Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!rutgers!dayton!ems!nis!stag!trb
From: trb@stag.UUCP ( Todd Burkey )
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Zoomracks (i.e. Hypercard's predecessor?)
Message-ID: <298@stag.UUCP>
Date: 1 Jan 88 16:06:41 GMT
References: <1987Dec31.203153.28991@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: trb@stag.UUCP ( Todd Burkey )
Organization: Mindtools ST Access Group, Plymouth, MN
Lines: 40

In article <1987Dec31.203153.28991@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu> parora@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu (Pavneet Arora) writes:
>
>I was just reading this quarter's STart magazine (Wint87), and came across an
>article on Zoomracks - an ST product which sounds a lot like Hypercard for the
>Mac.  One major difference being that Zoomracks has been around for 3 years.
Yep, I got the Zoomracks II version while at Comdex over a year
ago...it lets you store degas pictures as part of your
datasets...among other features.
>
>Why hasn't this product come to light earlier?   One thing I did notice was
>that the screens used in this article gave a definite edge to Hypercard
>since there were beautiful graphics mixed with text.  Is this a shortcoming
>of Zoomracks?

Yes, and no...It depends upon how much you really depend on graphics.
I like the Zoomracks approach because it got more information on the
screen at once (although it looks like a mess if you were expecting
graphics.) But then, I also am the type of person that turns off my
icons on the ST display and just use narrow vertical boxes of text
file names for my desktop view (to see more files). From a programmers
point of view, I still have yet to come up with a use for hypercard
(I've played with it and am not impressed enough to upgrade my wifes
Mac just for that). Zoomracks II seems to have a lot of power and
macro programmability to it, but give a person a good database, a good
spreadsheet, and a good word processor and they will probably be more
happy in the long run.

I know that a lot of the MCC people down in Texas are doing Hypertext
based applications (which hypercard was derived from). It would be
nice if they tried porting some of their stuff over to the ST's (they
are currently SUN and Symbolics based.) I think the Mega's would make
a nice engine for their needs (and things like the ABAQ would fit into
their longer term AI stuff where they are really going to need the
horsepower). If I remember right, MCC stands for Micro-electronics
Computer Consortium and is a research organization funded by 20 or so
large companies in the US to develop new technology in a variety of
computer and IC design specific areas...

  -Todd Burkey
   trb@stag.UUCP