henry@chinet.chi.il.us (Henry C. Schmitt) (10/10/90)
Let's start this off with a caveat: I'm working with the HyperCard 2.0
8/31/90 release as sent to Users' Groups (I don't know if there are any
other versions), so I only have 5 disks, no manuals.
After playing around for an hour or so, I think Apple has managed to get
a large amount of egg on its face. In other word, I'm NOT impressed.
I start by popping in the HyperCard Program disk; it has an Installer
Script on it. Cool, I don't have to worry about dragging everything.
I double-click and get the infamous "Application is busy or missing"
dialog. Not Cool! An Installer Script, but NO Installer. Now I have
to dig around and find my latest System Tools disk. Five minutes later
I find the Safe Place (tm) in which I put it.
I dump Installer onto my hard disk and double-click the script again.
It starts up, tells me it's going to install HyperCard 2.0 and then offers
to put it on my SyQuest removable. I hit the Switch Disk button and
am informed that I can't install on the locked master disk (I kinda
expected that), and then I'm informed that I can't install on my hard
disk because Installer is running from it. If that's the way it wants
to be, fine.
I quit the Installer and drag it to my SyQuest and try again from there.
Now I can't install anywhere because the hard disk is my startup disk,
and you can't install on the startup disk either. I understand why
these restrictions are necessary for installing System Software, but
HyperCard??
So I start again running from my hard disk and install on my SyQuest.
It runs through the 5 disks (I installed everything) and I quit. Next
I notice that it's installed a System Folder with a System file in it
on the SyQuest. I don't remember asking it to do that! Into the trash
it goes. Next I move HC onto my hard disk.
I double-click HyperCard and am immediately informed that "HyperCard
needs more memory to run at this color setting" (I run at 256 normally).
I check it out and find it's only got 1000K, so I up it to 2048K and try
again. No go. So I up it to 4096, more that enough I think. Still no go!
So I try 16 colors. Nope. How about 4 colors? Nope. You mean I need
more than 4 Megs of memory to run HC in other than Black & White?
Apparently. So I run in black & white.
After I go through the Tour Stack, I try out the Puzzle. When I
finish the puzzle, I get a scripting error!
If this is what Apple is sending to it's Users' Groups, I think
they'd better find a hole to hide in!
--
H3nry C. Schmitt | CompuServe: 72275,1456 (Rarely)
| GEnie: H.Schmitt (Occasionally)
Royal Inn of Yoruba | UUCP: Henry@chinet.chi.il.us (Best Bet)man@cs.brown.edu (Mark H. Nodine) (10/11/90)
I would guess that since HyperCard 2.0 requires System 6.0.5, that the installer makes sure that the system is upgraded as well. That explains why it doesn't want to work on the Startup disk. If your hard drive had an earlier version of the system on it, I wouldn't complain about crashes, since you went against the installation. --Mark
gdavis@primate.wisc.edu (Gary Davis) (10/13/90)
From article <1990Oct10.031404.13263@chinet.chi.il.us>, by henry@chinet.chi.il.us (Henry C. Schmitt): > Let's start this off with a caveat: I'm working with the HyperCard 2.0 > 8/31/90 release as sent to Users' Groups (I don't know if there are any > other versions), so I only have 5 disks, no manuals. > > I start by popping in the HyperCard Program disk; it has an Installer > Script on it. Cool, I don't have to worry about dragging everything. > I double-click and get the infamous "Application is busy or missing" > dialog. Not Cool! An Installer Script, but NO Installer. Now I have > What is the installer for? I just dragged all the files over to my hard disk and everything worked fine. The only thing I could see that the installer might do (other than copy the files for you) is make sure that you have all the fonts in your system that come in the HyperCard Fonts file on the HyperCard disks. > I double-click HyperCard and am immediately informed that "HyperCard > needs more memory to run at this color setting" (I run at 256 normally). > I check it out and find it's only got 1000K, so I up it to 2048K and try It ran fine on my Mac II with 256 colors and 1000 K. All the stacks worked perfectly too. Some are pretty neat like the Puzzle and the PowerTools. All in all, I'm quite impressed by 2.0. Great job. I have run into one peculiar anomaly, though. I opened an old stack on an SE/30 at work and converted it to 2.0 format. There was a problem in the info dialogs for objects. For buttons, for instance, the lines with the objects number and id both said "Error: not enough f". I thought this might be one of the earthy Apple engineer messages that got censored by legal, but in another case the message read "Error: not enough free." For other objects I got varying messages in plave of the numbers and ids. For the card info, the id line was fine, the number line read "Card number: Usage<sorted_container>". I later installed (by dragging) HC 2.0 on my Mac II at home and opened and converted a number of old stacks. None of them showed the anomaly and they all worked fine. But a copy of the problem stack showed the same problem on my home machine. I forgot to mention that the titles in the script editor windows were also screwed up. They consisted of a bare id number with a name if present. The stack seemed to work fine, though I haven't tested all its functions. On both machines I was running 6.0.5, After dark and On Cue. The HC 2.0 was the 8/31 User Group shipment. Gary Davis
gandalf@apple.com (Martin Gannholm) (10/15/90)
In article <3264@uakari.primate.wisc.edu> gdavis@primate.wisc.edu (Gary Davis) writes: > an SE/30 at work and converted it to 2.0 format. There was a problem in > the info dialogs for objects. For buttons, for instance, the lines > with the objects number and id both said "Error: not enough f". The resources in HyperCard 2.0 were all renumbered (except for the ICONs) to be sequential and within the range assigned to applications. Unfortunately the resource numbers for strings (STR#) sometimes conflict with STR# resources in stacks (used by XCMDs). Since we use strings from the STR# resources to "fill in blanks" in the dialogs, you can get some pretty strange results if we're using someone else's STR# resource. The problem with STR# resources will be fixed in the next version by making sure that we get the resources from HyperCard's resource file. Martin Gannholm HyperCard 2.x Engineer Apple Computer Exclaimer!!! I typed this myself = I speak for myself...
gdavis@primate.wisc.edu (Gary Davis) (10/15/90)
From article <10709@goofy.Apple.COM>, by gandalf@apple.com (Martin Gannholm):
- In article <3264@uakari.primate.wisc.edu> gdavis@primate.wisc.edu (Gary
- Davis) writes:
-- an SE/30 at work and converted it to 2.0 format. There was a problem in
-- the info dialogs for objects. For buttons, for instance, the lines
-- with the objects number and id both said "Error: not enough f".
-
- The resources in HyperCard 2.0 were all renumbered (except for the ICONs)
- to be sequential and within the range assigned to applications.
- Unfortunately the resource numbers for strings (STR#) sometimes conflict
- with STR# resources in stacks (used by XCMDs). Since we use strings from
- the STR# resources to "fill in blanks" in the dialogs, you can get some
- pretty strange results if we're using someone else's STR# resource.
That's what happened alright. Renumbering the XCMD STR# solved the problem.
Gary Davis