> I am exposed to Hypercard/Supercard and I want to get into
>Metacard. I am trying to create a product in Hypercard and then port to
>Metacard. I checked with Metacard site, it gives some idea. But I would
>like to get the full idea such as the issues to look for etc. Where should
>I start?
You can simply open a Hypercard stack in Metacard, but here are a few points
to watch for:
Colour.
For any colour confine yourself to pictures in JPEG or GIF format. PICT is
no use off the Mac and BMP currently doesn't work and isn't recommended for
Metacard anyway.
Sound.
The familiar coding for sounds such as play Harpsichord etc don't work in
Metacard. And again sounds need a cross-platform format like.WAV
XCMDs
You probably won't need many of them because Metacard is so fast
Graphing
There are no paint tools in Metacard (except on UNIX), so graphing has to be
done differently by building polygons.
You can use colour MUCH more easily and powerfully in Metacard. And that is
just one of its advantages. The existence of programmable graphic objects as
in Supercard is another. The initial learning curve is steep though not so
bad if you are familiar with Supercard as well. But believe me it's worth
it - you won't build another product in Hypercard.
And of course for Supercard you can use the Cross Worlds Supercard to
Metacard converter to mechanise a lot of the conversion - web site below.
But ultimately it's better to just build in Metacard - then you don't have
to convert - as long
as you watch for cross-platform issues like size of fonts (fonts are
smaller on Windows).
Have fun
Mike
Dr Mike Yates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Educational Consultant and Programmer
SUMit Software (Tel: +44 (0) 1248 680184)
Subcontractor for:
Cross Worlds Computing Services Division
Providing Metacard based contract services
Visit our web site at <http://www.xworlds.com/contracts>
