dan@Apple.COM (Dan Allen) (11/30/88)
Many people have mentioned problems, limitations, and restrictions with HyperCard. Most requests are valid and are things we want to do. Here is a reply to various requests... HyperCard does not and will not in the near future be able to get an app to open a document if the app is already running under MultiFinder. Sorry. And in reply to several other questions, I'm afraid it is all bad news: no, you cannot currently change the default font when printing reports. I know it really is a pain, but we hope to greatly improve reports sometime in the future. Until then, write an XCMD or use PrintReports or some such. Someone else asked about increasing the recursion limit: no, you can't increase the limit. Recode your program using iteration rather than recursion. Create your own stack in a variable and you put before and put after and you can probably make the script run faster anyway. Yet another person asked about driving the polygon tool from a script. Nope, you are right, it CAN't BE DONE. Sorry once again. Maybe someday... SUMMARY OF THE PROBLEMS: HyperCard will never be finished. There are zillions of things we can do to improve and refine it. We are trying to do our best with four programmers working full-time on the improvements that we think will be appreciated by the greatest number of people. Our philosophy is to please the mainstream user, not the esoterica. Hence color always takes a back seat to other improvements because very few Mac users have color monitors. When more than have of our users have color then we'll probably think about doing color, and doing it right, which means, color text, color paint tools, lots of RAM needed, etc. Keep your cards and letters coming. We will continue to fix bugs and add great new features to HyperCard. We are doing so even as I speak. Right now the HyperCard to get and use is 1.2.2, just now getting into the distribution pipeline. Make lots of great stacks and if you need to do something, WRITE AN XCMD. Sorry for the bad news to the specific questions of late. I hope that you all will not be disappointed when HC 2.0 comes... it will be worth the wait. Dan Allen Software Explorer HyperCard Team Apple Computer
anson@spray.CalComp.COM (Ed Anson) (12/08/88)
In article <21421@apple.Apple.COM> dan@Apple.COM (Dan Allen) writes: > Our >philosophy is to please the mainstream user, not the esoterica. Hence >color always takes a back seat to other improvements because very few >Mac users have color monitors. When more than have of our users have >color then we'll probably think about doing color, and doing it right, >which means, color text, color paint tools, lots of RAM needed, etc. Apparently, Silicon Beach and Format Software don't regard color as too esoteric for their customers. The latest MacWeek describes those two companies' Hypercard work-alikes, both of which feature color and large screen support. Although there are both legal and pragmatic issues regarding these products (due to both similarities and differences with respect to Hypercard), they represent an answer to a very real need. Those products will supposedly be available in a few months. Meanwhile, the most-needed features of color and large-screen support are available now as a set of XCMDs which will run on a 1M Mac II, and even on an SE or Plus (although the colors aren't as nice :-) Check the latest APDA catalog for HyperWindows. -- ===================================================================== Ed Anson, Calcomp Display Products Division, Hudson NH 03051 (603) 885-8712, anson@elrond.CalComp.COM