spontaneous use of BB1.5 open source code

[Josef Templ]

Hi folks!

Just recently I had a very positive experience regarding BlackBox 1.5 Beta,
which happened to be open sourced by Oberon microsystems.

I was sitting in a train with my laptop and did some
BB 1.4 programming. The BB text editor has the property that
it beeps when it does not find the text you are searching for.
This is Ok in principle, but I did not want to disturb my neighbours in the
train.
Switching off the loadspeakers also did not stop the beep.
So I switched my programming work to BB 1.5 (BETA), did
a search for 'Beep' in the accompanied sources and found Dialog.Beep
to be the central point for issuing beeps. I introduced a boolean
variable to switch beeping on and off and a command to toggle the
beep mode. Within a minute or two I had a silent version of the IDE
and continued my work. I did not find any incompatibilities with 1.4,
which I was a bit afraid of at the beginning. (So I consider to switch to
1.5
for all my BB work).

I found this a nice example of 'spontaneous' use of the source code of a
system,
which was only possible because it is well structured and simple enough
to be mastered more or less immediately.

Best regards and thanks to Oberon microsystems for the sources and the
structure

- JT

P.S.: Now I am going to extend the properties editor with a feature to
jump directly to the source code of links, guards and notifiers...

[Gérard Meunier]

Post by Josef Templ
Hi folks!
Just recently I had a very positive experience regarding BlackBox 1.5 Beta,
which happened to be open sourced by Oberon microsystems.
I was sitting in a train with my laptop and did some
BB 1.4 programming. The BB text editor has the property that
it beeps when it does not find the text you are searching for.
This is Ok in principle, but I did not want to disturb my neighbours in the
train.
Switching off the loadspeakers also did not stop the beep.
So I switched my programming work to BB 1.5 (BETA), did
a search for 'Beep' in the accompanied sources and found Dialog.Beep
to be the central point for issuing beeps. I introduced a boolean
variable to switch beeping on and off and a command to toggle the
beep mode. Within a minute or two I had a silent version of the IDE
and continued my work. I did not find any incompatibilities with 1.4,
which I was a bit afraid of at the beginning. (So I consider to switch to
1.5
for all my BB work).
I found this a nice example of 'spontaneous' use of the source code of a
system,
which was only possible because it is well structured and simple enough
to be mastered more or less immediately.
Best regards and thanks to Oberon microsystems for the sources and the
structure
- JT
P.S.: Now I am going to extend the properties editor with a feature to
jump directly to the source code of links, guards and notifiers...

Very nice example. Will you publish your tool open source? Thanks.

Gérard

[Chris Burrows]

Post by Josef Templ
Hi folks!
Just recently I had a very positive experience regarding BlackBox 1.5 Beta,
which happened to be open sourced by Oberon microsystems.

Great story! I agree - now that I've been spoilt with two great open source
Component Pascal systems I find it frustrating to use anything that is more
restrictive. When you know you have the freedom to get into the system and
change it to suit yourself, a lot of the minor, but niggling, irritations
that you usually get with development tools just disappear.

I find that even if I *don't* change anything, knowing that I *can* change
it if I want to, makes a huge psychological difference.

--
Chris Burrows
CFB Software
http://www.cfbsoftware.com/gpcp