Ha, had forgotten about the old xtalk list. did it finally fold up
lately? i seem to remember it hanging around for quite a while with a
post here and there. with the exponential email curve i have gotten
more vicious with the delete button so lost records of it a long time
back.
one thing also missing around this is that while hypercard, supercard,
metacard, revolution, toolbook, plus, and many others are all pretty
much dialects of the general umbrella name of xtalk, Revolution is
really the only one left standing and thriving. while there are some
still limping along with hc and supercard and some of the other
variants, they are a dying breed to say the least. Revolution is
pretty much the only system living on doing Xtalk, so at this point it
seem like they do have some bragging rights to name it as they have
been pretty much carrying most of the torch for the last decade with
Metacard and Revolution. Dr. Raney's willingness to be more open with
the development (and naming even) give good testament to why this
linage both survived and deserves the right to be in the drive's seat
some also. I too like to see all credit go to the early developers of
xtalk in general, but corporations and history have pretty much
stopped all the other systems from sticking around, so at some point
it gets a bit pointless to hold on to some names when there is only
one left standing... Adding to this all the additions to the language
that Rev has added with the years as Brian pointed out, all the others
have not been moving the language forward, they are gone.
So while i use xtalk to describe the language in general, revolution
is about the only practical one I can point to at this point doing the
classic xtalk and pushing it onward.
cheers,
jeff
On Dec 22, 2008, at 11:23 AM, [email protected]
wrote:
I'm not sure if it helps or hinders the conversation to note that, to
the best of my knowledge, the term "xTalk" was coined by none other
than
Scott Raney, inventor of MetaCard.
At the time, HyperTalkers preferred the term "HyperTalk", and
SuperTalkers preferred "SuperTalk", but Dr. Raney showed the
generosity
to bring into common usage a term which encompasses them all.
In the mid-90s he created the xTalk mailing list, a discusssion forum
whose aim was to provide a venue for the various xTalk vendors to
standardize syntax additions. This is not unlike the talks that had
once been proposed by Charlie Jackson (Silicon Beach Software,
publisher
of SuperCard at the time) and Jean Louis Gassee (Apple VP of
technology
at the time) to standardize what were then called "HyperTalk
dialects".
With both the xTalk list and the earlier Silicon Beach talks, when it
actually came time to start work Apple refused to participate.
In fact, with the xTalk list pretty much every vendor refused to
participate except Doug Simons of Thoughtful Software, inventor of
SenseTalk, and Dr. Raney himself. All were sent invitations; only one
showed up at the party.
I think it speaks well of the audience for these tools that the word
"xTalk" has caught on: it seems the users of these tools have a
broader
vision for what the future can be than their old vendors did; the
users
are still with us even when the vendor is not.
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