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

Ken Ray kray at sonsothunder.com
Wed Jan 2 10:42:27 EST 2008


On Wed, 2 Jan 2008 03:16:53 +0100, Mark Schonewille wrote:

> First, I'd like to wish everybody on this list a Happy New Year.

Same to you, Mark!
 
> 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.

I read your responses, and the first thing I did was perform the same 
comparisons you did relative to my personal experience with HC since I 
stood in line to get a box the first day it was released in my area... 
the funny thing is that most of the things you mention you didn't need 
were things I longed for in the stacks I was building, or had to have 
some extraordinary workaround to accomplish the goals I was targeting.

Not to belittle any of your comments, or the genius of the people who 
built HyperCard - quite the opposite - the point is that HyperCard (and 
the other xTalks that followed, including Revolution), were/are used by 
a wide variety of people with a diverse set of experiences, markets, 
needs, and desires. So while we may have opposite opinions of where Rev 
falls compared to HC, I respect your opinion nonetheless. 

As to how much better/worse/the same Rev is in comparison to HC, while 
it would be a n interesting roundtable discussion, the only thing I can 
say is "your mileage may vary" (YMMV).

:-)


Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software, Inc.
Email: kray at sonsothunder.com
Web Site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/



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