Oberon with Gadgets - A Simple Component Framework

We present a simple component framework that, "in a nutshell", addresses many of the archetypal aspects of component-oriented software environments, with a particular emphasis on homogeneity and uni ed concepts. Some of the topics focussed upon are a fully hierarchic notion of compound objects, persistent object representation, interactive and descriptive tools for object composition and self-contained and mobile objects. Methodological highlights are (a) a novel kind of generic object interfaces in combination with a message protocol that strictly obeys the principle of parental control, (b) a multi-purpose concept of indexed object libraries and (c) an alternative approach (compared to the Java virtual machine) to portable code, accompanied by dynamic compilation. Our framework is based on and integrated into Oberon, a language and system in the heritage of Pascal and Modula that runs both natively on Intelbased PCs or on top of a commercial operating system. Of the many projects having made use of our framework so far, three applications of a pronounced interdisciplinary character shall be mentioned brie y.