Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!HDETUD1.BITNET!WIORS12 From: WIORS12@HDETUD1.BITNET (Eric Maryniak 015-782547) Newsgroups: comp.lang.modula2 Subject: Modula-2 standard system interface Message-ID: Date: 8 Sep 88 14:44:17 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: Info-Modula2 Distribution List Organization: The Internet Lines: 58 Dear Vincent, Experienced networkers at the faculty I work, told me that it is not possible to 'download' the BSI drafts, therefore I would like to ask you if you can e-mail them to me via uucp or bitnet (see adresses below). About SI Making your programs (or rather your collection of modules) portable, is a problem in M-2 indeed. At this moment we started developing a huge semantic database program (in M-2), which itself must be machine *AND* operating system independant. This can be achieved by providing a 'virtual' machine to client modules, containing I/O operations, etc. All real machine dependance (and even operating system dependance: e.g. one can define ones own file/directory structure on this virtual machine) can then be confined to the (implementation) modules of this virtual machine, from which the application modules import. In order not to invent the wheel for the nnn-th time, I've been looking in the literature for some articles. So far, I found the following: 1. BSI drafts. 2. YAML library of Robert Nagler: see net discussions. 2. Dotzel, G. 1986. A Modula-2 I/O Library Proposal. Journal of Pascal, Ada & Modula-2 5(2): 24-32. 3. Craig, J.M. et al. 1985. Design of a Modula-2 Standard Library. Journal of Pascal, Ada & Modula-2 4(2): 33-46. 4. Biagioni, E. et al. 1986. A Portable Operating System Interface and Utility Library. IEEE Software 3(6): 18-28. I cannot judge about 1 and 2, but the OSSI-interface (4) seems to be the best candidate for a standard interface so far, for it comes closest to the virtual machine mentioned above. However, they do not give all defi- nition module specifications. Machine dependencies, such as WORD/BYTE, etc. have been taken seriously, consequently and uniformly into account. Ports have been made to (OSSI itself is also very portable) VAX/VMS, IBM-PC/MS-DOS, Mackintosh and Unix systems (according to the article in 1986) and the Lilith. Does anyone know, or are one of the authors on this net, how I can reach E. Biagioni (Univ. of N. Carolina) or one of the co-authors: K. Hinrichs (id.), G. Heiser (ETH Zurich) or Carlo Muller (Brown Boveri Research Centre) ? Lets get a standard for M-2, before we switch over to Oberon (or Oberon-2). \ / / /#. # #- # / ## ## ## ## ## # # ## ## ## " " # ## ## "." ". "./ TTTTTTTTTTT UU UU Delft University of Technology TTTTTTTTTTT UU UU TTT UU UU Eric Maryniak, scientific programmer TTT UU UU TTT UU UU bitnet address: wiors12@hdetud1 TTT UU UU uucp address: mcvax!dutrun!dutrex!wiors12 TTT UU UU real address: Julianalaan 132 TTT UUUUUUUUU 2628 BL Delft, The Netherlands Standard disclaimer: not specified yet.