attached mail follows:
Dear Jono,
I am interested in producing a CD-ROM of The Oberon Series for ACM or
private publication. Please let me know whether you wish to
correspond additionally, and if you can offer me any encouragement to
proceed.
The most crucial assumption that I have made is that the publications
are already available in the V4 Oberon system. If this turns out to
be incorrect that would be disappointing. I have copied nw directly
in order to ascertain that answer.
Thank you for your time. I have included some additional information
that may aid in your decision.
Sincerely,
Aubrey McIntosh, Ph.D.
--------
Somehow, your email correspondance below has become published. I
have this additional information to offer.
When I was a dissertator, I explored some issues of the digital
library, publishing on CD-ROM, and disseminating information from a
portable, processor independent platform. This exploration was not a
part of my research, but it was with a view of submitting the second
dissertation published on CD-ROM at the University of Texas. I did
produce a CD of the dissertation, although I submitted a paper copy
to the graduate school. By any measure, this was a stringent test of
the system.
While I think that the mainstream has moved solidly toward using the
Adobe Acrobat (PDF file) format for digital publication, I do not believe
that Acrobat is the proper tool for this job, and I still use my
original project.
Basically, I have demonstrated an ISO-9660 format CD-ROM that can be
used on any 95/98/NT/2000 system to author and read documents. From
the time the CD is placed into a virgin system to the time that a
student is reading my assignments is typically under 25 seconds, and
on a top end machine this is under 5 seconds. To obtain a full
authoring environment, an install of 1 subdirectory containing 1, 1Kb
file is required. From the time that the original CD is installed to
the time that the student is running in full author mode is under 1
minute. This speed and level of intrusion compares quite favorably
with environments such as Netscape. I am willing to send a copy of
such a CD to a surface mail address, or publish the basic directories
on line.
I have demonstrated that the CD stored documents may be viewed by the
same system on a number of other CPUs and operating systems, although
not in a self-contained manner. Based on effort to date, I believe
that the demonstration of a multi-platform CD could be made with a
few man-months of effort. Most of this effort is mundane labor to
move files to certain directories, stay awake while the CD burner is
going, travel to a site with the necessary operating system and
administrative permission, and similar non-software tasks.
The substantial part of the CD publisher is the Oberon V4 system
originated by Profs. Wirth and Gutknecht. I made a small
modification to allow the system to produce and use legal ISO-9660
(ECMA-119) file names, at the expense of upper/lower case
discrimination. I may have distributed a copy of this labeled
"Oberon_60" to Dr. Templ about 4 years ago. I have used this system
daily for 4 or 5 years.
Additional parts of the system are the Write text editor by Clemens
Szysperski, and the Kepler graphic editor by Josef Templ, along with
the standard release (Nov 98 is perhaps most recent) including
rudimentary email, html, and other communication tools.
I have the question that an additional several man-months effort by
someone else (or even more effort by me) could result in a CD that is
a CD-I compliant product. This would give the ability to publish a
work on a workstation where the revenue returns to the publisher and
the workstation manufacturor without dilution to other software
entities. I think that this would be a nice technology for a
publisher to have access to. In parallel work, the "V3" group has
announced that they can boot their CD in an "El Torito" environment.
The speculation that is most pertinant to your correspondance with
Prof. Treutwein is that, based on images published in the book, the
original manuscripts were in a format (V4 Text) that is directly
publishable on this CD. If this speculation is indeed true, then in
principle a ready to publish CD-ROM image could be produced within 24
hours.
--
Aubrey McIntosh, Ph.D.
1502 Devon Circle
Austin TX 78723-1814
1-512-452-1540
> > From: Jono Hardjowirogo <jono{([at]})nowhere.xy> > To: <bernhard{([at]})nowhere.xy> > Subject: RE: The Oberon Series
> > Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1999 16:16:21 -0400
> >
> > Dear Prof. Treutwein,
> >
> > Unfortunately, all the Oberon series of books were put out of print
> > because they no longer sells. So, it was done for economic reason more
> > than anything else. Interests in the Oberon project are no longer as
> > strong as they were once, so, we felt that it was time to retire the
> > books from the active list.
> >
> > I do agree with you assessment that the project was of a monumental
> > importance to computer science. For this reason, I am looking to have
> > those books scanned and made available in their entireties on the ACM
> > website. This way, future programmers who are looking for materials on
> > Oberon can simply take a look or download the materials in which they
> > are interested. I am not sure when we can have this affected as it does
> > involve some logistical issues from our side.
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> > Jono Hardjowirogo
> > Publisher, ACM Press Books and Journals
> -------------------------------
>
>
Received on Mon May 21 2001 - 12:01:12 UTC