cost of switching from keyboard to mouse constantly. And then there's the following: Need to explain to your aunt what application to launch? Tell her to click on a word in the e-mail you just sent her. "Need to create a botnet? Tell your (or your hacked celebrity account's) Twitter followers to click on a word in the tweet you just posted."
- Slackwise 13y ago
  > Has anyone used this extensively? Rob Pike and any devoted Acme users? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP1xVpMPn8M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP1xVpMPn8M
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- Joeri 13y ago
  Oberon was the programming language and environment used to teach first year programming classes at the university of antwerp when I studied there back in the late 90's. I ended up using it as my main programming environment for months at a time. There was a definite learning curve because of the weird mouse approach. They used mouse behavior that I haven't seen anywhere else, like interclicks (chorded mouse button click combinations). Mostly though there were keyboard alternatives, like ctrl-enter for middle click, so you didn't have to have the mouse in hand all the time. Once the learning curve was over I remember finding the keyboard/mouse behavior quite efficient, though you did need a three-button mouse to make full use of it. I initially had a negative reaction to the clunky appearance of oberon and the weird conventions, but grew to like it quite a bit over the course of the year. It was really a programmer's OS, because there was essentially no difference between documents, programs and user interfaces. You could look at any application and decompose it into its building blocks and program code quite easily because "view source" was an intrinsic part of the system. The downside was that it didn't actually do much, given that there was basically no way to port existing software so it ran inside the oberon environment. Had it somehow gained the ability to run other programming languages than Oberon within the same UI paradigm it might have been quite popular as a geek OS.
zarify 13y ago
Considering the bit about different European languages, it seems really strange that words would become links to applications. Sending instructions on how to do something from your home in <latin character set country> to your Russian aunt? Better know the Cyrillic version of what you want to launch. Snark aside, there are some interesting aspects to that; I really like the idea of simple launcher lists, even if it means you have to know the names of everything you want to launch. I teach some kids with dyslexia and I can imagine trying to do this in a classroom environment.
GuiA 13y ago
Plan 9's UI works in a quite similar way. I'm not up to date on my history of those systems, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is heavy cross pollination between the two. Additionally, the fact that the writer of this post mentions Oberon's zooming user interface and the Canon Cat means I have to encourage anyone interested in this topic to read this wonderful book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Humane-Interface-Directions-Interactive/dp/0201379376/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1380936948&sr=8-3&keywords=raskin http://www.amazon.com/The-Humane-Interface-Directions-Intera... --- The article linked to at the very beginning is not available on the original site. Here is an archive.org link: http://web.archive.org/web/20090416033922/http://stevenf.tumblr.com/post/94591835/warning-a-long-rambly-exploration-of-the-state http://web.archive.org/web/20090416033922/http://stevenf.tum...
- tujv 13y ago
  Rob Pike says that Oberon was an influence on his Plan 9 text editor, Acme. http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/acme.html http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/acme.html
RexRollman 13y ago
I remember giving Oberon a try in the late 90's. As I recall, Oberon was available as both an application and as a stand-alone OS. I really liked the interface of both Oberon and Plan 9. I wasn't really able to get much done with them back then, as I was a real novice, but I did find the UI attractive.
malandrew 13y ago
So every time I see these threads about classic computing systems that did something interesting or novel (Oberon, Plan 9 Symbolics OpenGenera, BeOS, Amiga, etc), I want to be able to try them out on my own machine. After discovering that OpenGenera was available, I tried a bunch to find a way to run it in a VM in OS X and had no luck finding an Alpha virtual machine host on which to install it. Is Oberon one of those systems that I can get up and running in a virtual machine on OS X in an afternoon?
- GuiA 13y ago
  Yes, you should be able to get Oberon running in VirtualBox through Blue Bottle OS [1]. Some tweaks do need to be made though [2] [1] http://www.a2.ethz.ch/download.html http://www.a2.ethz.ch/download.html [2] https://lists.inf.ethz.ch/pipermail/oberon/2008/005536.html https://lists.inf.ethz.ch/pipermail/oberon/2008/005536.html
  - malandrew 13y ago
    Thanks. This is most appreciated. I started looking for details on getting it running after posting this. That second link should prove useful.
    - pjmlp 13y ago
      And if you feel like to research how Oberon was implemented, the language, the kernel level GC and all the rest, there are lots of information available here, http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ The book "Project Oberon" describes the system. For the Native Oberon's sucessors, EthOS and Blue Bottle, you can additionally read http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/cszypers/books/insight-ethos.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/cszypers/books... and http://e-collection.library.ethz.ch/eserv/eth:26082/eth-26082-02.pdf http://e-collection.library.ethz.ch/eserv/eth:26082/eth-2608...
      - jdboyd 13y ago
        I went to look for "Project Oberon" to buy, but 170USD for a used copy is a bit much for me.
itchitawa 13y ago
This part is the most exciting to me. - "obsoletes the idea of opening a document. Essentially, all documents can be open all the time. All you have to do to interact with one is to zoom in close enough."
- gioele 13y ago
  What about documents that can have multiple interpretations? Where do I zoom to edit and HTML file as a set of tags? Where do I zoom to edit it inside a WYSIWYG editor? Where do I zoom to see it in a browser?
X4 13y ago
That guy needs a new camera, idk. why, but his camera has a ghosting effect! I initially thought it's a built-in effect, but it's his camera..weird..
616c 13y ago
The text and GUI integration describes exactly why I fell in love with Linux. There is a GUI, but I will be damned if there are things (save some terrible GNOME cruft from personal experience) that cannot be facilitated the terminal commands and scripting. Around the same time in college as I discovered Linux and began really exploring, I started a sysadmin gig at school maintaining Winboxen, and the inability to script a lot of core stuff (this was before Powershell, but my opinion is little has changed beyond "this is the crap Microsoft thinks you should automate") is incredibly frustrating and what drove me to admire the utilitarian approach of Linux and other UNIX environments so so much. That is why Linux, *BSD, and even in a small way OS X make me really happy. Oberon seems to harmonize both. That is very cool, and definitely would be an OS of choice for me.
- pjmlp 13y ago
  You would love Mac OS 1 - 9, Acorn RISC OS, Amiga OS, Atari ST GEM. :)
  - 616c 13y ago
    Apple was one of the my first computers; I am familiar with the OS 1 - 9 line. That being said I was a child and I am not too familiar after all these years if they were like it. When dealing with a current Mac, people look at me weird as I spend my time in only two apps: Console.app and Terminal.app. And people wonder why I bitch how Apple bastardized Unix (and to the fanbois: I know it is just as much BSD's fault, get off my lawn).
pjmlp 13y ago
Implemented with a GC enabled systems programming language!
bluelu 13y ago
I still remember the days when we had those Oberon machines (not yet bluebottle) at the computer rooms at the ETHZ. Nobody touched them except the computer science students. You didn't even needed a login to use them, just a mouse with 3 buttons for the famous interclick to execute commands! :)
erlkonig 13y ago
It's a bit silly to claim that outside of Oberon, all modern graphical UIs are descended from the Lisa. Unix and its many variations were very active in the early 1980s, and there were non-Lisa sophisticated window systems emerging around the same time as the Apple Lisa. I remember seeing Oberon in the late 1980s, running on a Sun workstation which supported the SunView and X10 - simultaneously (at the time, we'd figured out how to run SunView in the color buffer and X10 in the overlay buffer, configured to be a separate virtual screen). In those three environments, I feel little could be ascribed to the Lisa, but much to PARC.

Oberon (2009)

99 points by olaf 13y ago

asdfs 13y ago

Eagle Mode (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6yPQKt3mBA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6yPQKt3mBA) uses the zoomable UI concept and takes it to an extreme.

itchitawa 13y ago
That's how it should be! Pity it's probably actually a pain to use in real life :P
- Jtsummers 13y ago
  That would be awesome to see on a modern tablet device. The gesture interface already exists and people are accustomed to it. It would be neat to see a demo of it at least. Thinking about it, while not implemented for the whole experience, are there any apps that do this? To some extent Safari on OS X does this now (since what version, I'm not sure). While you can zoom in and around a page, you can also zoom out when the page is at 100% and get a view of all the open tabs. iPad with its multitasking control is similar (swipe up with 4 fingers to see all tasks, tap on one to switch to it). A photo app would, as demonstrated, be an appropriate use, same with the calendar. Instead of having to hit buttons to move up the hierarchy allow the users to pinch-to-zoom instead.
X4 13y ago
WOW, WOW, WOW!!!!! Thank you for posting this!! I'm just emerging it: emerge -av x11-wm/eaglemode

davidy123 13y ago

After reading the article I thought Oberon might be really interesting, then I watched the linked Youtube video.

sirsar 13y ago

To launch applications or execute commands, you first type them somewhere (anywhere, it doesn’t matter), and then middle-click them Has anyone used this extensively? I'm extremely skeptical about the cost of switching from keyboard to mouse constantly. And then there's the following: Need to explain to your aunt what application to launch? Tell her to click on a word in the e-mail you just sent her. "Need to create a botnet? Tell your (or your hacked celebrity account's) Twitter followers to click on a word in the tweet you just posted."

Slackwise 13y ago
> Has anyone used this extensively? Rob Pike and any devoted Acme users? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP1xVpMPn8M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP1xVpMPn8M
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Joeri 13y ago
Oberon was the programming language and environment used to teach first year programming classes at the university of antwerp when I studied there back in the late 90's. I ended up using it as my main programming environment for months at a time. There was a definite learning curve because of the weird mouse approach. They used mouse behavior that I haven't seen anywhere else, like interclicks (chorded mouse button click combinations). Mostly though there were keyboard alternatives, like ctrl-enter for middle click, so you didn't have to have the mouse in hand all the time. Once the learning curve was over I remember finding the keyboard/mouse behavior quite efficient, though you did need a three-button mouse to make full use of it. I initially had a negative reaction to the clunky appearance of oberon and the weird conventions, but grew to like it quite a bit over the course of the year. It was really a programmer's OS, because there was essentially no difference between documents, programs and user interfaces. You could look at any application and decompose it into its building blocks and program code quite easily because "view source" was an intrinsic part of the system. The downside was that it didn't actually do much, given that there was basically no way to port existing software so it ran inside the oberon environment. Had it somehow gained the ability to run other programming languages than Oberon within the same UI paradigm it might have been quite popular as a geek OS.

zarify 13y ago

Considering the bit about different European languages, it seems really strange that words would become links to applications. Sending instructions on how to do something from your home in <latin character set country> to your Russian aunt? Better know the Cyrillic version of what you want to launch. Snark aside, there are some interesting aspects to that; I really like the idea of simple launcher lists, even if it means you have to know the names of everything you want to launch. I teach some kids with dyslexia and I can imagine trying to do this in a classroom environment.

GuiA 13y ago

Plan 9's UI works in a quite similar way. I'm not up to date on my history of those systems, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is heavy cross pollination between the two. Additionally, the fact that the writer of this post mentions Oberon's zooming user interface and the Canon Cat means I have to encourage anyone interested in this topic to read this wonderful book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Humane-Interface-Directions-Interactive/dp/0201379376/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1380936948&sr=8-3&keywords=raskin http://www.amazon.com/The-Humane-Interface-Directions-Intera... --- The article linked to at the very beginning is not available on the original site. Here is an archive.org link: http://web.archive.org/web/20090416033922/http://stevenf.tumblr.com/post/94591835/warning-a-long-rambly-exploration-of-the-state http://web.archive.org/web/20090416033922/http://stevenf.tum...

tujv 13y ago
Rob Pike says that Oberon was an influence on his Plan 9 text editor, Acme. http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/acme.html http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/acme.html

RexRollman 13y ago

I remember giving Oberon a try in the late 90's. As I recall, Oberon was available as both an application and as a stand-alone OS. I really liked the interface of both Oberon and Plan 9. I wasn't really able to get much done with them back then, as I was a real novice, but I did find the UI attractive.

malandrew 13y ago

So every time I see these threads about classic computing systems that did something interesting or novel (Oberon, Plan 9 Symbolics OpenGenera, BeOS, Amiga, etc), I want to be able to try them out on my own machine. After discovering that OpenGenera was available, I tried a bunch to find a way to run it in a VM in OS X and had no luck finding an Alpha virtual machine host on which to install it. Is Oberon one of those systems that I can get up and running in a virtual machine on OS X in an afternoon?

GuiA 13y ago
Yes, you should be able to get Oberon running in VirtualBox through Blue Bottle OS [1]. Some tweaks do need to be made though [2] [1] http://www.a2.ethz.ch/download.html http://www.a2.ethz.ch/download.html [2] https://lists.inf.ethz.ch/pipermail/oberon/2008/005536.html https://lists.inf.ethz.ch/pipermail/oberon/2008/005536.html
- malandrew 13y ago
  Thanks. This is most appreciated. I started looking for details on getting it running after posting this. That second link should prove useful.
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    And if you feel like to research how Oberon was implemented, the language, the kernel level GC and all the rest, there are lots of information available here, http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ The book "Project Oberon" describes the system. For the Native Oberon's sucessors, EthOS and Blue Bottle, you can additionally read http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/cszypers/books/insight-ethos.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/cszypers/books... and http://e-collection.library.ethz.ch/eserv/eth:26082/eth-26082-02.pdf http://e-collection.library.ethz.ch/eserv/eth:26082/eth-2608...
    - jdboyd 13y ago
      I went to look for "Project Oberon" to buy, but 170USD for a used copy is a bit much for me.

itchitawa 13y ago

This part is the most exciting to me. - "obsoletes the idea of opening a document. Essentially, all documents can be open all the time. All you have to do to interact with one is to zoom in close enough."

gioele 13y ago
What about documents that can have multiple interpretations? Where do I zoom to edit and HTML file as a set of tags? Where do I zoom to edit it inside a WYSIWYG editor? Where do I zoom to see it in a browser?

X4 13y ago

That guy needs a new camera, idk. why, but his camera has a ghosting effect! I initially thought it's a built-in effect, but it's his camera..weird..

616c 13y ago

The text and GUI integration describes exactly why I fell in love with Linux. There is a GUI, but I will be damned if there are things (save some terrible GNOME cruft from personal experience) that cannot be facilitated the terminal commands and scripting. Around the same time in college as I discovered Linux and began really exploring, I started a sysadmin gig at school maintaining Winboxen, and the inability to script a lot of core stuff (this was before Powershell, but my opinion is little has changed beyond "this is the crap Microsoft thinks you should automate") is incredibly frustrating and what drove me to admire the utilitarian approach of Linux and other UNIX environments so so much. That is why Linux, *BSD, and even in a small way OS X make me really happy. Oberon seems to harmonize both. That is very cool, and definitely would be an OS of choice for me.

pjmlp 13y ago
You would love Mac OS 1 - 9, Acorn RISC OS, Amiga OS, Atari ST GEM. :)
- 616c 13y ago
  Apple was one of the my first computers; I am familiar with the OS 1 - 9 line. That being said I was a child and I am not too familiar after all these years if they were like it. When dealing with a current Mac, people look at me weird as I spend my time in only two apps: Console.app and Terminal.app. And people wonder why I bitch how Apple bastardized Unix (and to the fanbois: I know it is just as much BSD's fault, get off my lawn).

pjmlp 13y ago

Implemented with a GC enabled systems programming language!

bluelu 13y ago

I still remember the days when we had those Oberon machines (not yet bluebottle) at the computer rooms at the ETHZ. Nobody touched them except the computer science students. You didn't even needed a login to use them, just a mouse with 3 buttons for the famous interclick to execute commands! :)

erlkonig 13y ago

It's a bit silly to claim that outside of Oberon, all modern graphical UIs are descended from the Lisa. Unix and its many variations were very active in the early 1980s, and there were non-Lisa sophisticated window systems emerging around the same time as the Apple Lisa. I remember seeing Oberon in the late 1980s, running on a Sun workstation which supported the SunView and X10 - simultaneously (at the time, we'd figured out how to run SunView in the color buffer and X10 in the overlay buffer, configured to be a separate virtual screen). In those three environments, I feel little could be ascribed to the Lisa, but much to PARC.