WIORS12@HDETUD1.BITNET (Eric Maryniak 015-782547) (09/08/88)
Dear Vincent,
Experienced networkers at the faculty I work, told me that it is not
possible to 'download' the BSI drafts, therefore I would like to ask you
if you can e-mail them to me via uucp or bitnet (see adresses below).
About SI
Making your programs (or rather your collection of modules) portable, is
a problem in M-2 indeed. At this moment we started developing a huge
semantic database program (in M-2), which itself must be machine *AND*
operating system independant. This can be achieved by providing a 'virtual'
machine to client modules, containing I/O operations, etc. All real
machine dependance (and even operating system dependance: e.g. one can
define ones own file/directory structure on this virtual machine) can then
be confined to the (implementation) modules of this virtual machine, from
which the application modules import.
In order not to invent the wheel for the nnn-th time, I've been looking in
the literature for some articles. So far, I found the following:
1. BSI drafts.
2. YAML library of Robert Nagler: see net discussions.
2. Dotzel, G. 1986. A Modula-2 I/O Library Proposal.
Journal of Pascal, Ada & Modula-2 5(2): 24-32.
3. Craig, J.M. et al. 1985. Design of a Modula-2 Standard Library.
Journal of Pascal, Ada & Modula-2 4(2): 33-46.
4. Biagioni, E. et al. 1986. A Portable Operating System Interface and
Utility Library. IEEE Software 3(6): 18-28.
I cannot judge about 1 and 2, but the OSSI-interface (4) seems to be the
best candidate for a standard interface so far, for it comes closest to
the virtual machine mentioned above. However, they do not give all defi-
nition module specifications. Machine dependencies, such as WORD/BYTE,
etc. have been taken seriously, consequently and uniformly into account.
Ports have been made to (OSSI itself is also very portable) VAX/VMS,
IBM-PC/MS-DOS, Mackintosh and Unix systems (according to the article in
1986) and the Lilith. Does anyone know, or are one of the authors on
this net, how I can reach E. Biagioni (Univ. of N. Carolina) or one of the
co-authors: K. Hinrichs (id.), G. Heiser (ETH Zurich) or Carlo Muller
(Brown Boveri Research Centre) ?
Lets get a standard for M-2, before we switch over to Oberon (or Oberon-2).
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TTTTTTTTTTT UU UU Delft University of Technology
TTTTTTTTTTT UU UU
TTT UU UU Eric Maryniak, scientific programmer
TTT UU UU
TTT UU UU bitnet address: wiors12@hdetud1
TTT UU UU uucp address: mcvax!dutrun!dutrex!wiors12
TTT UU UU real address: Julianalaan 132
TTT UUUUUUUUU 2628 BL Delft, The Netherlands
Standard disclaimer: not specified yet.bbc@ethz.UUCP (Hubert Kirrmann) (09/13/88)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.modula2
Subject: Re: Modula-2 standard system interface
Summary:
Expires:
References: <INFO-M2%88090816523225@DB0TUI11>
Sender: cs2@research.abb.ch (Uwe Schult)
Reply-To:
Followup-To:
Distribution:
Organization: ABB Asea Brown Boveri, Baden/Switzerland
Keywords: OSSI
About the OSSI authors:
Ed Biagioni is moving to Japan. Klaus Hinrichs is moving to the University of
Siegen/West Germany; his long-time mail address is hinrichs@cs.unc.edu.
Gernot Heiser can be reached at {uunet,mcvax...}!iis!heiser on UUCP and
heiser@ifi.ethz.ch on CSNET. Carlo Muller's address is cs3@research.abb.ch
on CSNET.
Recently, we (i.e. the ABB Research Center) acquired the rights to further
develop and distribute the OSSI standard interface. Currently the optional
part of OSSI is being revised, expanded and implemented on VAXstation and
Macintosh II machines. This includes graphics, events and menus (see e.g.
"OSSI - A Portable Operating System Interface and Utility Library for Modula-2",
report # 79 of the 'Institut fuer Informatik', ETH Zurich, second edition,
April 1987) and additions like colors.
One task of our computer science department is to support Modula-2 programming
on various target machines (mostly VAXes, PCs and Macs). One of the OSSI
authors, Carlo Muller, is working here, and another, Klaus Hinrichs, did so
for one year. For more information about OSSI, please e-mail to the
User Interface Software group at cs2@research.abb.ch on CSNET.
-- Uwe Schult User Interface Software (CRBC2)
ABB Research Center
CH-5405 Baden/Switzerland
Note: "I work for ABB". I don't work on OSSI, but I do read all the mail. :->