moriarty@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Meyer) (09/25/89)
Well, I've spent five days trying to move my favorite HyperCard stacks --
the initial version of Focal Point -- to SuperCard; and after a particularly
fruitless weekend, have decided to call it a day. I'd class myself as a
mid-level HyperCard programmer, but this program stumped me quite a few
times -- I'd hate to think what the problems a novice would have converting
HyperCard stacks. A few comments/complaints:
1) The documentation. God above, but it sucks. The over-all format --
intro, tutorial, object-by-object description -- is a fine idea, but the
book goes NOWHERE into the amount of detail one needs for putting a
halfway-complex stack together. The seperate scripting booklet (more like a
pamphlet) doesn't even give examples for every command, and the index for
the main manual is laughable. Think of it as a user's manual without the
corresponding reference manual.
Now, of course, HyperCard was this way, too; any useful work was impossible
without Danny Goodman's HYPERCARD HANDBOOK (or some other book). However, I
didn't pay $100 for HyperCard, so I could live with the extra expense. I
know there's a SuperCard Handbook out there for ~$30, but I didn't think it
was essential equipment for use with SuperCard. (And, for all I know, maybe
it's as inept as the manuals.)
Not that the User's manual is all that hot -- quite a few of the tutorial
lessons aren't accurate. The user is suddenly asked to make choices by
SuperCard that aren't described in the step-by-step tutorial, which makes
things pretty confusing for a beginner. I luckily drop-kicked the tutorial
after about a half-hour, but sheesh... Oh, and some of the scripts provided
for use in our own projects don't work. What fun...
So, I've spent about 20 hours discovering things by trial-and-error that the
manual should have helped me with, making design choices that I wouldn't
have taken otherwise. I could have used those 20 hours working on a design
that *would* have worked under SuperCard... Grrrr....
2) My particular bane was absorbing HyperCard stacks into SuperCard. It
took me a while to discover (finally found the info in one of the Q&A
projects) that when you change the font of a background field, it only
changes for the card you've selected. OK, had to make a script that ran
through every card and changed every card in my ToDo stack (732 cards) to
the right font, size, height and font style. Takes a while to run -- only
to discover that it wasn't doing the job. Seems there's a bug that either
a) sets the height correctly, but won't set the font or font style or b)
sets the font and font style correctly, but sets the font size to 0; which
way it goes is dependent on the order in the script for the set
font/style/size command. Lots of trial and error on that one.
3) Not a problem for everyone, but a big one for me: as soon as you put
your cursor in a field that has the "Show Lines" attribute set, the lines
disappear. Plus, you can't move your cursor to any line in a field -- there
has to be newlines on every line before that one before you can place the
cursor there. I know, I know -- that could be useful in some cases. Not
for me in this case, and, more importantly, it's a fair-to-middlin'
difference from HyperCard.
-----
If anyone has workarounds/fixes to these particular problems, I'd love to
hear them. What makes it so damn frustrating is there is a lot about
SuperCard to like, from the scripter's perspective. At this time, I'd say
that if you were building a complex project from the ground up, I'd go for
SuperCard; but if you're planning to absorb a HyperCard stack to build
around in SuperCard, watch out. The pitfalls may be larger than you think.
You're listening to WKDU. No one else is, but you
are.
---
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
INTERNET: moriarty@tc.fluke.COM
Manual UUCP: {uw-beaver, sun, hplsla, thebes, microsoft}!fluke!moriarty
CREDO: You gotta be Cruel to be Kind...
<*> DISCLAIMER: Do what you want with me, but leave my employers alone! <*>steve@hp-ptp.HP.COM (Steve_Witten) (09/26/89)
A couple of weeks ago, I called Olduvai Software in Florida about their HC
clone called PLUS. I asked if I could use Focal Point II with PLUS.
(Naturally,) Their response was "No problem, PLUS deals with HC stacks totally
transparently." Not being one of soft head, I went to my local Mac-only soft-
ware store to try this out on one of their machines. (Naturally,) It failed
to work. The friendly store personnel couldn't discover the problem either.
I guess Olduvai's definitions of "No problem" and "totally transparent" are
different than mine.
(Naturally,) I am not a PLUS owner (much less a dissatisfied one). At least
the SuperCard people told me over the phone Focal Point II would not work with
SuperCard.
===============================================================================
Steve Witten steve%hp-ptp@hplabs.HP.COM
Industrial Applications Center {ucbvax, hplabs}!hpda!hp-ptp!steve
Hewlett-Packard Co. steve@hp-ptp
"...I'm no fool! Nosirree!..." -- J. Cricketrob@NRC.COM (Rob Pawsner) (09/26/89)
I second the motion. The SuperCard manuals are nicely designed, well- meaning, and notably inadequate. My copy of SuperCard included a flyer for a third-party Goodmanesque paperback; as I recall, there was a blurb from the president of Silicon Beach calling it indispensable. When I buy a retail-market proprietary language product (not some unsupported APDA tool), I expect to get a 100% complete REFERENCE manual. If the vendor wants to throw in a TUTORIAL manual, or arrange for an outside, extra-cost publication, that's fine; but it's a separate issue. Of course, finding the people, time, and resources to do a good job is a tough problem, as I can testify firsthand. As you've probably noticed, Apple's own software manuals are still beautifully designed, but their contents have become disorganized and incomplete. But that's another topic for another news group...