BlackBox & Component Pascal!

Martin, Marc (Marc.Martin@PSS.boeing.com)
Fri, 21 Feb 1997 13:16:31 -0800

Just as I was about to ask again about what's going on with Oberon/F, I
received the latest issue of the Oberon Tribune! Some quick comments:

-I'm happy to see that the Oberon/F Tribune is now free...otherwise I
would not have this issue... :-)
(Of course, I'd be just as happy with a web version)

-I like the name changes (Oberon/F -> BlackBox Component Builder,
Oberon/L -> Component Pascal). Convincing my management to upgrade to
the latest version of a "Pascal" compiler is going to be *much* easier
than an "Oberon" compiler. :-)

-I'm curious to learn more about how Component Pascal differs from
Oberon-2? From the looks of the datatype alignment table, it appears
that INTEGER has changed from 2 to 4 bytes, and REAL has changed from 4
to 8 bytes? If so, I'm happy to hear this, since I can remove a few
hundred LONGs from my code...

-Am I understanding correctly that v1.3 uses "slim binaries"? Is this a
new feature?

-I'm dissapointed to see diminishing support for the Macintosh, but
given the current state of affairs I certainly understand it. It looks
like the original Oberon/F plan of using the same source code for all
sorts of different platforms appears to have become "mostly just
Windows"... Oh well, perhaps a few more years after the BeOS wipes out
the MacOS we'll get a new version... :-)

--
Marc Martin, marc.martin@boeing.com