Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!bu-cs!dartvax!eleazar.dartmouth.edu!sean
From: sean@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Sean P. Nolan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: Problem running script with locked screen
Message-ID: <16461@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Date: 2 Nov 89 04:36:45 GMT
References: <1649@gmdzi.UUCP> <8871@hoptoad.uucp>
Sender: news@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU
Reply-To: sean@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Sean P. Nolan)
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Lines: 38

In article <8871@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) writes:
>What's that?  You missed that property?  Well, that's probably because
>they didn't bother to put it in, despite the fact that HyperCard must
>and does keep track of this quantity internally.  It's one of many
>places where HyperCard simply does not give you the information you
>need to do what you want.  (And you can't compute it yourself from the
>number of lines, because that doesn't take wrapping into account.)

Fair enough. A necessary feature (or at least one that would be very useful)
is missing. So you tell Apple about it.

>If this were one of the few places where this happened, I wouldn't
>bother to bitch about it here.  But it isn't.  
> [goes on to harsh on Apple about limitation of Hypertalk]

Unfair. Hypercard is a revolutionary idea; Hypertalk even more so. Constructed
in such a way that virtually anyone can not only use, but PROGRAM their 
computers - jeez, it's almost english. OK. So because they're missing a few
capabilities, somehow they've done us some great injustice. It's only
version 1.2.5 now. Hypercard is a project of tremendous magnitude -- they
keep track of buttons, fields, window updates, dialog boxes, message handlers,
on and on and on. The point being that the difference of HyperTalk is you
can just say "do this" instead of having to worry about initializing managers,
passing stuff to DAs, updating windows, etc. 

I don't know how coherent that was. But I don't think anyone really thought
that Hypercard would explode like it has. It's an incredible piece of work.
Give a little credit; don't act like they've somehow cheated us. The features
will come.

--- Sean

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| Sean P. Nolan     | Net: Sean_Nolan@Mac.Dartmouth.EDU |  "Let's face it:   |
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