nor1675@dsacg2.UUCP (Michael Figg) (08/26/89)
The reviews of UltraCard sound real good but I'm still alittle fuzzy about
what it can do. Is it mainly a means of handling iff pics and sounds or is it t
more of an AREXX type overall handler but from an Intuition perspective? At
times it even sounds like mostly a menuing system to possibly replace
the Workbench. Am I close? Am I correct that there is a PD demo available
called Browser, and if so how do you tell it from the old browser (without
looking at it)?
Thanks,
--
"Hot Damn! Groat Cakes Again Michael Figg
Heavy on the thirty weight!" DLA Systems Automation Center
Columbus, Oh.
(614)-238-2446 (Temporarily)portuesi@tweezers.esd.sgi.com (Michael Portuesi) (08/28/89)
In article <727@dsacg2.UUCP> nor1675@dsacg2.UUCP (Michael Figg) writes:
The reviews of UltraCard sound real good but I'm still alittle fuzzy about
what it can do. Is it mainly a means of handling iff pics and sounds or is it t
more of an AREXX type overall handler but from an Intuition perspective? At
times it even sounds like mostly a menuing system to possibly replace
the Workbench. Am I close?
Well, it's all of those things. The easiest way to describe UltraCard
would be to see it for yourself, or find the nearest Macintosh and
play with HyperCard for a few minutes. I'll try to give some sort of
an explanation of what it is about here:
Ultra/HyperCard is sort of a free-form database, that manipulates
electronic "stacks", or notebooks if you prefer, that have links to
the outside world. A stack is kind of like an electronic magazine.
It consists of a bunch of "cards", which are like pages in a magazine.
That is where the metaphor with printed material ends. You can paint
on a card, attach scrollable fields so that the user may enter/edit
text, and attach buttons to places or things on the card. Each card
has an "script" associated with it, which is a small program in a
language called Ultra/Hypertalk. The script can decide what to do
when a user interacts with a card by clicking its buttons or doing
other things.
The cards may be linked together, so that clicking on a button on one
card may take you to another place in the stack. The Ultra/Hypercard
environment gives you tools to navigate your way around the stack,
including a "find" capability that locates cards containing text you
specify, commands to return to the last card you saw, and a "history"
feature that shows you the last 40 or so cards you visited and allows
you to immediately jump to any one of them.
Both environments feature a central location where you can see all the
stacks available in the environment and call up new ones from disk.
In HyperCard, this is called the Home Card. In UltraCard, this is the
Control Room.
The scripts associated with cards can do things besides interact with
the user and other UltraCard objects. They may also interface with
the outside world. In HyperCard, this takes the form of calling
custom drivers to interface with external devices and programs. In
UltraCard, this takes the form of an ARexx interface.
So, you may use UltraCard to handle IFF pics and sound if you like.
You may also use it as a "visual interface" to ARexx, and indeed build
an UltraCard stack to do lots of common system tasks at the push of a
button. You can also use it to build visual interfaces to databases,
or prototypes of applications software (both have been very popular
uses for HyperCard).
HyperCard has also served as the basis for Apple's much-touted
"multimedia" push. They have put together interactive educational
adventures that combine HyperCard with a videodisc to create a movie
that people can interact with. HyperCard is also planned as a
storage/retrieval mechanism for data on CD-ROM discs.
Am I correct that there is a PD demo available
called Browser, and if so how do you tell it from the old browser (without
looking at it)?
There is a PD Browser demo available -- the latest version is 1.11,
though it doesn't seem to me to be any more reliable than its
predecessors. I do not know if there is a way to tell the version
number without looking at it.
--M
--
__
\/ Michael Portuesi Silicon Graphics Computer Systems, Inc.
portuesi@SGI.COM
"$16,000! And all he wanted to do was dip us in plaster!"