Oberon System Interface

オベロン・システムの画面 / 1988– / Layout / Platform Screen Languages

The screen of the system Niklaus Wirth and Jürg Gutknecht built at ETH between 1986 and 1989. Windows never overlap: the display is split into vertical tracks and each track is tiled top to bottom. Any text anywhere on the screen can be run as a command if it reads M.P and you click it with the middle button, so the system needs no menu widget at all.

Nothing overlaps: the display is cut into vertical tracks first, then tiled top to bottom inside each track / A narrow track on the right holds a log above and a text of commands below, with the wide working track on the left / A one line title bar across the top of every viewer, carrying the document name and commands such as System.Close as plain text / One bit per pixel, black on white, with borders drawn as single lines and no shadow, rounding or grey

Oberon System Interface — Oberon-0 screen, tag lines and gapless tiled surface — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 — Oberon-0 screen, tag lines and gapless tiled surface — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 ／ Oberon V4 screen, two-column tiling — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 ／ Tablet running PC Native Oberon — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

Oberon System Interface — Oberon V4 screen, two-column tiling — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 — Oberon-0 screen, tag lines and gapless tiled surface — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 ／ Oberon V4 screen, two-column tiling — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 ／ Tablet running PC Native Oberon — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

Dictionary entry

Best used for: Designing a workspace that gives up overlapping windows, where placement is decided by only two moves: which track, and where in that track · Giving a product a command list the user can rewrite, held as an ordinary editable text instead of a dedicated menu component
Type: Set commands in the same face and size as body text. Name them M.P and spell them out as words, Copy and Rename rather than cp and rn.
Composition: Cut the display into vertical tracks and divide each track horizontally. Never overlap. Keep a narrow right hand track for the log and the command text and leave the left wide. Give every viewer a one line title bar.
Material: One bit, black on white. Single pixel rules, no shadow, no rounded corners, no greys and no colour. Mark the insertion point with a hook.
Caution: Copying the tiling without the rule that any text on screen is executable forces the menu bar and the buttons back in, and all that is left is a cramped layout.
Further study: chapter 4 of Project Oberon, on why free tiling and hierarchical tiling are compared and which was chosen / the contents of System.Tool, and what it means that the command list can be edited as plain text / how consistently the three button rules hold, left for the cursor position, middle for commands, right for selection

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