Thoughts on screed about HC and Applescript

[Jim Witte]

Hi,

   A couple days ago, I submitted a long screed to Apple's Bugreporter 
(probably not the best place) as a feature request for Applescript.  
Then I posted it to the "Applescript Users" mailing list.  The 
reactions were not exactly pretty.  I'm wondering what people here 
think, since Rev is closer to HC (IMO) than AS is, especially my point 
at (1) about Cocoa and AS Studio being more 'intimidating' that HC, and 
my general idea of "desktop programming"?

   BTW, could Rev be used to do such "Desktop programming" - i.e. have a 
stack that would have a "clear" card (not opqaue) such that clicks to 
the card (but not objects on it which had scripts) would be passed to 
applications "underneath" the stack?

   You'd have to be able to make a "clear" card, and either have Rev sit 
on the very bottom of the windowing stack or the very top - probably 
the bottom, as to really integrate nicely, it would be desireably to 
have the ability to, say, you could put a Finder icon (MacOS) right 
next to a button in the Rev app, even if the Rev app had a field across 
from the button, like this:

[Rev button]  [Finder icon]  [Rev field]

   The button and field would be part of the application, but the icon 
would have to sit between them.  The only way I can see this happening 
is if the Rev stack were at the bottom of the windowing stack.  And it 
*might* have to stay there, even when it's controls were activated.

   This might be an interesting idea for the Windows/Mac/Linux? GUIs of 
Rev to be able to do in the future..

-- "The Screed" --
   It would be SO nice if in Applescript I could simply write:

put 5 into tVar
put "set x to" && quote & tVar & quote && "+10" into tCommand
[...]

than the rather cumbersome (and much less Englishlike)

set tVar to 5  -- or equivalently 'copy 5 to tVar'
set tCommand to "set x to \"" & tVar & "\"+10"
[...]

First of all, the word 'quote' is just easier on the eye than the 
escape-double-quote, except perhaps for people who are used to reading 
Perl for a living - which I don't think AS's audience is.

The && operator for concatenation with a space is not as intuitive, but 
it is simple, and accomplishes a function that one often wants to do 
when composing text.  It is both easier (some would say more concise) 
than using the 'space' keyword, and is easier on the eyes than writing 
"this string " & "has a space in it" with the space at the END of the 
first string literal - the eye can VERY easily miss that space, or 
worse, delete it by mistake.

   As for the 'put' command - I have never liked AS's 'set' command - it 
makes sense to *set* properties such as the height of an object.  It 
does not however make as much sense to "set" a variable.  It makes 
sense, but it's not what people generally say when they are referring 
to real world containers, which after all, are what variables are - 
containers.  One never says "I set water into the bucket".  HC 
succeeded because the programming language metaphors matched the 
real-world metaphors they were trying to emulate.  AS doesn't do this 
as much (and I have written quite a lot of HC in my time, and a fair 
amount of AS too)

   The 'copy' command is closer to the English language usage, but 
again, not quote.  To copy implies that the destination already exists, 
and that the source will continue to exist after the execution.  This 
is true with variables, but it is also (assummed) true with 'put' and 
'set' as well (that's where the metaphorical relation between 
computer-variables and real-world-objects breaks -  the contents of 
variables are almost ALWAYS copied, whereas real-world objects cannot 
be generally)

   'Set' also brings to mind to possibility that it is performing a 
refernce-copy instead of a value - like a 'clone' command (from 
NewtonScript).  Which of course it doesn't either.

   When AS came out, I had hoped that I would either be able to type in 
HC scripts I had been writing for years *exactly* as they had been, and 
have them work (as far as they would - as HC had no application-object 
model), or that they would with very minor changes.  Alas, that didn't 
happen, and it *continues* to frustrate me to this day, because I write 
something that would have worked in HC, and it doesn't in AS, and I 
can't figure out why.

   Most often this has to do with coercian of variables that didn't seem 
to be a problem in HC (having to write kludgy-looking things as 
"display dialog (tFile as string)" instead of having the AS compiler 
know enough to do the coercian of a file refernce to a string 
automatically.  But that's another bug report - I'll have to come up 
with specific examples.

   Generally, I would hope that Apple would resurect the entire HC 
language syntax, and re-create it as an AS dialect (if those still 
exist in the current codebase - I know they did at one point).  This 
would be of great benefit if there are still a bunch of HyperCard 
veterans like me out there (I don't know), especially if Applescript 
Studio were reworked into an interface as easy to use as HC (instead of 
requiring one to use xCode and IB, which while much more powerful, is 
also somewhat intimidating than just having a little palette with 15 or 
18 buttons on it, creating little buttons, and editing their scripts 
all in one place..

   Hypercard was one of the most innovative, possibly THE most 
innovative application or technology on the Mac ever, aside from the 
Mac itself.  In my opinion, it should have been integrated directly 
into the system and Finder (buttons and fields on the desktop, in 
folders, etc), and made into a system scripting lanuage, combining what 
later was to be AppleEvents and AppleScript functionality, as well as 
UI scripting like QuicKeys.  Network support should have been added, 
and more robust data transfer capabilities.  If that had been done, HC 
would have been a platform for user-level programming (which it already 
was), and more so, for "user GUI design" - a concept which does not 
currently exist in ready form on either MacOSX OR Windows.  SmallTalk 
and Squeak may have parts of it (I haven't played with thse much).  
This kind of technology, coupled with easily-accessible 
application-control and UI-scripting (comparable in part to VBA on 
Windows and a number of disparate pieces on MacOS including QuicKeys, 
iKey, AppleScript Studio, and MetaCard) YEARS before Windows did.  With 
network ability, scripting ability (equivalent to JavaScript), and 
multimedia capabilities, HC could have formed the basis for the World 
Wide Web, taking the place of, or combining with the current protocols 
of HTML, XML, DHTML, JavaScript, Java, and all sorts of CGI platforms, 
as well as WebObjects. [some may recognize that last line..]

   Apple could still put together this "user GUI design" paradigm on the 
desktop end - and work toward integrating it more closely with Java, 
JavaScript, DHTML and the DOM, and WebObjects on the enterprise size - 
even now.  It would undoubtedly be harder (technically and 
logistically), and the payoff would be much more uncertain, but if done 
correctly, it could possibly create the next interface revolution for 
the 21st century, after the desktop-metaphore pioneered at Xerox-PARC.  
It already exists in small forms in Squeak and some Java environments, 
but it has yet to reach the mainstream, and I believe will never reach 
the mainstream unless a large company commits to it.  MS is probably 
not going to do so, or it likely already would have.

   Plus, for users, the "Steve Jobs keynote selling-point demonstration" 
is obvious: how would you like to be able to create a customizable list 
of stock quotes that would always be on your desktop, yet roll away at 
the click of a mouse, in only 6 lines of code?  And it would take you 
less than 5 minutes to do." and it could be done, eith HC and SOAP 
queries..

-- (my further commentary from later on in the discussion on the 
Applescript list) --

   Actually, either live SuperCard or Runtime Revolution.  Supercard I 
think is a bit (or a lot - I haven't used it since v3) more polished, 
but Revolution has a lot of potential.

   And I didn't mean by the comment that "Hypercard was one of the most 
inovative (blah)" and the bit about the system integration that it 
can't be done - it certainly can, and faster.  I wouldn't even want to 
*think* about writing a web browser in HC - but I might using 
Revolution or Applescript Studio .  Nor did I mean that HC should be 
resurrected as it - God no.  HC was the beginning, but it *is* dead 
now, and has been for a while (no color, very little or no multi-window 
support, little real menu support, etc - I never looked much at the 2.2 
version).

   All these things *can* be done, and quite quickly given the tools - 
which are now freely available in xCode.  I'm saying that if the 
functionality of AppleScript Studio were available on the desktop 
(rather than as a separate app), it might get a bigger a bigger 
user-base.  How much bigger, I don't know.

(1)
I just have a feeling that Cocoa programming, and perhaps even 
Applescript studio programming, is seen as more intimidating that HC 
was, because of the design interface.  I'm very possibly wrong on that, 
but I remember seeing a *lot* of stuff relating to HC (the DevStack 
collections, other external collections, reams of educational software) 
and I'm not sure if that is happening with Applescript Studio, although 
AS Studio still is relatively new.

-- (another response, to a (non-favourable) comment someone made about 
my distinction between 'set' and 'put') --

Subject of this email: Re: "Putting minutes into timers..." (this 
becomes clear quite soon)
>>> (I had written)
>>>    As for the 'put' command - I have never liked AS's 'set' command 
>>> - it
>>> makes sense to *set* properties such as the height of an object.  It
>>> does not however make as much sense to "set" a variable.
>> (The complainer [John. C] had written)
>> It's quite natural. Do you put five minutes into a timer? Of course 
>> not, you
>> set the timer for 5 minutes. That's the real way you set values.
> (The 'peace maker' had written)
> Well, that's the way _you_ think of it; and Jim thinks of it a 
> different
> way. And don't get Howard Gardner started, or we'll be here all night.

   Interesting here, that John C. exactly makes my point: a timer is an 
object, not a container.  According to my human-language/real-world 
metaphorical model, you use set with objects and put with containers, 
so you would *not* "put 5 minutes into a timer".

   This is starting to look like an interesting programming-psychology 
experiment..

   And I'm starting to feel like a fool.  I just wish Apple hadn't let 
HC sit for so long...

Jim