Re: Status...

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

Hallo!

> the libs are fixed as their documentation is progressing.  The library
> is certainly not complete.  Some things aren't addressed yet.  IMO the
> most important missing piece is a `Locator' data type.  I envision
> this to be an ADT representing something like an URL, together with
> operations to manipulate the Locator and to attach channels to it.
> This data type would be closely connected to the various
> implementations of `Channel', permit system-independent manipulation
> of (e.g.) file names, and provide access to directory structures.
> There has been some discussion on this topic a long time ago, but no
> one has provided an implementation.

I have the number of the RFC in which the format of an URL is defined.
If someone is intersted I can send it (or even the full RFC).

As already told in the VisualOberon mailinglist (where the the mail
MvA replied too, original comes from), I started writing a set of
modules for common Algorithms and Datstructures (Trees, list, various
sort for arrays and an interface to the POSIX regular expression
library). The last time I worked at it, I found it extremly difficult
to buidl a common framework for all the stuff. The library in the
current state is not that well working. If someone is intersted, I can
put the current sources on the VO homepage.

I also ported the interface to the postgres access library. Postgres is
a semi-professional object relational SQL database system. The
interface seems to work well and I started writing some wrapper classes
to make things easier and to smoothly integrate other databse drivers.
AFor this suff contributorss are also searched.

> Documentation of more standard library modules is steadily added to

One word regarding documentation. VO contains a tool (autodoc) than can
generate ascii and texinfo output from special documentation comments
within source code. The output is manpage like (using some
modifications it could in fact be used to automatically generate man
pages!). An enhanced version of this tool could be a perfect add on for
the existing documentation. I'm also searching for contributors for
this program.

You can find the current VO documentation generated with this tool at

http://www.ping.de/sites/edge/VisualOberon.html

Vo also contains a code simple beautifier and a
Oberon-Code-to-HTML converter.

And another one: Is something like:

TYPE
  String* = POINTER TO ARRAY OF CHAR

Defined within the current OOC library? If not, this could be very
helpfull.

Also a simple type definition, like

TYPE
 Object*     = POINTER TO ObjectDesc;
 ObjectDesc* = RECORD
               END;

should be place somewhere within the current library.

> Finally an address to the public:

> If progress is too slow for you, or doesn't address at all the topics
> that are important to you, feel free to contribute.  As it is OOC is

Yes, in my opinion OOC is an excellent product which nevertheless can
be improved. How much improvement can be done diretcl depends on the
contribution of poople. Participate!

I highly value the work the creaors of OOC/oo2c have doe and want to
say a big *Thanks*! and *great work*! :-) (ok, enough of cheerleading
;-))

-- 
Gru...
       Tim.