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From: ftdkl@acad3.fai.alaska.edu (LaSota Daniel K)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Ways to beat the bad guys
Message-ID: <1990Sep26.035004.13530@hayes.fai.alaska.edu>
Date: 26 Sep 90 03:50:04 GMT
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Well the news of the Claris thing hasn't really hit the average Mac
person yet.  I know a lot of kids and teachers in schools throughout
Alaska who will be very dissapointed when they learn that they might
have to pay for a fully working version program of HyperCard.

This particular subset of HyperCard users/doers is really
getting heavily involved with HyperCard and scripting.  There is
a special keen interest in writing interactive front ends for
laserDisks.  A few groups have embarked upon the path of creating their
own laserDisks (with of course their own front ends made in HyperCard).

For the teachers HyperCard provides a nice tool.  For the kids its a world
of wonder.  I have seen 4th and 5th graders sit down with HyperCard and in a
matter of minutes be in complete control.  The painting environment
was fascinating to all but a large portion go directly into the HyperTalk
part.

These are tomorrow's programmers learning structured programming skills
with a program that came FREE with every new Macintosh.
A large part of the success here is that HyperCard did come with the Mac.
It was something as nice and friendly as the interface itself.

Many schools in Alaska (and of course elsewhere) will not be able to afford
and will not bother to get a 'development' version of HyperCard 2.0.
The development and learning that has and is taking place in these school
environments will not proceed at the pace it is.
And schools will have one less reason to purchase Macintoshes.

Well now here is a thought for consideration:
What versions of the 2.0 HyperCard will have the ability to convert 1.x.x
stacks to 2.0 stacks?  And will the marketing menaces go to lengths to stop
people from using HyperCard 1.2.x for development and then use 2.0 for usage?
[One advantage I could see from this would be background scripting under
multi-finder].


Dan LaSota
FTDKL%ALASKA.BITNET@CORNELLC.cit.cornell.edu  (best)
ftdkl@acad3.fai.alaska.edu                    (if you must)