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Happy Birthday

By Fred Stauder, HyperChat Editor, Zurich, Switzerland

on HyperChat

Happy Birthday HyperCard

MacWorld once again has brought us HyperCard-this time in it’s first birthday shoes. There were forums dedicated to HyperCard and a first birthday extravaganza party which included a giant cake and a HyperCard time capsule.

The exciting thing at the show was a trend to expand the uses HyperCard.

Apple

Bill has done some more magic by creating Hyperscan, which is a stack that controls the new Apple scanner. Apple has also released through APDA a serial toolkit that allows you to access the serial ports through a series of XCMD’s. Also released is a Laserdisc driver Interactive video toolkit that allows you to build videodisc stacks, and a HyperAppletalk driver that allows you to make networked HyperCard Stacks (this was written by Don Koscheka). Needless to say we will have some great articles on this in the future.

Versacad

A very novel way of using HyperCard was implemented by Versacad. They open Versacad files with HyperCard and get a list of objects in a drawing (HyperCard can open any file, and information can be written or retrieved by knowing the offset of items), then they use HyperCard to do a cost analysis of the project. For example, you put in the cost of each part of a motor, and HyperCard does the calculations.

Bright Star

Bright Star technology have released their HyperCard Face driver (see May issue) called HyperAnimator. This is the type of technology that will lead us to the Knowledge navigator. I will be showing you how to use this technology in innovative ways in a later issue. (See Figure 1).

Figure 1. HyperAnimator From Bright Star

ACM

I was at SIGGRAPH just before MacWorld, and it was really interesting to see the Mac being accepted warmly by the graphics crowd. The Association of Computer Machinery (ACM) has released a great Database of HyperText articles using HyperCard, a valuble resource. (See Figure 2).

Figure 2. ACM

Stack Starter

This is a stack which has the best collection of innovative buttons and controls that I have seen, including incredible animated icons with sound effects. This stack was written by Robertson Smith and is Shareware available from Cumputerware and BB’s. (See Figure 3, on next page).

Figure 3. Sample Controls

Amanda Stories

Amanda Goodenough has brought out another story Called “Your faithful Camel goes to the North Pole.” Amanda is a story herself. She is a person that was unknown in the computer industry a year ago and now is very involved in the industry. She created “Inigo get’s out”, and the response from children was so great, it made us adults look at what she was doing. She was a speaker at MacWorld and is praised for her stack simplicity. I will demonstarate some of the concepts of design that Amanda is trying to convey in an article in a later issue. I think we should take an example from Amanda that Simplicity and content are the keys to good stack creation. (See Figure 4).

Figure 4. Your Faithful Camel

Great Book

Gary Bond’s XCMD’s for HyperCard is a must if you are witing XCMD’s; it is a good beginners guide and a great reference book.

Send your Articles, ScriptTips, SpeedTips, etc. to:

Fred Stauder

Ecofin Reseach and Consulting

Lavaterstrasse 45

Zurich 8002

Switzerland

or

Applelink D0280

or

To the MacTutor Office

end HyperChat