Blackbox Component Builder is now free!

[Marc Martin]

Hi all,

Yesterday, Blackbox component builder was a fairly expensive piece
of software. Today, it's free, and in the near future it will also be
open-source:

http://www.oberon.ch/blackbox.html

Marc

[Ondrej Hrabal]

Post by Marc Martin
Hi all,
Yesterday, Blackbox component builder was a fairly expensive piece
of software. Today, it's free, and in the near future it will also be
http://www.oberon.ch/blackbox.html
Marc

Great news!

[Ondrej Hrabal]

I got it and tried to install it, but bad lack, the setup file seems
to be corrupted.

[Gérard Meunier]

Post by Ondrej Hrabal
I got it and tried to install it, but bad lack, the setup file seems
to be corrupted.

It works on my computer. Try to download it again.

Cheers.

Gérard

[WLad]

Post by Ondrej Hrabal
I got it and tried to install it, but bad lack, the setup file seems
to be corrupted.

Hmmm... It seems everything is OK...
But be attentive during sp1 setup. Do everything precisely like they've
written! :o)

[Ondrej Hrabal]

The entire problem was that I attempted to install it on a machine,
where I didn't have access rights to the temp directory. The installer
then writes the confusing message "Corrupt installation detected." :-)

[Chris Burrows]

Post by Marc Martin
Yesterday, Blackbox component builder was a fairly expensive piece
of software. Today, it's free, and in the near future it will also be
http://www.oberon.ch/blackbox.html

This is great news - it has to be the development tool bargain of the
decade!

To encourage and help newcomers I've started a BlackBox user's group in
Yahoo groups. All those with an interest in Oberon-2 / Component Pascal and
this amazing development system are invited to join.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blackboxusers/

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

[Gérard Meunier]

Post by Chris Burrows
To encourage and help newcomers I've started a BlackBox user's group in
Yahoo groups. All those with an interest in Oberon-2 / Component Pascal and
this amazing development system are invited to join.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blackboxusers/

Why don't you use the blackbox mailing list, which has been already
available for years?

***@oberon.ch

Gérard

[Chris Burrows]

Post by Gérard Meunier

Post by Chris Burrows
To encourage and help newcomers I've started a BlackBox user's group in
Yahoo groups. All those with an interest in Oberon-2 / Component Pascal

and

Post by Chris Burrows
this amazing development system are invited to join.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blackboxusers/

Why don't you use the blackbox mailing list, which has been already
available for years?

I do. Unfortunately, however, unless you save all of the messages somewhere
yourself, all the valuable previous history is lost. Any interesting
discussions that may have happened before you joined are not accessible.

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

[fuller]

Dear Oberon developers,
Following the announcement that Blackbox Component Builder is now
free, I have downloaded it and started to play with. Oberon is an easy
and straightforward language, and I really hope that Blackbox will
become a free alternative to Delphi.
One innocent question from a beginner with Blackbox: I have checked
the documentation for making an executable for deploying final
applications (*.exe). It seems that I need to use DevLinker.LinkExe,
with the bodies of all modules listed in the correct order.
The question is: how to figure out which are all the necessary modules
to be linked? In Freepascal, for instance, there is a smartlinker
which does automatically the job for you, based on the use/import
statements. How is in Blackbox. For instance, for making an executable
out of a minimal "hello" program,



MODULE Hello0;

IMPORT StdLog;

PROCEDURE Do*;
BEGIN
StdLog.String("Hello World"); StdLog.Ln
END Do;
BEGIN
Do
END Hello0.

If I try a simple


DevLinker.LinkExe Hello0.exe := Hello0

the result is a set of errors:

StdLog not present (imported in Hello0)
TextViews not present (imported in Hello0)
Containers not present (imported in Hello0)
Views not present (imported in Hello0)
Stores not present (imported in Hello0)
Files not present (imported in Hello0)
Models not present (imported in Hello0)
Ports not present (imported in Hello0)
Fonts not present (imported in Hello0)
Controllers not present (imported in Hello0)
Properties not present (imported in Hello0)
TextModels not present (imported in Hello0)
TextSetters not present (imported in Hello0)
TextRulers not present (imported in Hello0)

Must I manually link all these modules? Normally, the program should
figure by itself what is the minimum ncessary set, based on the
initial
IMPORT StdLog;
statement.

Could I get some help here?
Best regards,
Fuller


On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 21:35:54 GMT, "Marc Martin"

Post by Marc Martin
Hi all,
Yesterday, Blackbox component builder was a fairly expensive piece
of software. Today, it's free, and in the near future it will also be
http://www.oberon.ch/blackbox.html
Marc

[Gérard Meunier]

Post by fuller
Dear Oberon developers,
Following the announcement that Blackbox Component Builder is now
free, I have downloaded it and started to play with. Oberon is an easy
and straightforward language, and I really hope that Blackbox will
become a free alternative to Delphi.
One innocent question from a beginner with Blackbox: I have checked
the documentation for making an executable for deploying final
applications (*.exe). It seems that I need to use DevLinker.LinkExe,
with the bodies of all modules listed in the correct order.
The question is: how to figure out which are all the necessary modules
to be linked?

Making an exe with Blaclbox is possible, but not very "natural". In general,
it's easier to develop applications within the framework. But there exists a
tool that helps automating the job: the menu command Info->Create Tool, that
you'll call after having selected the list of the module(s) you wish to
include. See the doc files in Dev/Docu/ for further informations,
particularly Dev/Docu/Dependencies.odc, Dev/Docu/Linker.odc &
Dev/Docu/Packer.odc.

Post by fuller
MODULE Hello0;
IMPORT StdLog;
PROCEDURE Do*;
BEGIN
StdLog.String("Hello World"); StdLog.Ln
END Do;
BEGIN
Do
END Hello0.

Won't work. You should not call Hello0.Do from the body of the module, but
from another module or a command. If you want to run it at startup, you
should call it from the Config.Setup procedure (found in
System/Mod/Config.odc). Look at System/Docu/Config.odc for other
explanations.

For a "not too complicated" example of stand-alone application, see e.g. the
file Tabmult/Docu/Make.odc in http://www.zinnamturm.de/#Tabmult.

Cheers.

Gérard

[fuller]

Thanks Gerard,
It looks a bit clearer now. I still think that the developers of
Blackbox should pay attention to an efficient "package-and-release"
cycle, but nevertheless I like what I have seen until now. It is a
fine piece of software.
Is there anything implemented in Blackbox for data acquisition or
signal processing? I assume that a killer application, like an
alternative to Labview/Agilent VEE, would boost its popularity.

Thanks again.
Fuller

Post by Gérard Meunier

Post by fuller
Dear Oberon developers,
Following the announcement that Blackbox Component Builder is now
free, I have downloaded it and started to play with. Oberon is an easy
and straightforward language, and I really hope that Blackbox will
become a free alternative to Delphi.
One innocent question from a beginner with Blackbox: I have checked
the documentation for making an executable for deploying final
applications (*.exe). It seems that I need to use DevLinker.LinkExe,
with the bodies of all modules listed in the correct order.
The question is: how to figure out which are all the necessary modules
to be linked?

Making an exe with Blaclbox is possible, but not very "natural". In general,
it's easier to develop applications within the framework. But there exists a
tool that helps automating the job: the menu command Info->Create Tool, that
you'll call after having selected the list of the module(s) you wish to
include. See the doc files in Dev/Docu/ for further informations,
particularly Dev/Docu/Dependencies.odc, Dev/Docu/Linker.odc &
Dev/Docu/Packer.odc.

Post by fuller
MODULE Hello0;
IMPORT StdLog;
PROCEDURE Do*;
BEGIN
StdLog.String("Hello World"); StdLog.Ln
END Do;
BEGIN
Do
END Hello0.

Won't work. You should not call Hello0.Do from the body of the module, but
from another module or a command. If you want to run it at startup, you
should call it from the Config.Setup procedure (found in
System/Mod/Config.odc). Look at System/Docu/Config.odc for other
explanations.
For a "not too complicated" example of stand-alone application, see e.g. the
file Tabmult/Docu/Make.odc in http://www.zinnamturm.de/#Tabmult.
Cheers.
Gérard

[Dominic]

Post by fuller
Is there anything implemented in Blackbox for data acquisition or
signal processing? I assume that a killer application, like an
alternative to Labview/Agilent VEE, would boost its popularity.

It probably needs a decent open-sourced command-line
compiler for UNIX and WINDOWS plus documentation plus a
convenient foreign function interface plus some
libraries (data structures, sockets, graphics) to start with.
From what I have seen there exist quite a lot stand-alone
compilers for various Oberon dialects, but they are
focused on research, which is ok. Maybe Oberon for .net
could qualify since it should have access to the entire
.net framework. The native Oberon-systems
are really interesting (BlueBottle), since e.g. they
need no distinction between user- and kernel-space etc.
But not everyone is going to boot into Oberon to use e.g.
an instant messenger ;-) Usually users do not care what
language their applications are written in. It seems to me
that it is more important how useful they are, how much
memory they need, speed matters and of course reliability
and stability. From what I have read Oberon claims to be a safe
language, it's implementations have modest memory requirements
and decent code quality. So it ought to be perfect!?

I can only assume that chances are low to find
data acquisition tools written in Oberon. However
I must admit that it would very interesting to
compile kernel modules - in Oberon - for RT-Linux or
RTAI-Linux, in combination with COMEDI-DAQ drivers.
A potential real-time native Oberon-OS has the disadvantage
that drivers for DAQ-boards would have to be written first,
which is quite tedious and error prone to do.


Ciao,
Dominic

P.S. Still wondering, if anyone is using Oberon besides Niklaus Wirth...

[Chris Burrows]

Post by fuller
Is there anything implemented in Blackbox for data acquisition or
signal processing? I assume that a killer application, like an
alternative to Labview/Agilent VEE, would boost its popularity.

For Data Acquisition have a look at Wojtek Skulski's Data Acquisition and
Monitoring Toolbox. For Signal Processing see Robert Campbell's Filter
package. Both of these can be downloaded from Helmut Zinn's Component Pascal
Collections page.

http://www.zinnamturm.de

AFAIK these are libraries to assist you to develop your own applications
rather than and end-user tool like Labview.

The two presentations given by the same authors at the recent Oberon Day at
Cern might also be of use to you:

Experiment control and data acquisition using BlackBox Component Builder W.
Skulski (U of Rochester)

Industrial experience with an engineering perspective R.D. Campbell (BAE
Systems)

http://ftkachov.home.cern.ch/ftkachov/programme.html

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

[n***@top-post]

What OS does this need: WinYZ, linux or standalone on a
86386 like native-oberon ?

== Chris Glur.

[Chris Burrows]

Post by n***@top-post
What OS does this need: WinYZ, linux or standalone on a
86386 like native-oberon ?

The latest version, BlackBox v1.4, needs a Win32 system.

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