VisualOberon

[Tim Teulings <tim@edge.ping.de>]

What is VisualOberon?
=====================

   VisualOberon (or short 'VO') is a collection of classes written in
the programming language Oberon-2. The classes are designed to easily
build graphical user interfaces for programs written in Oberon-2. VO is
distributed under the GNU license and it uses oo2c as development tool.

What are its main design criteria?
==================================

Simplicity:
     VO gives great layouting power to the programmer, but at the same
     time takes away as much as possible the need to handle low-level
     GUI things.  It also takes away any low-level design decisions. In
     that way it is similar to TeX. You give it a abstract description
     using layouting objects and it will make it nice and good looking
     on its own.

Extensibility:
     The used classes are designed to make them easily extensible. The
     implementation of new objects is easy and the objects can be build
     in a number of steps each of them adding new power.

Portability:
     Though VO currently only runs under X11 the library is designed to
     be portable in that way that the classes share the same interface
     among different platforms. Programs building an interface under one
     operating system should be portable without any changes to the
     code.  The class library itself is not portable in that way that
     it is implemented by making access to a special OS. VO must be
     adapted to each OS. However, VO tries to build a abstraction layer
     everywhere where its is possible to hide OS-dependent details.

     Portability goes hand in hand with the next point:

Configurability:
     Since VO should be platform independend it must be possible to get
     a native look and feel. VO archives this not by building a layer on
     the existing API of the OS, but by building its objects on its one
     and make the that flexible that their look and feel can be
     configured to adept the look and feel of the current OS. While far
     away from being perfect the current version shows which way to go.

Rich set of objects:
     To get up to date GUIs VO should support a huge variety of objects
     for every needs.

What is the current status of VO?
=================================

   * Basic object system.

   * Message system for inter object communication. Messages can be
     generated from any object and can be send to any other object in
     the object hierarchie. Handlers can be used to convert messages on
     the fly.

   * Basic support for persistence in the baseclass. Each object has an
     load and store method, objects can be recreated using their names.

   * A number of simple GUI-objects. Most common GUI objects are
     implemented. Still some of them need improvement.

   * A number of layouting objects for every day use.

   * A configuration system together with a textbase resource-file
     system and routines for simple loading, parsing, accesing and
     storing of entries in the resource database.

   * Most object support configuration via the configuration system and
     a graphical interface. Most objects can be configurated to change
     their basic look and feel.

What can *you* do?
==================

   VisualOberon still needs a lot of work. If you interested in joining
the team, because you want to write gadgets, applications or other
things like a datatype-system, a gui-builder or if you want to deal
with persistance etc..., write to one of the given addresses. Note,
that the ooc-project needs volunters, too. So if the VisualOberon
doesnt thrill you, maybe ooc does.

Adresses of mailinglist, homepage, ftp and address of the programmer:
=====================================================================

The address of the homepage is
     `http://ping.de/sites/edge/VisualOberon.html'.

The address of the mailinglist is
     <VisualOberon@edge.ping.de>.

     Write to

     <majordomo@edge.ping.de>

     for information how to get on the VisualOberon mailinglist.

The address of the author is
     <rael@edge.ping.de>.