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From: chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: news.groups,comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Call for votes: comp.binaries.hypercard
Message-ID: <43313@sun.uucp>
Date: 26 Feb 88 17:41:08 GMT
References: <454@stech.UUCP> <960@athos.rutgers.edu> <42857@sun.uucp> <18326@topaz.rutgers.edu>
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[In general, I refuse to have battles of wits with unarmed people. So I'm
 going to try to answer Webber's few points of unfact and then drop it 
 before this gets out of hand....]

>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.

I suggest strongly that rather than evaluate HyperCard by its reference
manual, you evaluate HyperCard by playing with HyperCard.

The weakest point of Goodman's book is the graphics. He basically shines it
all on. Not surprising, since Goodman is an author and primarily text
oriented (as an aside, Goodman hired an artist to do the graphics and design
for HIS StackWare products Focal Point and Business Class. And, I might
point out, having written a review of Focal Point for Macintosh Horizon, the
advantages of that package are the logical graphic interface, not any of the
underlying whizzies. But I digress).

To go back into Unix equivalents, what you're doing, Webber, is evaluating
Unix based on Kernighan and Ritchie. The White Books is a great reference on
C, but it's not what I'd call exciting reading, and it's definitely not a
good way to evaluate the wonders of Unix. Your knowledge of the system is
too limited to make a reasonable judgement.

Go find a Mac at Rutgers. I know there are some there. find hypercard, and
work with it. Especially grab Laura's story, the stack Bill Atkinson wrote
for his daughter. then tell me Hypercard is textually oriented. 

It isn't.

Another area you've ignored completely is sound. A major (and growing)
proportion of HyperCard stuff is the 'snd ' routines. That's an area that
is very Mac specific. How are you going to play this stuff with your awk
script?

>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.

No it's not. See above. They may be the areas that are of interest to you,
but it's not a good idea to generalize your personal interests into the
interests of the population as a whole. Especially when you don't know what
you're talking about.

>The issues are really
>simple.

Very. Do what's good for the Macintosh people, or do what's good for Webber.

>Usenet is based on Unix which is grounded in a philosophy of
>open systems, machine independence, and knowledgeable users using
>sophisticated tools.

Usenet happens to be a transport device that Mac people use to transfer
information and programs. If you look at the numbers, there are about as
many people reading Usenet for the Mac as for Unix these days. So trying to
say this is a Unix network doesn't work anymore. It's a network that happens
to be hosted primarily on Unix boxes.

>Binaries are closed, system dependent, and based
>on hiding the workings from the user (for their own good, of course).

This is a loaded comment. First, HyperCard stacks are open and completely
accessible to the user. The only reason they qualify as a 'binary' is
because they aren't limited to printable characters. HyperCard is really the
next generation of source, because it includes not only the 'code' (scripts)
but an entire environment that can be taken apart, played with, re-used and
hacked on -- including pictures, sounds, graphics, movements, various
objects like buttons and fields, and data. You're insistence on focusing on
the scripts and data to the exclusion of the rest, especially the time spent
on design and placement by the stack programmer (both of which would go
bye-bye under your proposal of posting only component parts, and both of
which are critical parts of the success of HC stacks) show you don't care
about what's good for the users of this stuff, you only care what's good for
you. And, personally, I'm here for the general good, not the good of a
single selfish individual.

>While some people are willing to tolerate binary groups because of the
>general ``potential'' of micros, this is mostly because the typical
>micro binary would be useless to anyone else as it is just an attempt
>to implement standard functionalities in a particularly restrictive
>environment.

This is your bias. If you want to talk about only posting stuff that is of
use to the widest populations (Hmm. Webber, are you a Marxist? What a
concept....) then we should get rid of the Unix groups, and only allow
softwaare and soruces on the net. There are LOTS more Mac's out there than
Unix machines, and lots more Mac users. And Unix software is notoriously
unportable between different flavors of Unix. Macintosh software, on the
other hand, would serve a very large segment of the computer using
population, and would work on all Macs. 

To carry this to a ridiculous extreme, there are zillions of IBM-PC's out
there. Not to mention Apple ]['s. Maybe we should refuse to carry any
software that doesn't run on MS-Dos. That's the way to his the really large
segment of the population (although you'd have to start worrying about PC
vs. XT, EGA vs. CGA, etc, etc, etc, I'm sure it could be worked out). 

This, of course, is insane. All Webber is really saying is "I can't use it,
so you can't do it" -- I'm not particularly worried. It's been a long time
since I've thought it was possible to please everyone all the time, so I
don't bother any more. I just try to do the best I can. The best we can do
here, of course, is to make hypercard stacks available to the many hypercard
users, just like we've suggested.

Nothing, of course, is stopping Webber from using the HC stuff. If he really
wants it, he can borrow a Mac with HC and unpack the stacks himself. or
write a Hypercard translator for his wonderful Unix machine. Or, gasp,
simply use HyperCard on a Mac somewhere.

Webber, if you want HyperCard stuff on your Unix box, I suggest you go and
write something that'll read a HyperCard stack and pull it out for you.
Don't force us to do your dirty work for you, especially when all it will
really do is make the stacks useless to everyone else. 

Look around you. you may not have noticed it, but you're not the only person
on this network. Quit acting like you are.


Chuq Von Rospach			chuq@sun.COM		Delphi: CHUQ

     There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.
                              Ken Olson, President, Digital Equiptment, 1977