Hi all
All of this recent news of Apple's abandonment of HyperCard has also spurred
me on to look for alternatives to my favorite development tool. Small wonder
the other possibilities come up short. Definitely not AppleScript, although
it has its place in the world of inter-application communication. SuperCard,
MetaCard, HyperSense all present interesting possibilities. But none of these
come back to the original goals of the 1996-ish announcement that HyperCard
would be a QuickTime movie editor allowing HyperTalk scripters to create
objects and scripts in QTi's interactive layer.
No one here speaks much of Java; not certain I care to develop with it either,
but its successful presence on the web may have changed the way Microsoft and
Apple are thinking in how they plan to tear down barriers between platforms.
While in Redding, on business, a Windows tech introduced me to the idea when
Windows 2000 will be a mix of Java-code and HTML, and when introduced, that
Microsoft would no longer be supporting DOS. Seeing Windows 98 display PC
directories primarily on web browser pages got me listening to what the guy
was saying. And the implications. If System 7-8 is going to be left behind
in three years, (assume MacOSX appears within 18 months, who's using System 6
these days?) why spend all the time and money developing for an OS that will
be obsolete, especially if Microsoft is moving away from DOS toward Java.
The original goal was to create a truly cross-platform, object-oriented, user-
friendly, scriptable, development tool. Java is object-oriented and cross-
platform, perhaps it is more sensible, economically, to spend development
efforts on something like JavaCard. Picture all of the HyperTalk scripting
language and our familiar buttons, fields, cards, backgrounds and stacks... in
Java. Such an app would easily create cross-platform standalones. It would
run on MacOSX, or MacOS8, in addition to Windows because Java interpreters
exist on Wintel and Mac machines, in addition to Unix machines where Java, and
incidentally, MacOSX, spring forth. Perhaps this is the direction development
efforts may go, if we're lucky.
So, I'm really beginning to wonder whether it's possible that it makes more
sense to make QTi's interactive layer Java-based rather than HyperCard or even
AppleScript when considering planning for the future. I noticed Apple
recently released QuickTime for Java; need to learn more what that's for. For
now, I'm still using HyperCard. I guess if I ever want to port something to
Windows, I need to talk to Broderbund or Red Orb or one of those guys...
they're the ones who ported Myst and Riven to Windows, respectively.
Rcf
idlewildcd
http://members.aol.com/idlewildcd
