Engelbart and Kay --was: Back to the Future with Hypercard

[Mark Schonewille]

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

--

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