cohill@vtserf.cc.vt.edu (Andrew M. Cohill) (10/10/90)
I just got Hypercard 2.0 yesterday, and all five levels of scripting are right there in the Home stack. The help stack is also included, and it is a *major* improvement over the old one--better layout, better graphics, more information, more examples. Other goodies that have been mentioned but I have now seen for real: variable card size, which is really nice (the address stack is now the size of a real rolodex card); floating windoids, which I haven't figured out how to use; a real font menu on the menu bar; you can now add your own stuff to the menu bar, which will be nice for more application-like stacks. Also included is a "power tools" stack; the HC development group learned a lot from the shareware stuff, and a nice set of development tools are included; enough, I think, to give most people the basic stuff they need to build stacks, but there is still plenty of room for add-ons from third party/shareware people. Hypercard was and still is a wonderful product; I think the Hypercard developers have done a great job. Writing good software is a long, slow thoughtful process, and with all the really bad stuff written and sold today, it is amazing that Apple has persevered with the free distribution of Hypercard as long as they have. I hope that Claris adds real value to it, and I certainly won't mind buying a new and improved product if more development tools and a good manual come with it. Thanks again to all the folks at Apple for a great product.
ouellettemj@merrimack.edu (10/15/90)
I don't know how you got your version of HyperCard 2.0, but the version I recieved contains only the Address and Appointments stack. Also the only two user levels selectable are the first two. You can however get into the others by removing the two buttons covering 3,4 and 5. I agree that HyperCard 2.0 is a great product and has a lot of potential. But as far as I know Apple is only shipping their computers with these two stacks and a disabled home. In this matter I think Apple has made a mistake, for I have seen the other stacks, the ones Apple was origanly going to provide before going to Claris, and they're great. They also give you something to do once you open up the box. There is a train set and puzzle that work great. As well as a lot of clip art and pictures. And from what I have experienced the only thing non HyperCard fanatics use HyperCard for is to get those pictures onto their MacWrite documents. Matt Ouellette OUELLETTEMJ Merrimack College