Plurix Editor
The goal of this semester project is an editor for the distributed Plurix Operating System (OS). The editor must be capable of handling any future objects being inserted into the text (e.g. graphics or charts). Furthermore it must support different font styles and sizes. As the editor will run in the Plurix environment all required run-time functions must be provided by the editor itself and the development can not rely on the huge Java class library.

The project is divided in two parts:

  • Editor: porting the modules of Moessenboeck Oberon-0 editor
  • Testing environment: developing a testing environment under Windows NT. The latter part is necessary as Plurix currently doesn’t offer a graphics engine.
During the first step all required Oberon editor modules are ported to Java. As the Moessenboeck editor relies on the viewer concept (non-overlapping windows) all viewer related modules have to be ported too. Hence the editor implements an own graphical user interface. This rudimentary user interface is composed of viewers, the menus and a simple scroll-bar. During the port an eye must be kept on Oberon var-parameters which are not supported in Java.

The second step compromises a testing environment under Windows NT. This testing environment is also written in Java and displays all graphic output of the editor in a AWT-window. The editor part never directly calls AWT functions but a well defined interface separating the two parts. The AWT-window emulates the PC screen offering pixel output capabilites. Mouse and keyboard events are passed two the editor. The interface between the editor and the emulation part should be lean - provided by a single class simplifying the port of editor to the real Plurix world.

Ulrich Schmid and Lars Weisshaar - Semester Project 1999
Department of Distributed Systems, University of Ulm