ETH PlugIn Oberon for Windows 9x / ME / NT / 2000 Oberon is both the name of a programming language and operating system developed at ETH Zuerich. This particular distribution contains an implementation of ETH PlugIn Oberon Release 2.4 for Windows 9x / ME / NT / 2000. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Hardware: - 20 MB of hard disk space. - Preferably a screen with a resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels with at least 32768 colors. - Preferably a three-button mouse and a mouse driver that supports all three mouse buttons. A 2-button mouse may be used instead but with less comfort. Software: - Microsoft Windows 9x / ME / NT / 2000 INSTALLATION OF OBERON Oberon is delivered as a number of self-extracting EXE files. System1.exe - Oberon and Gadgets system files, tools, libraries, panels System2.exe - Oberon and Gadgets object files Docu.exe - Documentation and books Src.exe - Source code for all system modules Fonts.exe - Windows display fonts (*.FON) PrFnt.exe - 600 and 200 dpi printer fonts. AppsAH.exe - Application Packages A .. H AppsIZ.exe - Application Packages I .. Z Installation step-by-step If you re-install Oberon or upgrade your Oberon version, it is strongly recommended to install Oberon in a new directory. Once you have configured your new Oberon system you can copy files from the old installation as you need them. To remove registry entries of a previous Oberon installation use the OberonReg.exe utility. 1. Create a new directory, e.g. C:\ETHOberon. This newly created directory will be called "Oberon directory" for the rest of this document. 2. Extract the files System1.exe, System2.exe, Docu.exe and Src.exe to the Oberon directory, by executing the EXE files. 3. Merge the settings in oberon.reg with your windows registry by selecting the "Merge" entry in the context menu of the oberon.reg icon. 4. Drag the Oberon.EXE file from the Oberon directory to your desktop to create a shortcut. Double-click the Oberon icon to start Oberon. 5. In older version of Oberon for Windows you could use the "Ctrl" key to simulate a missing middle mouse button. This version features a new emulation scheme for your missing middle mouse button. See Distribution.Text for more details. 6. The command System.Quit terminates the Oberon application. The Oberon application may also be terminated by closing all windows. 7. For faster text output you may install the Windows versions of the Oberon bitmap fonts. Extract the files in Fonts.exe to a temporary directory and start the "Fonts" control panel application and choose the "File / Install New Font" menu entry. A "Add Font" dialog will pop-up, locate the Oberon font files (*.Scn.Fnt) in the temporary directory and start the installation by clicking on "Ok". 8. For further setup steps see: Setup.Tool. RELEASE NOTES "Oberon System 3" and "ETH Oberon" As you may allready have noticed, that we use now the name "ETH Oberon" for "Oberon System 3". Mouse In older version of Oberon for Windows you could use the "Ctrl" key to simulate a missing middle mouse button. Since this conflicts with commonly used shortcuts (Clipboard, ...), you must use the context menu key (Win95 keyboard) as middle mouse button replacement. Note: this release does also support 2-button mice directly, see: Mouse.Text. To check how mouse buttons are mapped by your Windows mouse driver use the TestMouse.exe utility. Registry By default module Registry stores settings under the key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ETH PlugIn Oberon\Release 2.4 This key is constructed using the version resource entries "FileDescription" and "FileVersion" found in oberon.exe (or oberon.dll). You can override the "FileVersion" part by providing a new version string as command line parameter to oberon.exe. E.g.: oberon.exe -Registry=MyVersion will start an Oberon system which reads its settings from: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ETH Oberon\MyVersion Note: command line parameters passed to oberon.exe are append to the Oberon.Text in a section called CommandLine. Thus to get the value for a command line parameter named "Name" use Oberon.OpenScanner(S, "CommandLine.Name"). Display Module Display is now based on a new module Displays. This makes it possible to use multiple logical displays. Where a display is either an application window, control window or an offscreen bitmap. This is the basis for technologies like "Oberon Documents on the Windows Desktop", "ActiveX controls" or the "Netscape Browser Plugin". Fonts The Fonts module has been split into the modules Fonts and WinFonts. By default module WinFonts handles both screen (.Scn.Fnt) and printer (.Prx.Fnt, .Mdx.Fnt) fonts. The metric problem with Syntax20b.Scn.Fnt (and other Fonts) has been fixed in Win32.FontRes.Mod. The new .fon files can be found in Fonts.exe. WinPrinter Printing of color text using Oberon bitmap fonts still does not work with all printer drivers. The problem seems to be, that some drivers do not implement all features of GDI32.BitBlt. When using true-type fonts printing of color text should work with any driver. Using the postscript driver provided by Adobe (see: http://www.adobe.com/supportservice/custsupport/LIBRARY/pdrvwin.htm) color text is printed correctly. Suggestion: If printing using WinPrinter does not work with your setup use either the postscript driver provided by Adobe or use a PSPrinter based printer driver. If you do not have a postscript printer, I recommend using Ghostscript (see: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/). PSPrinter There are two new variants of the Oberon PSPrinter. GhostPrinter: Postscript is printed using your existing Ghostscript installation. For installation details see: Printers.Tool. WinPSPrinter: The postscript output of PSPrinter is redirected to any Windows (postscript) printer queue. For installation details see: Printers.Tool. Timer overflow The time value returned by Input.Time or Oberon.Time is a signed 32 bit value. After 25 days this counter will overflow. If you use Oberon.Task, Displays.SelectMsg or Oberon.SelectMsg you should use the following work arounds: Oberon.Task: Initialize the time field with Oberon.Time. If you initialize time to 0, the task may not run for the following 25 days! Oberon.GetSelection, Gadgets.GetSelection: time is set to -1 if no selection exists. Thus checking time > 0 does only work within the first 25 days! Oberon.GetSelection(text, beg, end, time) IF time # -1 THEN (* selection available *) END Displays.SelectMsg, Oberon.SelectMsg: Initialize the time field to -1 before broadcasting a SelectMsg. Oberon Documents on the Windows Desktop In this release Documents and Desktops can be opened in their own window using the commands Desktops.OpenWinDoc and Desktops.OpenWin. To use this kind of desktop as default, install the package Win included in System1.exe (see "Configuring the Display Screen" in Setup.Tool). Note that new windows use the default placeing and sizeing of Windows. Once you have stored a document, it will remember its position and size on the Windows desktop. This values are used the next time the document is opened on the Windows desktop. Application Packages All the available application packages are distributed in 3 self-extracting EXE files PrFnt.exe, AppsAH.exe and AppsIZ.exe. The packages TUI, GUI, Desk, Win, Network and PictConverters are included in System1.exe. The package Developer is included in Src.exe. For networked installation of application packages you must first install the Oberon Web browser (Packages.Install Network.oaf). A complete list of all available packages and some browser plugin examples can be found at: "http://www.cs.inf.ethz.ch/~zeller/Apps/" Netscape Browser Plugin This release includes an alpha version of the Oberon Netscape browser plugin. (see: PlugInsGuide.Text and NPPlugIn in Packages.Tool). OLE / ActiveX Server This release includes an experimental version of an Oberon ActiveX server. Thus you may use any Gadget as a visual or none-visual ActiveX component in popular ActiveX containers like VisualBasic, Internet Explorer, WordPad .... To learn more about the OLEObjects package see PlugInsGuide.Text. Known Problems and Bugs in this Release - Module Display does not support palette animation - Window updates are slow - Print preview does not work with the Netscape browser plugin - WinPrinter and color text printing using Oberon fonts - pressing all three mouse buttons on Windows ME does not work LEGAL INFORMATION ETH Oberon & ETH PlugIn Oberon Copyright (C) 1990-2000 Institut fuer Computersysteme ETH Zuerich Permission to use, copy, modify or distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and that the name of ETH not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software without specific, written prior permission. ETH disclaims all warranties with regard to this software, including all implied special, indirect or consequential damages or any damages whatsoever resulting from loss of use, data or profits, whether in an action of contract, negligence or other tortious action, arising out of or in connection with the use or performance of this software. Oberon, Gadgets, Native Oberon, Oberon System 3, ETH Oberon and ETH PlugIn Oberon are trademarks of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. Microsoft, MS, MS-DOS, NT, Win32, Win32s, Windows, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT and Windows 2000 are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. IBM and OS/2 are trademarks of IBM Corporation. Intel and Pentium are trademarks of Intel Corporation.