XCMDs

mark@hyper.UUCP (Mark Mendel) (09/23/87)

HyperCard is really neat!

However, I object to having to shell out more bucks for the hypertalk manual.
I've looked at the 3rd party manual, and it really doesn't tell me anything that
isn't in the help stack.

The only piece of information that I can't find is how to write XCMDs and XFUNs.
And that doesn't seem worth the price of joining APDA + buying the manual.

So, could somebody have pity on this poor skinflint tell me give me a brief
run down?  What I suspect I need to know is:
	1) the resource header format (if any).
	2) Register usage & parameter passing
	3) accessing global variables
    and, if it is allowed,
	4) how to send messages.

Alternatively, you could try to convince me that the manual is really worth it.

Thanks in advance!

-- 
Mark G. Mendel, ihnp4!umn-cs!hyper!mark,  Network Systems Corporation
(612)-424-4888 x2779

dtw@f.gp.cs.cmu.edu.UUCP (09/25/87)

The HyperCard Technical Reference manual is a "Working Draft" (number 4).
It's pretty disappointing!  There is little (if anything) there that you
don't already have in the Help stack.  I sort of felt "ripped off"; I
suppose I'm going to have to pay more money to get the final official
documentation.

There's an appendix on "External Commands".  It's 32 pages of Pascal and C
header and source files!  In other words, you don't get real documentation
for XCMDs and XFCNs, but you do get enough information to enable you to
write your own XCMDs.  There's also an Alpha Draft of the HyperCard Stack
Design Guidelines.  This is genuinely new material.

The most useful thing you get from APDA is a disk with header and glue files
and sources for various XCMDs.

Duane Williams
(dtw@cs.cmu.edu)