I read an article a few months back that reported on the introduction of
HyperCard at a hypertext conference back in the late eighties. The report
from the hypertext conference was interesting and prescient: it
criticized the obvious lack of a cross-platform solution, but also
described what they saw as the remedy for the weak hypertext
capabilities. What they described was pretty much an equivalent to the
IP-based, server-hopping linking available through web browsers.
Obligatory Macintosh Fanatic Rumination: if only Apple had followed the
recommendations, would HyperCard be the browser of choice today?
Which leads me to the feature suggestion: MetaCard already handles the
cross-platform requirement, so why not modify the go command to allow
something along the line of:
go url "http://www.someserver.com/somestack.mc" --downloads and opens
the stack
go url "http://www.aserver.com/astack.mc#aNamedCard" --downloads and
opens the stack, at card "aNamedCard"
This means that with a standard web server, the MetaCard demo, freely
available, would function like a standard web browser, of MetaCard
content. This content would be better-looking, easier to create, and far
more powerful than standard web fare. Ordinary users could create pages
(stacks) with MetaCard Demo that blow away anything they would be able to
create in html. Advanced users, with licensed copies of MetaCard, could
deploy content as powerful as any available through a web browser, using
any technology. As a bonus, content creators, beginning and advanced,
would know that anyone with the MetaCard demo would see the content
exactly as the creator intended it to look, regardless of the client
platform.
Finally, another command would be a great one:
save this stack to url "http://www.anotherserver/adirectory/"
Having a built-in property for the "home" url for a stack would allow:
save this stack to home --I don't like this syntax, but you get the idea
The great thing about this is that it would allow a designer to
transparently open a stack off a web server, change the stack, and save
it back to the server, something that is always a pain with html products.
So think about the possibility: MetaCard as the new browser!
Geoff Canyon [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"C.D. Caterpillar teaches kids how to read, not how to watch cartoons."
