Metacard support

[Dr.John R.Vokey]

I won't repeat Wilhelm's comments both to save space and to acknowledge 
the fact that I think most of us agree with the general sentiment.

As a long-time supporter of Metacard (MC), I, too, have lamented in 
previous posts about the directions that RR has taken.  I won't repeat 
those either.  I simply want to emphasise *one* point.  *I* (and for 
all I know, only I) use MC as I used hypercard: stacks that used 
hypercard (hc) as the interpretative engine.  To do that in hc (on old 
68k machines), hc had to be wickedly *fast*, transparent, extensible, 
and efficient.  And it was: stacks were a few k in size, and hc outran 
anything I ever encountered (especially once on the fly compilation was 
encorporated), and whole new language units were immediately at the 
user's command.  MC apparently aimed for the same goals, with, as with 
hc, stand-alone capabilities as at best a clumsy afterthought for those 
who couldn't or wouldn't use IDEs better adapted to such (e.g., ZBasic, 
then FutureBasic to name the best, and the many Fortran, Pascal, C, and 
C++ IDE/compilers to name the worst in descending order).  As with hc, 
the point was distributable *stacks*, with MC as the engine.

RR  has evolved more and more to a different, if common, approach: 
stand-alones as the ultimate, distributed product.  Yes, the IDE (like 
most of the same ilk, e.g., RealBasic) is slow and clumsy, but the 
stand-alone is fast so, what is the complaint?  Just this: I want the 
modern equivalent of hypercard (as described earlier), not a 4th GL way 
to produce bloated 2.5 GL products.

*If* the debate were simply over IDEs to produce stand-alones, there 
would be no real issue.  But, contrary to the spin, a simple change in 
IDE is not all that has happened; there has been a fundamental change 
in the underlying philosophy of the product, as evinced by the 
licensing and the recent ``closed'' aspects of the IDE.  Yes, it is 
probably only me that gives a flying ``whatever''.  But that doesn't 
make what has happened any less real.  And disappointing, and sad. (And 
please don't respond with usual tiresome, trite mantras of ``well, they 
gotta make money'' or ``it's all about market share'' or ``the new IDE 
is so much easier for the novice''--all of which may be true-- or other 
such drivel, thank you---*those* are *not* the issue).  It is the 
*philosophy* of MC that needs support, which included what used to be 
phenomenal user support, even for those that downloaded the 10-line 
version (which provided the engine for any and all MC stacks that were 
distributed).
--
John R. Vokey