zee@fwi.uva.nl (Daniel M. van der Zee (I89)) (05/29/91)
Hi all, I'm looking for information about PLUS, a hypercard-like application running both on mac and ms-dos systems. I would like to have a good idea about what PLUS is like before -eventually- purchasing it. Especially interesting for me are answers to the following questions: 1. Is PLUS-mac completely compatible with PLUS-dos? 2. Has PLUS been updated to work with hypercard 2.0 stacks or does it only convert and run the old hypercard 1.0-1.2 stacks? Has PLUS been updated on both platforms? 3. Can the run-time version be freely distributed on both platforms or does the manifacturer require licenceing fees to be paid for each copy? 4. How fast is PLUS. Is the switching between cards slower than hypercard? What about scripts? 5. Is it possible to delete all PLUS-menus from the menubar and replace them by custom-menus without the use of external commands? 6. Is it possible to work with variable card-sizes? 7. Can different fonts be used (and printed) in one field? 8. How does PLUS handle printing? Is printing better in PLUS or in HYPERCARD. Is it possible to print labels? If any of you out there uses PLUS please be so kind to answer one or more of my questions. You would make me a happy man! Daniel van der Zee Student Computer Science University Of Amsterdam (Holland) e-mail: zee@fwi.uva.nl
thanson@swbatl.sbc.com (Tony Hanson D2D - 331-2904) (05/30/91)
In article <1991May29.143748.1972@fwi.uva.nl> zee@fwi.uva.nl (Daniel M. van der Zee (I89)) writes: > >I'm looking for information about PLUS, a hypercard-like application running >both on mac and ms-dos systems. I would like to have a good idea about what PLUS >is like before -eventually- purchasing it. Especially interesting for me are >answers to the following questions: > I started working with Plus around August of 1990, although I have shifted my application over to Oracle's implementation of it since then (called Oracle Card, and it appears to be Plus with a lot of Oracle created stacks wrapped around it.) I will answer those questions that I can: >1. Is PLUS-mac completely compatible with PLUS-dos? I started developing under Plus on a Macintosh, then moved over to a PC. After I had finished my application I copied it back to the Macintosh. Since then I have supported the same application on both platforms, and I have not found anything that will not work. You will need to use the Apple File Exchange (or something like it) and something like resedit, but it does work. Note that external resources (Xcmd's and the like) *do not* port so easily. These are usually written in something like C, and must be re-compiled (at least) on each platform. >2. Has PLUS been updated to work with hypercard 2.0 stacks or does it only > convert and run the old hypercard 1.0-1.2 stacks? Has PLUS been updated on > both platforms? Don't know. >3. Can the run-time version be freely distributed on both platforms or does > the manifacturer require licenceing fees to be paid for each copy? The information I have from Spinnaker says: $495 for a runtime license for Windows or the Macintosh. $900 will cover both. >4. How fast is PLUS. Is the switching between cards slower than hypercard? > What about scripts? Switching between cards takes a noticeable amount of time: on the order of 1-2 seconds. Can't comment on how this relates to Hypercard. >5. Is it possible to delete all PLUS-menus from the menubar and replace them > by custom-menus without the use of external commands? You can hide the Plus menu's, but Plus does a poor job of supporting user created menu's. Plus does support a command called popUpMenuSelect that lets buttons look and (mostly) act like menu's. The biggest flaw: it will not recognize when the pointer has left one menu and entered another (in most packages, selecting, say the File menu, then sliding the mouse to another menu, say Edit, will cause the File menu to close and the Edit menu to appear. This does not happen with this command. You must release the mouse to make the first menu go away, then click on the second menu.). >6. Is it possible to work with variable card-sizes? Yes. >7. Can different fonts be used (and printed) in one field? Plus offers several different types of fields: fields, wpfields and dbfields. I gather that fields are just like fields in HyperCard. WPFields allow the use of different fonts. DBfields are one line fields. >8. How does PLUS handle printing? Is printing better in PLUS or in HYPERCARD. > Is it possible to print labels? I know that Plus lets you print a card, but beyond that I do not know. Other thoughts: I have not worked with HyperCard, so I cannot commment too much on it. I did pull some Xcmds from my HyperCard stack and attach them to my Plus stack (on my Macintosh, obviously) and they worked fine. I have also imported Hypercard scripts as well as Supercard scripts and had them run without any difficulty. If you have any more questions, feel free to contact me. Tony Hanson Southwestern Bell Telephone Company St. Louis, Mo USA thanson@swbatl.sbc.com (314) 331-2904
hmarvel@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Howard P Marvel) (05/30/91)
In article <1991May29.143748.1972@fwi.uva.nl> zee@fwi.uva.nl (Daniel M. van der Zee (I89)) writes: >I'm looking for information about PLUS, a hypercard-like application running >both on mac and ms-dos systems. I would like to have a good idea about what PLUS >is like before -eventually- purchasing it. Especially interesting for me are >answers to the following questions: > >1. Is PLUS-mac completely compatible with PLUS-dos? Not entirely. Plus on the Macintosh can use Macintosh resources. These do not translate to windows. Moreover, you cannot add similar resources to the Plus version on the PC. Obviously sounds are gone, but so are less obvious things like icons. Other limitations are a result of the Windows environment -- Windows fonts, for example, have a bad case of the uglies. >2. Has PLUS been updated to work with hypercard 2.0 stacks or does it only > convert and run the old hypercard 1.0-1.2 stacks? Has PLUS been updated on > both platforms? Not updated. 1.x.x only. >3. Can the run-time version be freely distributed on both platforms or does > the manifacturer require licenceing fees to be paid for each copy? $495 for one platform, $900 for two, for the runtime license >4. How fast is PLUS. Is the switching between cards slower than hypercard? Considerably slower, comparing Windows Plus with HyperCard. Dump all your visual effects. Plus is quite slow if you must clean up after yourself using a paint tool. > What about scripts? Depends on what you are doing. You can show and hide draw objects pretty rapidly, but such objects are limited. >5. Is it possible to delete all PLUS-menus from the menubar and replace them > by custom-menus without the use of external commands? Don't know. >6. Is it possible to work with variable card-sizes? One card size per stack, user selectable. One stack open at a time. >7. Can different fonts be used (and printed) in one field? Yes. Plus has something called a WPField, for word processing field. Have not tried this yet. But you don't want to use many fonts in the Dos version unless your users are guaranteed to have ATM or some substitute. >8. How does PLUS handle printing? Is printing better in PLUS or in HYPERCARD. > Is it possible to print labels? Don't know > >If any of you out there uses PLUS please be so kind to answer one or more of >my questions. You would make me a happy man! Plus is an interesting product. It is not a panacea, however. Plus works rather differently than HyperCard, particularly its paint tools. One particularly irritating feature is that when you choose a tool other than the browse tool, any object on a card can catch a click even if its tool was not active. Suppose that you have a field or button defined to catch a mouse click in a region and that you want to use, say, the brush tool to draw something where the user clicked. If you try choose brush tool set brush to 7 click at the clickloc You will find that the original button or field will catch the click and you won't be able to draw anything. (Hide the original first -- a pain) Watch out for the compact stack command. Seems to be the corrupt stack command. Note that you don't get a cantmodify property, that you can't use paintobjects from scripts, that the marquee tool does not work from scripts, and that other gotchas abound for HyperCard scripters. The documentation is by the author of a well-known HyperTalk book which has been much abused in this newsgroup. It is pretty woeful. Plus is pretty unstable on large stacks. I cannot tell if that is due to Windows or to Plus itself. I suspect the former. You won't be able to bring your Mac stacks to DOS without a lot of work. But it looks as if the task is not impossible. It is impressive that it works at all. And it is really nice to see stackware in color. I have only used the Mac version of Plus to convert stacks to something that can serve as a starting point for a Dos version. If you don't need a DOS version, stick with HyperCard. If you do, prepare to do a good bit of work.
guzdial@zug.csmil.umich.edu (Mark Guzdial) (05/31/91)
We've been using PLUS to develop a multimedia authoring environment that we're distributing at NECC next June. I developed the first version in HyperCard, converted it to Mac PLUS, then moved it to DOS PLUS -- and it ran the first try. No problems, no modifications. We use the WPfield extensively and it works well. We're also manipulating paint and draw objects from scripts, so I can't confirm Howard Marvel's experiences. To get around problems with who catches clicks, we generate an object to the user's specs (e.g., rect, oval, fills, whatever), then move it to the right place, and let the user manipulate it from there. We've got everything we need to print on one card, so we just do "Print Card" for printing. I don't know about handling labels. I don't know how to change the menubar in DOS PLUS, but we got around it by putting up a paintObject menubar and using the PLUS' PopUpMenu function to create a working substitute. (It actually looks a lot more Mac-like than Windows-like, but it works.) Mark Guzdial
john@newave.UUCP (John A. Weeks III) (06/03/91)
In article <1991May29.143748.1972@fwi.uva.nl> zee@fwi.uva.nl (Daniel M. van der Zee (I89)) writes: > I'm looking for information about PLUS, a hypercard-like application running > both on mac and ms-dos systems.I would like to have a good idea about what > PLUS is like before -eventually- purchasing it. Especially interesting for > me are answers to the following questions: I am occasionally conned into using Spinaker PLUS under windows and on the Mac. All in all, I find working with PLUS to be very frusterating. One of my clients saw a demo a Spinaker, and now thinks that all business problems can be solved by Spinaker with only one or two hours of development time. As a C programmer, there are things that I can do easily in UNIX that I cannot get Spinaker to do. Spinaker builds nice interfaces, but they run too slowly to be of use. The only thing I really like PLUS for is prototyping when I do not know what type of machine my client will have for the demo. > 1. Is PLUS-mac completely compatible with PLUS-dos? Well, there are a few minor differences, most of them are are well documented. The WP field works a bit differently because windows does not have a built in text editor like the Mac, so they had to try to duplicate the Mac text editor. Also, X-commands and X-functions will not work on the PC without rewriting the code for windows. > 2. Has PLUS been updated to work with hypercard 2.0 stacks or does it only > convert and run the old hypercard 1.0-1.2 stacks? Has PLUS been updated on > both platforms? PLUS is Hypercard 1.x compatible, and does not have the features of Hypercard 2.x. There will probably be a big lag before PLUS is 2.x compatible because of all of the different versions and different vendors. > 3. Can the run-time version be freely distributed on both platforms or does > the manifacturer require licenceing fees to be paid for each copy? I do not recall any type of run-time version. I am pretty sure that everyone needs a copy of the program. > 4. How fast is PLUS. Is the switching between cards slower than hypercard? > What about scripts? PLUS is agonizingly slow, much slower than Hypercard. Especially if you use color. There are times with PLUS just sits and spins the harddisk while it is thinks--it must be doing some type of garbage collection. Even stripped down demos are sluggish, let alone full applications. > 5. Is it possible to delete all PLUS-menus from the menubar and replace them > by custom-menus without the use of external commands? Never tried it. > 6. Is it possible to work with variable card-sizes? I think you can change the card size on the fly, but I have never tried it. You can change the stack size any time you want when running a stack by dragging the corner of a the window. > 7. Can different fonts be used (and printed) in one field? Depends on which field you use. Text fields can only have one font, size, and style. WP fields can have mixed fonts, sizes, and styles. > 8. How does PLUS handle printing? Is printing better in PLUS or in HYPERCARD. > Is it possible to print labels? I only work with the LaserWriter, and I find problems trying to print in B&W from stacks that use color. The program seems to print in either black or white, and does not generate shades of grey. This might be my lack of in depth knowlege about printing from Hypercard or PLUS, but I rarely have to print. I have made screen captures and copied them into other graphics programs without problems. As far as doing labels, I have never tried. You can write genaric text files from PLUS, so you could write out the label text to be processed by another program, or write a script to generate the postscript needed to create the labels. -john- -- ============================================================================= John A. Weeks III (612) 942-6969 john@newave.mn.org NeWave Communications, Ltd. ...uunet!tcnet!newave!john