> Tony Rich : One day I asked myself, "Why aren't ALL my word
> processing documents *HyperCard* documents, instead of BBEdit or
> WordPerfect documents? Why do I reach for those other programs to
> create text documents? Wouldn't it be great if the related documents
> on my hard drive could be hypertext-linked internally to each other,
> just like Web pages, but were completely and easily scriptable in
> HyperTalk instead of that yucky HTML and Java?"
Alain : I lllliiiike it ! It's kind of the same idea that underlied
OpenDoc, except that they took it even a step further. Why switch
between applications ? Why not integrate the functionality of all of
your current applications into one document ? But, alas, this
revolutionary technology was "Steved".
> Tony Rich : Suppose the first window you saw every time you opened
> HyperCard was a "portrait" window, the shape and size of a piece of
> paper, instead of a 512 x 342 landscape one. Seems to me it would then
> be a LOT more obvious that HyperCard could be HyperDocument or
> HyperBook.THAT would broaden its appeal.
Alain : I wonder why there are not more portrait-oriented screens out
there.
> Tony Rich : People like and use paper and books a lot more than stacks
> of index cards.
Alain : You're unfortunately right.
> Tony Rich : And the Web has shown us that linked documents can be a
> lot more useful than passive text.
Alain : That is my view. The interactivity makes all of the difference.
> Tony Rich : And what about these new "e-books" that are coming out
> now, where you can download the text of any book into them and read it
> page-by-page electronically? They're just HyperCard as hardware.
Alain : I have heard of some of the E-books. Apparently, you only need
power when downloading the pages. Thereafter, the E-book can be
consulted without any electrical power whatsoever.
> Tony Rich : So to modify what Tim suggests a little bit, I'd say a
> better metaphor than a stack of cards would be simply a set of pages.
> They could be a set of web pages or pages of an ordinary document.
> That broadens the scope -- and appeal -- of HC to "HyperCard as a Web
> page tool" and "HyperCard as a personal hyper-document tool".
Alain : That's better than the card metaphor, but my vision of
computing goes even further than this. I want computers to become
performance-enhancing tools that will augment our personal and
collective intelligences. An approach inspired by the visionary Douglas
Englebart.
> Tony Rich : It also de-emphasizes "HyperCard as a programming tool",
> but would allow users to ease into scripting when they're ready to --
> and enjoy it.
Alain : This is in tune with the original concept of HyperCard as an
authoring tool for the rest of us. The designers did not anticipate that
the scripting would be so popular. Boy were they ever wrong!
> Tony Rich : I'm not sure where I'm going with this idea. Maybe as
> Tim suggests, one possible option for such an "OpenBook" would be to
> have it generate some kind of "Web site standalone", if you wanted to
> put the pages on the Web, or otherwise have it create the usual kind
> of hyperdocument that HyperCard stacks are now.
Alain : Huuummmm...
> Tony Rich : We could even do better than books...
Alain : The book metaphor is a good one but, like you, I am sure that
we can do even better.
> Tony Rich : Has that been done yet? Is it worth doing?
Alain : I think so.
