Hi Bill,
First, I'd like to wish everybody on this list a Happy New Year.
Bill, I know we both agree that HyperCard is great software and that
Revolution is capable of much more than HyperCard. If I take your
list literally, however, I believe that most features on your list
were available in HyperCard one way or another. I'm also a little
supprised by some of the features you include in the list, because
they don't work in Revolution the way I would expect them to.
Without going into details, I'd like to go through your list and
comment on each item. Please be aware that I don't mean to be
offensive and I have no desire to start an endless discussion.
Op 28-dec-2007, om 11:43 heeft Bill Marriott het volgende geschreven:
I recall when HyperCard was new and it was an exciting time for
certain. The
video certainly brings back fond memories.
Randall Lee Reetz wrote...
I keep thinking we are way over due building for today what
hypercard was twenty years ago. I dont thing color and
multi-platform quite measure up to the challange.
What about
- Easy and powerful Internet functionality
In HC, this was no problem with a few externals or AppleScript.
- Ability to command a variety of multimedia
HyperCard can play QuickTime movies and dispay them on a card, just
like Revolution.
- Object-oriented graphics
With AddColor and other externals one may achieve astonoshing effects
in HyperCard and given the hardware of those days one didn't need
much more (but I admit, as Judy pointed out, there was no "real"
colorisation and I believe that HyperCard not having built-in
colorisation was a bit weird).
- XML support
You had to do this yourself, parsing XML with plain HyperTalk is not
impossible.
- Arrays
True, not available in HC, but I never missed them until they became
available in Revolution.
- Encryption
One would have to use an external in HyerCard, to deal with the
binary data.
- Greatly enhanced speed of execution
On my Mac Intel, running in SheepShaver, HyperCard is much faster
than Revolution, except if used a number cruncher. I didn't do any
serious benchmarking though, so I'm sure you'll find tasks that
Revolution does more quickly than HyperCard.
- Flexible groups
Didn't need those in HyperCard.
- Regular expressions
One might have wished for those in HC, but HC has the fastest and
most clever search engine ever created, so I never missed regex.
- Inline graphics in fields
Yup, didn't have those. Never missed them, though, and I rarely use
them in Rev and when I use them (for file lists and hierarchical
collapsible lists) it is actually a workaround for another feature
that isn't available in Rev.
- Database/SQL support
One did't need those in HyperCard, since HyperCard itself is the most
clever database ever created and could be made available on-line
using CGI. Cool!
- Additional chunk expressions
It is true that Revolution has more chunk expressions, but I wouldn't
call this an essential feature.
- Alpha mode blending and window shapes
True, graphics is an issue in HC (see above), but keep also in mind
that hardware standards of those days didn't really call for
sophisticated graphics. Window shapes were actually possible with an
external, but I never used those because it was too big a fuzz (Udi
made a very nice external for this). Even though HyperCard didn't
have anything comparable to Rev's inks, it was certainly possible to
display pictures with transparent area's correctly. It was even
possible to make pictures partly transparent, making visible the
background behind it.
- Custom properties and property profiles
Property profiles didn't work in Rev for a long time, I don't know
whether they are currently functional. Custom properties are a nice
thing in Rev, but there are other ways to do this in HC.
- Multi-statement message box
Never missed this in HC and in my personal view the Rev message box
is too cluttered with stuff I don't need and too buggy. Usually, I
use a stack with a field and execute code in that field with the do
command. I did the same in HC.
- Built-in objects like progress bars, tab controls and sliders
There are externals available for HC to display progress bars and I
emulated controls, such as tab controls, which were not natively
available.
- Tables
Tables in Revolution are emulated. There are externals for HyperCard
that do a better job, often with a limit on data size, though.
- High-quality visual effects
At the time, visual effects were quite sophisticated in HC. Of
course, new hardware creates more possibilities.
- Unicode support
Unicode in HC is better than in Rev. In HC, you don't need to think
about the fact that it is Unicode. It just works.
- Easy-to-use Geometry Manager
Please, don't use the Geometry Manager. Also, if you wanted to, you
could do exactly the same in HyperCard by script.
- Ability to run as CGI on web servers
When HyperCard became available, one would have one's own server. So,
I'd consider this a non-issue. If your web-server had Mac OS 6 or
later, you could run HC as CGI engine.
- Referenced controls
In HyperCard, all movies, colour pictures etc. would be referenced,
even if you saved them in the resource fork. I think that the big
advantage of Rev is that movies and pictures can be embedded.
- Enhanced debugging
I've never seen a better debugging system than HC, particularly in
comparison with Revolution's.
Nonetheless, Revolution allows for releasing commercial products
without the user knowing that the product was created in an xTalk
platform. Considering the quality of end-products, Revolution is
largely comparable with XCode and Visual Basic. HC cannot be compared
with the different flavours of C and Pascal available for the Mac in
the old days. So, we both agree that it is easier to create high-
quality software with Revolution than in HyperCard, and there are
even many things that one wouldn't even try to do in HyperCard.
Obviously, Revolution being cross-platoform is a huge advantage over
both HyperCard and SuperCard. However, I strongly feel that your list
of missing features doesn't do justice to the genius of the teams who
developed HyperCard.
Best regards,
Mark Schonewille
--
Economy-x-Talk Consulting and Software Engineering
http://economy-x-talk.com
http://www.salery.biz
Quickly extract data from your HyperCard stacks with DIFfersifier.
http://differsifier.economy-x-talk.com
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