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From: leue@galen.crd.ge.com (Bill Leue)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Hypercard Pro Wishlist
Message-ID: <17537@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Date: 13 Mar 91 13:30:48 GMT
Sender: news@crdgw1.crd.ge.com
Organization: General Electric Research & Development
Lines: 42

No, of course there is no such product yet!  However, now that I've got your
attention, isn't it about time that we in the HC user/developer 
community started making our desires for new features known? If Claris
runs true to form, there should be a 'Pro' version of HC out in 1-2
years.  Let's start a good thread going and perhaps we can influence
the feature set of the next version.

Here's my personal wishlist:

1. Better Color support, including color drawing tools and
color properties for objects, e.g., color fonts properties for
buttons and fields.  This is the only missing feature that really 
separates HC from Supercard, IMHO.

2. User-defined "first-class" objects, with user-defined Properties.  I 
believe that a feature like this was thought about for the 2.0 release
but eventually dropped.  "First-class" objects would be like buttons,
fields, etc:  capable of originating and receiving messages, being
sources of value, being draggable, resizable, etc., and having Properties
which can interact with "set" and "get" like other HC properties.  Such
user-defined objects would almost certainly have to be written in some
external language, rather than Hypertalk.  Perhaps we can add 'ODEFS'
(Object definitions) to XCMD's and XFCN's.

3. Better printing support, including Hypertalk properties and commands
for setting parameters normally determined in Print and Page Setup dialogs.
This may be a tough one until the new Apple printing architecture is
released, as most of these parameters are currently "owned" by the print
drivers.

4. A set of Claris-supported XCMD`s and XFCN's for device interfaces:
a serial port interface library, network library, and file system interface
library come to mind immediately.

I'm sure that there are many others out there with good ideas.  How about
some chit-chat on this topic?  (BTW, just because I say "Claris" in this
note, that doesn't mean that I'm ignoring the excellent support that the
Apple HC team has been giving to people over this net.  Are you all
going to be working for Claris some day?  No, forget I asked :-))

-Bill Leue
leue@crd.ge.com