21602MR@MSU.BITNET (Mark Rosenberg) (06/13/89)
Does anyone have any experience using supercard ? Is it worth switching environments ? Will HC 2.0 be worth waiting for ? When will HC 2.0 be making its debut (MacWorld ?) ... Mark Rosenberg Michigan State Univ. Educational Technology Dept.
american@pnet51.cts.com (Jeff Iverson) (06/16/89)
I have only 'tinkered' with SuperCard but a few things leap to mind.... it is
not as friendly as HyperCard in that most development occurs in SuperEdit, and
then the projects are run under SuperCard, unless one decides to turn the
project into a standalone, in which case even a one window project is 350K, it
(SuperCard) is definitely not recommended for use on a one-meg machine... if
one runs out of memory SuperCard will 'lose' parts of itself and its
environment, essentially it will alert you that it can not do something and
then proceed past the point that it alerted you about, really to complex for
me to explain... I don't like it, I can do color windows in HyperCard, I can
open multiple windows in HyperCard, and I can resize HyperCard's native window
to suit me... and all this on a one meg machine with narry a complaint from
HyperCard... I'll stick with HyperCard.
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Jeff Iversontaylorj@yvax.byu.edu (06/21/89)
I've played with SuperCard for a little bit, and altough I was very excited and pleased at first to see wonderful features such as full color support, card sizes up to 32'x32' (yes, that's feet!), draw-oriented graphics (bitmaps are supported as draw objects), PICS animation, multiple windows, any style window (including dialog boxes and floating windoids), built-in icon and cursor editors, full control over all menus, and much much more, the more I use it the more I have misgivings. SuperCard just doesn't "click" like HyperCard. It has lots of little quirks and annoyances. It's much harder to develop and debug with. There is a separate editor, so you have to switch to the interpreter before you can run things. There is a "runtime editor" (written in SuperTalk, believe it or not) that let's you do basic editing at runtime, but it's pretty cumbersome. I fully expected to switch a lot of my HyperCard projects over to SuperCard, but I'm having second thoughts. However, many of SuperCard's extended features are very useful and will be invaluable for some of the more complicated projects. My recommendation would be to wait for HyperCard 2.0 and only switch to SuperCard if HC 2.0 doesn't cut it. Disclaimer: Keep this and all other postings out of reach of children. Jim Taylor Microcomputer Support for Curriculum Brigham Young University taylorj@byuvax.bitnet
jlc@atux01.UUCP (J. Collymore) (06/22/89)
In article <640taylorj@yvax.byu.edu>, taylorj@yvax.byu.edu writes: > I've played with SuperCard for a little bit, and altough I was very excited and > pleased at first to see wonderful features ... > the more I use it the more I have misgivings. SuperCard just doesn't "click" like HyperCard. > It's much harder to develop and debug > with. There is a separate editor, so you have to switch to the interpreter > before you can run things. There is a "runtime editor" (written in SuperTalk, > believe it or not) that let's you do basic editing at runtime, but it's pretty > cumbersome. > > I fully expected to switch a lot of my HyperCard projects over to SuperCard, > but I'm having second thoughts. However, many of SuperCard's extended features > are very useful and will be invaluable for some of the more complicated > projects. > > Jim Taylor > Microcomputer Support for Curriculum > Brigham Young University I recently purchased SuperCard (SC), and have begun to read the manual. Since I am currently in the middle of some other HyperCard (HC) stack development, I really haven't had the time to do any hands-on work with SC yet. I am becoming concerned though, that from things I'm reading in the manual (and here on the net) that SC might need some changes to make it an easier development environment than it currently is. I'm a little concerned to that when making/ converting a HC stack to a SC "Window" standalone, the size of the stack defaults to 340K! I understand that this is due to the insertion of the SC kernel, but still. WHen you've got an HC stack thats only 70K, but as a SC Window it will be 340K, that makes me somewhat uncomfortable. I will admit, that SC seems to provide a LOT more FLEXIBILITY than HC 1.2.2 does (and I fervently hope that Silicon Beach will listen to user comments, cuggestions, and complaints and make solid improvements in a timely manner), however, I am now anxiously waiting to see how Apple will respond to SC, and if they'll be able to make any improvements to HC 2.0 based on SC before the release date. (When IS Apple going to release HC 2.0 anyway?) Jim Collymore p.s. For those of you who bought a copy of SC, remember that there was a big 5x7 postcard for you to write in any changes you'd like to see in SC. I'd suggest we ALL send them our comments posthaste if we want to see any improvements soon. Remember: "The squeaky gear gets the grease."