Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!umich!csmil.umich.edu!zug.csmil.umich.edu!guzdial From: guzdial@zug.csmil.umich.edu (Mark Guzdial) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard Subject: Re: SuperCard vs HyperCard Summary: SuperCard control of tool modes, larger windows, and speed. Message-ID: <1990Dec11.144321.3397@csmil.umich.edu> Date: 11 Dec 90 14:43:21 GMT References: <12593@milton.u.washington.edu> <4140@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> Sender: Mark Guzdial (guzdial@csmil.umich.edu) Organization: Cognitive Science and Machine Intelligence Laboratory Lines: 26 I use SuperCard instead of HyperCard for two reasons: (1) because I need tighter control of what happens when using button and field tools and when errors occur, and (2) because I need really large windows. HyperCard 2.0 does let me remove the standard menus and put up my own, but it doesn't let me redefine what happens when someone (for example) double-clicks on a button in the button tool. I'm working on creating new kinds of programming environments for education contexts. I need to be able to bring up my own info dialogs, my own editing environment, etc. With the new XCMD interface, some of this is supposed to be possible, but I can't seem to get enough information on how to make it work to try it. SuperCard lets me catch double-clicks with pointer tools, catch errors ("On ScriptError") to write my own debugger, and generally allows me to create whatever environment I choose. For some other applications, we needed some really long windows (e.g., 3000 pixels), but HyperCard 2.0 only allows up to 1800x1800 pixel windows, for unknown reasons. To cope with the SuperCard speed problem, I've been using Heizer Software's Compile-It! for creating XCMDs and XFCNs out of scripts. The speed-up in my utility functions has been tremendous. Mark Guzdial University of Michigan