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LiveCode is a modern day HyperCard (2019)

andregarzia.com

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Re: LiveCode is a modern day HyperCard (2019)

#51

Post by betamaxthetape »

hoistbypetard wrote: post #47
badsectoracula wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But HyperCard wasn't really for making GUI programs - i do not even think many people who used it viewed themselves as programmers (at least not any more than people who make complex stuff on Excel do). Sure, you can place buttons and input fields, but it was more of a hyperlinked painting program that also allowed you to enter interactive elements. I think it was closer to something like Powerpoint (which i think al…

As someone who made a great many HyperCard stacks, I like this characterization: > I think it was closer to something like Powerpoint (which i think also allows you to put interactive elements and jump between slides) and Access Hypercard occupied this weird in-between space. It was kind of a programming thing, but not exactly. You could certainly program it. And it could load XCMDs and XFCNs to expand the universe o…

> As someone who made a great many HyperCard stacks...

I don't suppose you still have the files for those stacks lying around? I maintain the HyperCard Online project, a collection[1] of over 3,500 HyperCard stacks on the Internet Archive directly emulated in-the-browser.

I've made an uploader[2] that anyone can use to contribute their own stacks to the collection. It accepts all formats of stacks (all the .sit, .bin, .hqx-style compression formats that were common in the 80s/90s, disk images, and just raw HyperCard stacks).

It's always great to see what stacks folks are uploading - recently a large number of Japanese stacks were uploaded, covering a wide range of topics.

[1] https://archive.org/details/hypercardstacks

[2] http://hypercardonline.tk/

Re: LiveCode is a modern day HyperCard (2019)

#52

Post by hoistbypetard »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #49
hoistbypetard wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who made a great many HyperCard stacks, I like this characterization: > I think it was closer to something like Powerpoint (which i think also allows you to put interactive elements and jump between slides) and Access Hypercard occupied this weird in-between space. It was kind of a programming thing, but not exactly. You could certainly program it. And it could load XCMDs and XFCNs to expand the universe o…

I like the way you contextualize this. What's interesting is to contemplate that Macs still come with / have free access to Xcode and apps like Developer and Swift Playgrounds, which would seem to fit into what you are saying above in terms of free tools assuming the purchasing user wants to program. But what tools like that say about the complexity of modern programming vs. the wonderful simplicity of HyperCard is a…

There's the complexity difference, for sure. But the thing that's standing out to me right at the moment is the fact that the mac I got in 1991 just assumed I was going to use HyperCard. The same way the one I got in 2015 assumed I was going to want to use Keynote or Numbers.

HyperCard was a weird beast. While it was a programming tool, it wasn't the kind of programming tool people who programmed for a living were, by and large, using to build the applications they were selling.

(Make no mistake. Some did build the applications they sold with HyperCard. I built and sold one that way. See also Myst.) The tools that currently come free with any OS X license (or Windows, in the case of VS community editions, the sdk, and VS Code) are the tools that real working programmers use to build the things they sell. And it's real working programmers that pick those tools up.

The spirit I remember for HyperCard was: you have this computer now. You're going to want to program it. Here's a thing that does that. The business end was absent. People bought computers to create things, and one of the things you'd create is a program.

And, just to be clear, I'm not waxing nostalgic for 90s programming. Programming and the tooling that enables it are clearly better in pretty much every way now for people who know they want to do that.

I'm nostalgic for this bit of programming tooling that was intended for non-programmers and is now quite obscure. (See: livecode) That is unfortunate because much of its virtue used to lie in the fact that it was just __there__ by default when you fired up a new computer.

Re: LiveCode is a modern day HyperCard (2019)

#53

Post by hoistbypetard »

betamaxthetape wrote: post #51
hoistbypetard wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who made a great many HyperCard stacks, I like this characterization: > I think it was closer to something like Powerpoint (which i think also allows you to put interactive elements and jump between slides) and Access Hypercard occupied this weird in-between space. It was kind of a programming thing, but not exactly. You could certainly program it. And it could load XCMDs and XFCNs to expand the universe o…

> As someone who made a great many HyperCard stacks... I don't suppose you still have the files for those stacks lying around? I maintain the HyperCard Online project, a collection[1] of over 3,500 HyperCard stacks on the Internet Archive directly emulated in-the-browser. I've made an uploader[2] that anyone can use to contribute their own stacks to the collection. It accepts all formats of stacks (all the .sit, .bin…

I still do have some, I think, but I'm not sure I can currently extract them from the floppies and/or syquest cartridges I saved them on. I will scour my drives and upload any I can find.

This is the first time I've seen your project, and I love it!

The two that I would most like to find and post online were

* A matrix math tool * A gadget that monitored a serial port for errors from a giant, industrial label printer

I also had one that was very similar to the then-popular tool BackOrifice but for macs of the day.

If I can get any of them onto a modern system I will definitely upload :)

Re: LiveCode is a modern day HyperCard (2019)

#55

Post by soapdog »

mwcampbell wrote: post #3
soapdog wrote: post #2

Hey I'm the author of that page, AMA.

Since you work for LiveCode, do you know if there are any plans to implement platform accessibility APIs, so LiveCode (or at least applications built with it) can work with assistive technologies, such as screen readers for blind people? Besides being the right thing to do, that might unlock some sales to the educational market.

Sorry, that article is from 2019, I don't work there anymore so I can't tell. I'm a customer though and have been developing with the language since forever, what we usually do when we want such answers is to post to either the mailing list or the forum. Another option is emailing support, they're a small company but they take support seriously and will answer.

Re: LiveCode is a modern day HyperCard (2019)

#56

Post by soapdog »

hoistbypetard wrote: post #46
soapdog wrote: post #2

Hey I'm the author of that page, AMA.

Thanks for posting it. I don't think I've looked at this set of tools since it was Metacard. I love these threads every time they come up. Mostly because I loved HyperCard. Without fail, everything suggested as a modern HyperCard replacement really nails at least one element of its spirit and really misses something else. I think this is one of the closer ones overall. Its adherence to the stack model is much closer…

thanks for the kind words As for distribution, you can still distribute stacks and people who have livecode can run it without fuss. That still works. One unique feature from livecode is its ability to cross-compile a standalone and I decided to demo that in the post because I felt many people would like to distribute applications, that dosn't mean it is the only way to do it.

A technique that many of us use is having a "loader stack" which just load a stack from disk or network, then we build a standalone from that loader stack, while still being able to edit the real stack. This made creating self-updating applications really easy before the days of sparkle and notirizaton. I remember shipping auto-updating applications on early MacOS X (and I bet people did it in classic).

As for XCMD they used to work but they don't anymore. Now, livecode has "livecode builder" language which is a low-level livecode-like language that allows you to do FFI, and you can still build "externals" which are native modules that you can call from livecode.

Re: LiveCode is a modern day HyperCard (2019)

#57

Post by soapdog »

mmphosis wrote: post #19
emmanueloga_ wrote: post #6

looks more of a modern day visual basic no? (no snark, VB was cool!)

From a glance, it looks like it has the better features from either of HyperCard: message passing between "objects" vs. the class hierarchy, and VisualBasic: timers vs. the idle message, floating properties box vs. the dialog box. It would be good if it has an option/property for resizeable windows "stacks" with some of the auto-resizing, alignment, and guides like Xcode - maybe it does, I get an error every time I a…

you have guides for autoresizing. In the property inspector for a given object, you can switch to the geometry pane and set it up.

you can get the community version of livecode at https://livecode.org, that doesn't require a login IIRC.

Re: LiveCode is a modern day HyperCard (2019)

#60

Post by betamaxthetape »

hoistbypetard wrote: post #53
betamaxthetape wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As someone who made a great many HyperCard stacks... I don't suppose you still have the files for those stacks lying around? I maintain the HyperCard Online project, a collection[1] of over 3,500 HyperCard stacks on the Internet Archive directly emulated in-the-browser. I've made an uploader[2] that anyone can use to contribute their own stacks to the collection. It accepts all formats of stacks (all the .sit, .bin…

I still do have some, I think, but I'm not sure I can currently extract them from the floppies and/or syquest cartridges I saved them on. I will scour my drives and upload any I can find. This is the first time I've seen your project, and I love it! The two that I would most like to find and post online were * A matrix math tool * A gadget that monitored a serial port for errors from a giant, industrial label printer…

That would be awesome! Those sound like some really interesting stacks - particularly the industrial monitoring one, as there currently aren't many stacks like that in the collection.

I'm happy to answer questions about moving stacks from old media onto more modern systems - there are a few 'gotchas' particularly due to the way old Macs used resource forks and new systems... don't. Email hypercardonline@gmail.com

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