Оберон-клуб «ВЄДАsoft»

OBERON-M(tm) version 1.1 ANNOUNCEMENT

This is to announce the immediate availability of
Oberon-M version 1.1.

This package presents the Oberon programming language
for the MSDOS environment, on Intel 80x86 processors.

Version 1.1 has some language changes to keep
pace with Niklaus Wirth's Oberon revisions (see below).
Documentation has been increased, and a mature modular
example of Oberon's unique features has been added.

Oberon, as you may already know, is a second-generation
language past Pascal with most (maybe all) of the
clumsiness of its ancestors removed, with the added
power of type extension and object oriented programming
features available.


This release contains the following items:

compiler, library modules, updated documention,
language report, new/old examples, utility programs


If you are moving to this release from version 1.0, you
must erase all your reference files and recompile your
source files under this new release.




CHANGES IN VERSION 1.1


COMPILER: three minor changes to match language
details in Niklaus Wirth's recent revised
languge report: 1) SYSTEM is an alias to the machine-
dependent module SYS; SYSTEM is the preferred name
from now on. 2) BYTE has been moved into SYSTEM,
formerly being a general predefined type. 3) SIZE is
now available outside of SYSTEM as a general
predefined procedure.

One bug was fixed along the way. I have never
heard of anyone encountering it. It relates to
an incorrect symbolic reference file sometimes being
generated for multiplicities of exported, complex,
recursive data types.

The compiler is still only about 78KB on disk.


DOCUMENTATION: the language report is formatted better.
The README file contains more background about Oberon-M
and has important technical details.


EXAMPLE FILES: a new, robust set of five modules are
included to illustrate Oberon's unique type extension
and object oriented programming features. They make
a fairly good teaching tool about Oberon's strengths.
The well-received Abu program and the original library
modules are still present.





HOW TO GET Oberon-M version 1.1


The locations below have the new Oberon-M package.
It can be obtained by anonymous FTP, or by mail-message
glue-and-uudecode, depending on the location.

*FTP formats*

The package file name on an FTP location is either

oberonm - self unzipping .EXE file
oberonmz - zip files (not self-unzipping)

Either must be fetched using FTP in BINARY mode. Once
downloaded to an MSDOS machine, put the following file
name extensions on the respective file you obtained:

oberonm ---> oberonm.exe (run it to unzip)
oberonmz ---> oberonmz.zip (use PKZIP on it)

The oberonmz form is provided for those distribution
locations that prefer zip data files versus executable ones.
Both files otherwise are identical.


*MAIL MESSAGE FORMATS*

For locations that have the package in mail-like ASCII files
( 6 files), you must use an editor to concatenate all
the files where shown, use uudecode to bring it back into
a binary image, then download and use PKZIP (or an
equivalent utility) to unpack all the files of the
Oberon-M package. Only the zip-data form of the package
is included in the mail-like format (ie: it is the
oberonmz file mentioned above).





*LOCATIONS TO OBTAIN THE PACKAGE*

1) SIMTEL20
machine name: WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL
Internet address: 26.2.0.74, 192.88.110.20
subdirectory: pd1:<msdos.pgmutl>
file names: OBRONM11.ZIP
(* NOTE special form of name here*)
fetch how: anonymous FTP
unpack how: PKZIP under MSDOS

2) UCSD
machine name: ucsd, ucsd.edu, pop.ucsd.edu
Internet address: 128.54.16.1
subdirectory: pub
file names: oberonm.exe
fetch how: anonymous FTP
unpack how: For oberonm.exe: binary transfer
to MSDOS, then execute (self
unzipping files)


3) ETH Zurich
machine name: neptune.inf.ethz.ch
Internet address: 129.132.101.33
subdirectory: Oberon/80186
file names: oberonm.exe, oberonm.info
fetch how: anonymous FTP
unpack how: For oberonm.exe: binary transfer
to MSDOS, then execute (self
unzipping files)
For oberonm.info: ascii transfer
for human reading
*** Note: ETH has not tested this package
extensively and does not claim or disclaim
its validity relative to the ETH Oberon
System. Keeping the files here is only
being done as a courtesy to European
users who want to fetch it from a closer
location.

[ ETH Zurich is no longer offering Oberon-M on their
anonymous ftp-site. A.F. Borchert ]


4) comp.binaries.ibm.pc
machine name: Usenet newsgroup
Internet address: N/A
file formats: 6 uuencoded "mail" messages
fetch how: capture the messages
unpack how: Instructions are at the
head of the first message.


5) alt.sources
(same as in comp.binaries.ibm.pc , but
available here also by request from many
users)


6) wuarchive
machine name: wuarchive.wustl.edu
Internet address: 128.252.135.4
subdirectory: /mirrors/msdos/pgmutl
file names: obronm11.zip
(* NOTE special form of name here*)
fetch how: anonymous FTP
unpack how: binary transfer to MSDOS,
then unzip/decompress
using PKZIP or equivalent.

7) University of Ulm
machine name: titania.mathematik.uni-ulm.de
Internet address: 134.60.66.21
subdirectory: soft/oberon/oberonm
file names: oberonm.exe, oberonm.info
fetch how: anonymous FTP
unpack how: For oberonm.exe: binary transfer
to MSDOS, then execute (self
unzipping files)
For oberonm.info: ascii transfer
for human reading




-- E. R. Videki