Project Oberon Emulator in JavaScript and Java

There was a link to a paper giving a retrospective on Oberon on HN some days ago, and that made me want to play around with it. After trying an older now unsupoorted variant from the ETH site which segfaulted, I downloaded Oberon Linux Revival (http://oberon.wikidot.com/), and it worked for me. All files are kept in a single directory, and this includes the complete source (.Mod files), so you can browse these from Linux after dealing with the line endings (e.g. convert \r to \n using tr). There's no native Linux source, everything is written in Oberon. X11 is surprisingly accessed using the wire protocol directly.

Actually, about half of the Oberon system must even be compiled first (using the "recipe" in OLR.Gadgets.Tool) before these programs can be used in Oberon. There's also documentation in form of a "book" (Desktops.OpenDoc Book.Tool) which explains the system on various levels, including the Oberon language.

The font size turned out to be too small on my screen (because the bitmapped screen fonts where made for different hardware), and the fonts are hardlinked from the documents, so I shuffled the *.Scr.Fnt files about two sizes down and everything was readable. I also replaced Default.Pal with Light.Pal for better contrast. You can use the OWEIGHT and OHEIGHT environment variables to set the window size.

All in all, the "TUI" (textual user interface) is really nice. There are indeed similarities with Smalltalk, Emacs, or the Plan 9 ACME system philosophy (which is probably not surprising, all of those take a "integrated modifiable system for coders" approach).

It seems to be fine in Firefox 40.0.2 on Windows. Edit: Although I find I cannot use the mouse pointer at the far right of the canvas, for example to click the boxes which I assume are "close pane".

Should be the other way about as Oberon came before Plan9.

Plan 9's Acme editor was influenced by Oberon, as I recall.