BlackBox Component Builder

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BlackBox Component Builder
Developer(s) Oberon microsystems AG [1]
BlackBox Framework Center [2]
Initial releaseOberon/F: 1993;31 years ago (1993)
BlackBox: 1999;25 years ago (1999)
Stable release
1.7.2 / 3 November 2019;4 years ago (2019-11-03) [3]
Written in Component Pascal
Operating system Windows, Wine
Type Integrated development environment (IDE)
License BSD 2-clause [4]
Website blackboxframework.org

BlackBox Component Builder is an integrated development environment (IDE) optimized for component-based software development [5] developed by a small spin-off company, Oberon microsystems AG, [1] of ETH Zurich in Switzerland. The IDE consists of development tools, a library of reusable components, a framework that simplifies developing robust custom components and applications, and a run-time environment for components.

In BlackBox, developing applications and their components is done in the language Component Pascal, a descendant of Pascal, Modula-2, and Oberon. Component Pascal is a strongly typed, compiled language that supports modular and object-oriented programming and Eiffel-like pre- and post-condition testing using ASSERT statements. It provides full type safety, components (in the form of modules), dynamic linking of components, and automatic garbage collection to preserve memory integrity. The whole BlackBox system is written in Component Pascal and is available as source code: all library components, all development tools, including the Component Pascal compiler, and the low-level runtime system with its garbage collector.

As its name implies, BlackBox Component Builder supports blackbox abstractions and reuse, in contrast to whitebox, as defined in the book Component Software by Szyperski. [6] [7] In 1993, it was released as Oberon/F [8] [9] [10] (for Oberon Framework) and was renamed to BlackBox Component Builder with release 1.3 end of the 1990s. In December 2004, BlackBox went open source with the release of beta version 1.5. According to a posting [11] of Clemens Szyperski on Usenet news Oberon/F and in turn BlackBox Component Builder is a re-implementation of ETHOS, which was completely object-oriented version of the Oberon System, which he had implemented for his PhD thesis. [12]

As an IDE it is a quite puristic environment without syntax highlighting and code completion. Some of these tools can be integrated from the community platforms (see external links below, e.g. syntax highlighting can be found in subsystem Master). Similar to most BASIC dialects and Oberon implementations source code files are binary documents. They may contain embedded active elements (see below) and formatting.

BlackBox uses a document centered approach (as all versions of the Oberon System), which is very similar to OpenDoc. It features active elements like buttons, embedded documents, folds, drop down lists, and many more in documents and a fascinating way to create user interfaces (UIs): define the basic UI by exporting interacting variables and procedures from a module, and let the IDE create a draft document representing the UI in a so-called Form, which can be edited in the WYSIWYG editor. This approach is based on a model–view–controller (MVC) abstraction. At its start, BlackBox supported two platforms (Apple Mac, Microsoft Windows) with others planned. After Steve Jobs returned to Apple and abandoned OpenDoc, Oberon microsystems ended support for Apple Mac with release 1.3.3 around 2001. The Linux version was never released publicly by Oberon microsystems, although OpenBUGS a software package for the Bayesian analysis of complex statistical models using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods based its Linux version on it. The group around the OberonCore website in Russia has published the Linux version, and it is available on their Russian language website [13] and on Github.

In 2002, Pepperdine University professor Stanley Warford [14] published a book that teaches computing fundamentals via BlackBox. In 2014, he placed the full text under a Creative Commons license. [15]

There are at least four principal versions for MS Windows and at least one for Linux:

Center version at BlackBox Framework Center. [2]

Center version at Component Pascal Collection. [16]

Core version at Component Pascal Collection. [16]

BlackBox Oberon for MS Windows, and for Linux by A. Shiryaev, I. Denisov, I. Dehtyarenko, A. Dmitriev. [17]

Other versions are on the OberonCore Russian website. [13]

Related Research Articles

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Oberon is a general-purpose programming language first published in 1987 by Niklaus Wirth and the latest member of the Wirthian family of ALGOL-like languages. Oberon was the result of a concentrated effort to increase the power of Modula-2, the direct successor of Pascal, and simultaneously to reduce its complexity. Its principal new feature is the concept of type extension of record types. It permits constructing new data types on the basis of existing ones and to relate them, deviating from the dogma of strictly static typing of data. Type extension is Wirth's way of inheritance reflecting the viewpoint of the parent site. Oberon was developed as part of the implementation of an operating system, also named Oberon at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. The name was inspired both by the Voyager space probe's pictures of the moon of the planet Uranus, named Oberon, and because Oberon is famous as the king of the elfs.

Pascal is an imperative and procedural programming language, designed by Niklaus Wirth as a small, efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring. It is named after French mathematician, philosopher and physicist Blaise Pascal.

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Component Pascal is a programming language in the tradition of Niklaus Wirth's Pascal, Modula-2, Oberon and Oberon-2. It bears the name of the language Pascal and preserves its heritage, but is incompatible with Pascal. Instead, it is a minor variant and refinement of Oberon-2 with a more expressive type system and built-in string support. Component Pascal was originally named Oberon/L, and was designed and supported by a small ETH Zürich spin-off company named Oberon microsystems. They developed an integrated development environment (IDE) named BlackBox Component Builder. Since 2014, development and support has been taken over by a small group of volunteers. The first version of the IDE was released in 1994, as Oberon/F. At the time, it presented a novel approach to graphical user interface (GUI) construction based on editable forms, where fields and command buttons are linked to exported variables and executable procedures. This approach bears some similarity to the code-behind way used in Microsoft's .NET 3.0 to access code in Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), which was released in 2008.

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References

  1. 1 2 "Oberon microsystems AG". Oberon microsystems AG.
  2. 1 2 "BlackBox Framework Center". BlackBox Framework Center.
  3. ↑ "Download BlackBox". BlackBox Framework Center.
  4. ↑ "The 2-Clause BSD License". Open Source Initiative.
  5. ↑ Pountain, Dick; Szyperski, Clemens (May 1994). "Extensible Software Systems". Byte . Vol. 19, no. 5. pp. 57–62.
  6. ↑ Szyperski, Clemens (1999). Component Software: Beyond Object-Oriented Programming. Addison Wesley. pp. 33f, 96ff (Chap. 7). ISBN   978-0321753021.
  7. ↑ Szyperski, Clemens; Gruntz, Dominik & Murer, Stephan (2002). Component Software: Beyond Object-Oriented Programming (2nd ed.). Addison Wesley. pp. 40f, 109ff (Chap. 7). ISBN   978-0321753021.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  8. ↑ Floyd, Paul: A Discussion of Oberon. EDM/2
  9. ↑ Pountain, Dick (May 1993). "Oberon: A Glimpse at the Future". Byte . Vol. 18, no. 5. p. 111ff – via Archive.org.
  10. ↑ Pountain, Dick (January 1995). "The Oberon/F System". Byte . Vol. 20, no. 1.
  11. ↑ Szyperski, Clemens (19 April 1995). "Re: Information On Ethos". Google: comp.lang.oberon (usenet archive). Archived from the original on 20 November 2013. Retrieved 21 November 2013. These are lines 796995 - 797151 extracted from the complete archive, see also: https://github.com/btreut/NN-ETHOS.
  12. ↑ Szyperski, Clemens (1992). Insight ETHOS: On Object-Orientation in Operating Systems (PhD). Zurich, Switzerland: ETH Zürich. ISBN   3-7281-1948-2. ETHZ ecollection.
  13. 1 2 "Welcome!". OberonCore (in Russian). 2005–2021. Retrieved 22 March 2021.
  14. ↑ Warford, J. Stanley. "Stan Warford". Computer Science Laboratory. Pepperdine University . Retrieved 22 March 2021.
  15. ↑ Warford, J. Stanley (11 December 2002). Hug, Karlheinz (ed.). Computing Fundamentals: The Theory and Practice of Software Design with BlackBox Component Builder. Vieweg & Sohn. ISBN   978-3528058289 . Retrieved 22 March 2021. (chapters) and (full book).
  16. 1 2 Zinn, Helmut (22 July 2020). "Component Pascal Collection". Component Pascal Collection. Retrieved 22 March 2021.
  17. ↑ "BlackBox Component Builder". Oberon.org. 20 October 2020. Retrieved 22 March 2021.
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