# Oberon/Glossary

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Also refer to the glossary in the Wikipedia article. 2.3.6, 2.3.7, release numbers of the last releases of ETH Oberon from the ETHZ. GofU, for A2, the file name extension denoting "Generic object file, Unix, x86, 32 bit". Refer to the A2 page. Active Oberon, the dialect appearing in system A2. Ref. Active Oberon. BRAM, Block Addressable Random Access Memory, as used in the FPGA machine. Columbus, a software tool in ETH Oberon used to inspect and modify gadget attributes and to add a new attribute to a gadget. Usage described in the tutorial. Definition ( or Module Definition), a summary of a module presenting constant declarations, type declarations, variable declarations and procedure headings. fixup, the conversion from address relative to the base address of a module, to absolute address. Refer to V5#Fixup and Extended Oberon#Fixup. fold, a functionality of Text in V4 and BlackBox documents similar to collapsible in HTML. Several folds in a file can be grouped by name and their state can switched together; this allows for maintaining multiple source versions in one file. Gadgets, software infrastructure in ETH Oberon providing graphical entities and a graphical user interface. Usage described in the Gadgets tutorial pages. gadget, an end-user object in the Gadgets system. A button is a simple instance of a gadget. A text gadget is a more complex instance. Inner core, a significant architectural entity in an Oberon system. Refer to System Startup. INTEGER, an integer type in most Oberon systems. Interclick, a click of a mouse button while holding another button. MM+MR below is an example. The mouse tutorial has additional details. When editing a Text at least six interclick combinations are meaningful. Juice, an alternative to Java based on a portable representation of the abstract syntax tree and on-the-fly compilation also known as OMI (see below). The source code can be found at Github and three forks of it (as of 11.Aug.2021). Ref. Juice. Lola-2, a hardware description language developed by Niklaus Wirth. Ref. Lola-2.
LDPSR, Load Processor Status Register, allows software to establish whether the processor can handle interrupts. Refer to https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/FPGA-relatedWork/RISC-Arch.pdf , Section 5, Interrupts. Discussion in the mailing list begins at 2021-03-30. LinzOberon, an implementation of V4. Ref. mailing list, 2020-11-28. LONGINT, an integer type in ETH Oberon. Synonymized to INTEGER in the current V5. LUT, look up table of FPGA. Referenced when quantifying the size of a FPGA device. ML, the left button of the mouse or a click of that button, depending on context. Ref. Mouse support and Mouse tutorial. Abstract meaning: specify a location. Example: locate an insertion point in a Text. MM, the middle button or the wheel of the mouse, or a click of the button or wheel, depending on context. Abstract meaning: invoke an action. Example: execute a command. MR, the right button of the mouse or a click of that button, depending on context. Abstract meaning: select an extent. Example: select a character sequence in a Text. MM+MR, a click of the right button while holding the middle button or the wheel of the mouse. MR here is termed an "interclick". In a Text, take the word under the mouse pointer as the name of a file and open the text editor on it. MR+ML, a click of the right button while holding the left button of the mouse. When editing a Text, select characters and delete them. ML+MM+MR, nullification of an inadvertent mouse click. MT, in ETH Oberon, the mouse type configuration string. MT, in V5, the constant address of the module table. native, modifies the name of an Oberon system to indicate that it is installed on bare hardware; distinguishing from a subsystem such as UnixA2 installed atop a host system. Oberon.Text, a file in ETH Oberon and in A2O specifying system configuration. Oberon Trilogy, the three books Programming in Oberon, The Oberon System and Project Oberon; the first three books in the bibliography.
OMI/Slim binary (Oberon Module Interchange), a mechanism created by Michael Franz and Thomas Kistler allowing efficient portability of any module between differing systems. The language from this work was named Juice. Compare with Apple Fat binary. Slim binaries are mentioned in compilers page in the section "Compiler deployment in ports no longer updated". Outer core, a significant architectural entity in an Oberon system. Refer to System Startup. .odc, the conventional file name extension for a BlackBox/Oberon-F file (short for Oberon DoCument) quite similar internally to Oberon Text format.
(** any comment *), appears in some module sources. It means that any comment is an exported comment. A tool named Def produces a module interface file with this comment included, thus enhancing internal documentation. PACO PArallel COmpiler. Appears in A2. Compiles each scope in an independent thread. PICL, a programming language for the PIC microcontrollers. Ref. PICL. (** portable *), this comment in ETH Oberon marked a module where OMI/Slim binary code was portable across platforms. More generally, it means there were no SYSTEM dependencies or machine specificities. This exported comment appears in the documentation created by the above mentioned browser, Def, which was integrated into a tool called Watson in ETH Oberon. Registry, the content of Oberon.Text specifying file system aliases, sound adapter parameters, LinkSchemes, MIME types and etc. SB, in V5, the static base address. The base address for variables in the current module. SHORTINT, an integer type in ETH Oberon. Not in V5. SIZE, a signed integer type pertaining to memory address in A2. The difference of two addresses can be negative. New numeric types appeared in rev.9475. SP, in V5, the stack pointer address. Symbol file, a linearized excerpt of the symbol table of the compiler. The file contains descriptions of all exported objects. Ref. section 12.6.2 of Project Oberon, 2013 Edition. See also Symbol table in the Wikipedia. Watson, a tool capable of extracting a module definition from a definition file, module file, module Text or object file. Usage described in the tutorial. WTS, Write To Script, refers to Write and Script variants of Text document and conversion of a Write Text to a Script Text. Write is in V4 and Script is in ETH Oberon.

# Footnotes

* ↑ 2.3.6 and 2.3.7 were the most frequently cited release numbers. A hypothesized interpretation is MajorNumber.MinorNumber.PatchNumber. In this interpretation, Ceres Oberon would be represented by MajorNumber 1 and ETH Oberon by 2. Apparently MinorNumber releases preceding 3 were limited to the ETH. 2.3.7 patches bugs in and is backward compatible to 2.3.6. Patch releases prior to 6 were also limited to the ETH.
* ↑ Explained further in the Oberon mailing list at 2019-02-09.
* ↑ A Text can include non-character objects. Any object in the selection is also deleted.
* 1 2 3 Refer to section 8.1 , page 104 in Project Oberon, 2013.
* ↑ Renaming of numeric types in A2
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