postmaster@mailcom.UUCP (Bernard Aboba) (09/01/88)
* Original: FROM.....Bernard Aboba (204/444) * Original: TO.......All (204/444) * Forwarded by.......OPUS 204/444 Danny Goodman came to give a demo at MuCOW, the newly formed ComputerWare user group in Palo Alto, showing Focal Point II. The main thing about Focal Point II is that the line between Stack and Application has almost completely faded away. It implements pull down and pop up menus of its own, and gives the look and feel of an application, at least on a Mac SE or Plus where you don't see a HyperCard window, so you can tell it's a stack. As for features, there seem to be so many of them that it's hard to enumerate. As Goodman said, the HyperTalk code for FPII takes a 3" binder. Yet the performance seemed good. The main idea is that once you enter something in one part of the program, such as setting an appointment, it filters through to the other parts, generating reminders, alarms, schedules, to do lists, etc. FPII is somewhat of a dangerous program because it has the potential to completely take over your life. There is even a networking module by which a boss can control his staff's assignments, and have Focal Point nag them until they do everything he's sent them to do over the network! I call it "Network Nagware." Actually, after about 45 minutes, I had reached feature saturation, and my eyes were glazed over. However, I still wanted to get FP II, if only to delve into the scripts to see how he got all those neat effects. It's still unprotected, and overall, is probably one of the best tutors on HyperTalk programming fine points you can find. --- * Origin: sun!sunncal!mailcom Palo Alto (415) 855-9548 (Opus 1:204/444) SEEN-BY: 204/444 -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ FidoNet: 1:204/444 UUCP: ...!sun!sunncal!mailcom!bernard INTERNET: sunncal!mailcom!bernard@Sun.COM US MAIL: Bernard Aboba, 101 First St. #224, Los Altos, CA 94022