[link|http://www.japaninc.net/mag/comp/2000/11/nov00_filter_tron.html|TRON TRON TRON]

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"I Tron, You Tron, We All Tron
After being alternatively ignored, dismissed, and forgotten for the past 16 years, a university-industry Japanese tech collaboration is bearing new fruit as the wireless Web takes off.
by Steve Mollman
Send feedback to editors@japaninc.net

SIXTEEN YEARS AGO THE TRON project began with the vision of creating the "computerized cities of tomorrow." Headed by professor Ken Sakamura of the University of Tokyo, the project was a collaboration between university and industry, the latter represented by companies like Sony, Hitachi, and NEC but open to all. It was a grand vision that would take decades, even a century to realize, but by the mid-'90s the project was being referred to in many media outlets in the past tense as a failure.


But in fact TRON never died, and one of its offshoots, ITRON, is gaining increased relevance today as, among other things, the embedded real-time OS found in most i-mode handsets.

"The Real-Time Operating System Nucleus" came -- make that comes -- in various flavors: Business TRON, Communications TRON, Industrial TRON, (more recently) Java TRON, et cetera. Macro TRON is a sort of \ufffdberTRON that will -- who knows? -- someday connect all the TRONs in the computerized cities of tomorrow. Each flavor has achieved varying levels of usage in the world. Chances are you've used ITRON many times without knowing it -- it's in all sorts of automotive and consumer electronics products from Japan -- but it's doubtful you've ever used BTRON.

BTRON was fated to obscurity from the get-go. At the height of US-Japan trade tensions during Japan's bubble years -- when tribes of angered Detroit auto workers could be spotted on the evening news ritualistically sacrificing Toyotas -- the OS kernel was barred from being promoted in the United States (with a little encouragement from Microsoft). It's hard to imagine Windows wouldn't have clobbered it anyway, but it's a shame the BTRON specification was never given a fighting chance. It is, however, still to be found in niche desktop OSes, most notably one made by Tokyo-based Personal Media Corporation. Cho-Kanji 2, released this July, has sold 150,000 copies and is especially popular among those needing an OS with a little more character, so to speak -- it includes more than 130,000 characters, including a vast number of kanji. (Compared to the 7,000 or so characters available in a typical culturally insensitive PC.) Characters from many languages around Asia and the world are found in this double-byte OS, and even Klingon will be added shortly. The product has all sorts of cool features -- it supports a vertical writing editor, for example -- but in a Windows world, it is, sadly, a niche offering. A Japanese librarian needing to enter family names in kanji would love it, but would most likely have to partition the hard drive of his Windows machine to use it.

ITRON, on the other hand, is embedded in all sorts of intelligent consumer electronics products from Japan: audio and video equipment, microwave ovens, printers, phones, vending machines. "Millions of TRONs are out in consumers hands," says professor Sakamura, who still leads the project after 16 years. "Sony's latest camcorder has TRON, it's installed in most cell phones in Japan, and Toyota's recent model contains about a hundred microcomputers with TRON inside."

More at above link ........



WHAT IS TRON

[link|http://chokanji.hp.infoseek.co.jp/|A japanese tries to explain TRON - (He likens TRON to Unix & BTRON to Linux)]

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First of all, what is BTRON ?

I'm going to explain this according to my comprehension.

BTRON is a kind of OS for PC, such as MacOS or Windows(MS-DOS).

But, precisely speaking, TRON itself is NOTthe OS, but a specification.

I'm NOT sure this example is good, but please consider TRON as UNIX, and B-right/V as Linux.
* BTRON specification includes,
1. Multi Windows System with GUI(Graphical Users' Interface)
2. Pre-Emptive Multi Task
3. Real-Object/Virtual-Object Model

*

What is the Real-Object/Virtual-Object Model ?

This is a very difficult question.

But I believe you can consider this model as "hyper-link", like the Internet Web pages.

TRON makes it possible to link each file easily on your PC's.
*

Does TRON has other aspects ?

Yes, TRON is also called the "Enable Ware" for handi-capped(physically challenging) people.

And "B-Free" Project also exists.
* Other News Sources [E]
o National Semiconductor Japan Will Exhibit 41 Information Appliance Products at Tokyo Seminar on August 30th.
o User-UnFriendly PCs will Disappear in 10 Years

* Terminal
o Go to Index
o TRON Related Link