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

[Joe Lewis Wilkins]

Mark,

Thanks for taking the time to point out all of these comparisons. I  
agree with most all; particularly your message box commentary. BTW,  
what is "Sheep Shaver"?

Joe Wilkins

On Jan 1, 2008, at 6:16 PM, Mark Schonewille wrote:

> 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
>