TITLE: Oberon: GoogleMaps as Desktop UI AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford DATE: July 07, 2016 2:01 PM DESC: ----- BODY: Oberon is a software stack created by Niklaus Wirth and his lab at ETH Zürich. Lukas Mathis describes some of what makes Oberon unusual, including the fact that its desktop is "an infinitely large two-dimensional space on which windows ... can be arranged":
It's incredibly easy to move around on this plane and zoom in and out of it. Instead of stacking windows, hiding them behind each other (which is possible in modern versions of Oberon), you simply arrange them next to each other and zoom out and in again to switch between them. When people held presentations using Oberon, they would arrange all slides next to each other, zoom in on the first one, and then simply slide the view one screen size to the right to go to the next slide.
This sounds like interacting with Google Maps, or any other modern map app. I wonder if anyone else is using this as a model for user interaction on the desktop? Check out Mathis's article for more. The section "Everything is a Command Line" reminds me of workspaces in Smalltalk. I used to have several workspaces open, with useful snippets of code just waiting for me to do it. Each workspace window was like a custom text-based menu. I've always liked the idea of Oberon and even considered using the programming language in my compilers course. (I ended up using a variant.) A version of Compiler Construction is now available free online, so everyone can see how Wirth's clear thinking lead to a sparse, complete, elegant whole. I may have to build the latest installment of Oberon and see what all they have working these days. -----