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I have been recieving the odd blackbox oberon news from time to time, even
tho I have tried to remove myself a number of times !! :-)
However #210 contained a number of interesting messages regarding
documentation ( where my name pop'd up ) and languages for use by scientific
personal generally. Made for interesting reading!
I should say from the outset that I really like Oberon - however !?!, which
one can/should I use ???
a) If I use BB Oberon I'm stuck with a Windows environment AND a supplier who
is not really interested in the product at all. ( Thats their privilage
by the way).
b) I happen to have moved onto Linux (Debian) and cannot find a Oberon
'package' thats complete ! Complete in the sense that it has:
1) a manual (without hugh holes in its information)
2) a GUI interface ( at least for the end-user), a IDE is nice ( a la BB) but
not a serious impediment to developement.
3) at least ODBC interface for SQL databases
Indeed I did not even know a Oberon existed for Debian until the 'penny
dropped' that oo2c -- now theres a really DUMB name !! I suppose that if I
searched long enough I would have figured out that 'oo2c' equals 'Oberon' !!
Now oo2c seems to work at the raw Oberon coding level, BUT - the
documentation although huge in volume is years behind and the "Visual Oberon"
(VO) GUI tool seems OK , BUT it only seems to work on a much later versions
of certain Debian libraries ( so called unstable ones) and of course I will
not entertain using other than the stable Debian as I can't afford the time
debugging Debian libraries -- In any case stable Debian is VERY stable.
Also VO's documentation and example code is so minimual as to be non
existant.
In my opinion the Oberon community would be better off focusing their efforts
on a _single_ version of Oberon that works on a number of Operating Systems,
as
this will solve the problem of having to convert a working Oberon program
into a C++ , Java or whatever to get it across to your prefered platform,
even if it that means dropping BB Oberon completely, and losing some of your
favourite features.
(I dont believe that Ous have any plans to develop Oberon beyond its current
abilities - I could be wrong)
Also, choose a transportable GUI tool,
there are a number available that are at least as good as BB's ( but without
the close intergration) and of course ODBC library for large slabs of data.
Then , and only THEN, should an effort be made to develop decent user guides,
but always keep in mind the effort involve. And of course if you ( thats YOU)
think that Oberon will ever become 'popular' , think again, it wont happen !,
as You and I both know how good it is, but, its never going to be the
language of first choice for the new programmer, and a highly unlikely
choice for a systems developer - the pressure to conform to C++, .NET ,JAVA,
etc is just too great.
BUT!, if you can say = "heres a complete, working, transportable development
language & toolkit that's really efficient and easy to program and reliable
and _prefered_ by my collegues" - THEN -- you might have some leverage - good
luck !!
=====================
BTW - if you develop the proposed ( badly needed) intro to Oberon manual
using the Oberon Editor I can see the result being as badly organised as
the current deficient documentation.
Use LaTeX , because, it will focus your efforts on creating a decent good
looking document that relatively easy to change, and LaTeX and its files are
system independent. ( You only need to know about 10 commands to create nice
looking documents)
Now I'll go back to developing my progams using a modern OOPL system
independent,
transportable language, with a transportable GUI and ODBC connections and
plenty of good documentation :-)
(I dont think it will address the scientific communities needs however)
=====================
And now I'll try to get off the list! (again)
-- Good luck.
--------------------------------------------
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Received on Sun Feb 01 2004 - 22:54:42 UTC