Supercard 4.8 public beta

[Richard Gaskin]

David V Glasgow wrote:

 >  I PAID in advance for the Windows version, and then switched to
 > mTropolis.  IIRC it trumpeted that it did not rely on a metaphor.
 >
 > Boy was I glad to get back to stacks & cards

For me it's not even the "card metaphor" - we could call it a "form" 
like VB does or a "page" like Toolbook and I'd be just as happy.  I 
rarely use more than one card in a window anyway.

For me the big benefit is a fully featured scripting language, and 
unlike so many others ours has GUI elements as an inherent part of the 
language. With this the code we write can reflect the user experience, 
making the process from ideation of the UX to implementation of the UI a 
breeze.

I used to think about building mTropolis or iShell in LiveCode, doable 
were it not for one thing:  I don't believe it's worth the time.

No matter how simple a development UI might _seem_, no point-and-click 
system can deliver the flexibility and expressiveness of scripted code.

Like Bill Appleton told me shortly after he left his point-and-click 
authoring tool CourseBuilder behind to make SuperCard, there's a limit 
on the complexity of systems that can be expressed clearly in any 
point-and-click UI, and ultimately code becomes the more readable option 
for any but the most trivial of programs.

After all, how many point-and-click tools used their point-and-click 
tool to build their IDE? :)

Today most of the point-and-click are gone, even the industry-leading 
Authorware, while scripting language have taken over much of the world 
to dominate applications development.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com