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From: steele@unc.cs.unc.edu (Oliver Steele)
Newsgroups: news.groups,comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Call for votes: comp.binaries.hypercard
Message-ID: <1432@thorin.cs.unc.edu>
Date: 26 Feb 88 03:59:58 GMT
References: <454@stech.UUCP> <960@athos.rutgers.edu> <42857@sun.uucp> <18326@topaz.rutgers.edu>
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Reply-To: steele@unc.UUCP (Oliver Steele)
Organization: University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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In the left corner we have:
>webber@topaz.rutgers.edu (Webber)

In the right, stands:
]chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)

>By promoting ascii-readable hypercard stacks (databases), it becomes easier
>for people to write awk scripts for processing stacks on normal unix systems.

]Except, of course, that the major components of a HyperCard stack [...]
]can't be translated to ascii readable anything, and without them, the
]scripts Webber is doting on are useless.

>Having read Goodman's The Complete Hypercard Handbook, I see the graphics
>aspect of a typical stack is rather minimal and that HyperTalk gives a
>reasonable amount of functionality.  The real value of a stack is in the
>textual information stored there and the interconnections between that
>information that are also stored there.  The graphics, backgrounds, ...
>that you dote on are primarily the hype of hypercard and not its substance.

Mr. Webber, please post a reasonable stack (such as astronomy, dinosaurs,
diskbox, esperanto, macintalk, notepads, or periodic-table, all of which
are archived at Sumex) in your proposed text-only format, or give us the
specifications for programs to convert to/from your text-only format, or
give us the specifications for your text-only format.  This will end the
discussion once and for all and will be a great boon for those of use
working on other hypertext systems.  If you are talking through your hat,
I am sure that there are Macintosh owners in your vicinity who would be
happy to let you examine one of the previously listed stacks long enough
to come forth with a proposal for a language of sufficient clarity and
expressive power to do what you intend.

[To Mr. Von Rospach's claim that the conversion from HyperTalk to a more
common language is non-trivial, as HyperTalk and C differ in a few
control structures:]
>Absolutely not.  HyperTalk can handle the main() as well.  This isn't the
>way the Apple people encourage you to use their system but they are still
>wrapped up in appliance computers.

I fail to see what object-oriented programming has to do with appliances
(or why a hypertext system shouldn't run on one).  Are Bell Labs and Microsoft
similarly guilty of said heinous crime, in their advocacy of object-
oriented languages and an event-loop to handle the user interface?

>Any programmer could cons up the
>scripts in HyperTalk that would create the same stacks as a non-programmer
>hacks together.

Perhaps you should direct your efforts in the direction of a HyperTalk-to-
C converter.  Such a creation would answer all your petitions.  Please be
sure to make it portable, and post it when you are done.

>If hypercard is any
>good, its stacks will be of interest to many people other than mac owners
>[...]
>(as long as the format is easily readable like the refer format is).

Anyone with access to the net is free to download HyperCard files for
use on the HyperCard emulators which have been promised for other
machines.  It would indeed be preferable that the stacks be in some more
universal format: we await such a format.

]Accusing [HyperCard] of failure because people use its extensibility is
]like accusing C of being a bad language because people use things like
]libraries. 

>?  On my computer, the libraries are written in C!

A valid point.  I am sure that the universal ASCII HyperFormat on which
we are fast converging will fix such language deficiencies...

>[Viruses are n]ot so much a failing of hypercard stacks, so much as a
>general problem with accepting binaries in any system.

Are you proposing that we discontinue all binary groups?  Else I see
not why this point is relevant.

>Your little tirade on obsfucation was amusing.

I enjoyed it too.  Good work, Chuq!

>----- BOB (webber@athos.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!athos.rutgers.edu!webber)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oliver Steele					   ...!uunet!mcnc!unc!steele
							   steele@cs.unc.edu
"Never underestimate the power		(a departure from
of human stupidity." -- LL		 my usual signatures)