Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!agate!ig!uwmcsd1!bbn!rochester!PT.CS.CMU.EDU!cadre!geb
From: geb@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU (Gordon E. Banks)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: WARNING: Bad HyperTalk books
Message-ID: <1031@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU>
Date: 1 Mar 88 16:02:52 GMT
References: <7495@apple.Apple.Com>
Reply-To: geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu.UUCP (Gordon E. Banks)
Organization: Decision Systems Lab., Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA.
Lines: 19

In article <7495@apple.Apple.Com> winkler@Apple.COM (Dan Winkler) writes:
>As the author of the HyperTalk language and as an Apple employee, I am
>going to refrain from endorsing or criticizing any particular HyperCard
>book.  However, I will say that there are some very poor ones out there
>that were thrown together in a matter of weeks and that are full of
>inaccuracies and examples that are not even syntactically correct
>(i.e.  they were never tried). 

I agree.  I have seen three books so far and bought two (Goodman and 
Shafer).  While I learned a lot from them, both are inadequate,
incomplete and poorly organized.  What we need is something like the
unix manual or Kernighan and Ritchie, where we can find each function
and what it does, with examples.  We don't need pages and pages
of introduction to Hypercard for the brain-damaged.  I would suggest
Dan Winkler as author, except I would rather have him hack hypercard
to make it better, since everyone recognizes it needs improvement,
despite being an ingenious advance in the art of software.  I am
sure someone good will soon come out with a complete book, and eagerly
await it with my dollars.