brandt@iris (Jon Brandt) (09/21/88)
I'm looking for a Hypercard/Hypertalk book which would be useful for a new programmer, that is, an instructional book for someone who wants to learn how to program using Hypercard. Suggestions? Reviews? Jon Brandt Dept of EECS UC Davis Davis CA, 95627 brandt@iris.ucdavis.edu
chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (09/22/88)
>I'm looking for a Hypercard/Hypertalk book which would be useful for a >new programmer, that is, an instructional book for someone who wants to >learn how to program using Hypercard. Suggestions? Reviews? I recommend three HyperCard books: o Carol Kaehler's "HyperCard Power: Techniques and Scripts" -- a really neat book, both an introduction and a design/scripting book. Most other books generally talk about scripting, but don't really get into stack design (or they do and the author doesn't really have a good design sense). The first book I would give any new person, and if I could only own one book, this would be it. o Danny Goodman's original HyperCard book -- A good, solid reference work. o Gary Bond's XCMD's for HyperCard -- Only if you're going to do some serious HyperCard programming, of course. Honorable mentions: o Danny Goodman's second HyperCard book -- a little on the esoteric side, with a lot of concept and very little hard substance for my tastes. Good, but not great. There's nothing in here that isn't covered in more depth somewhere else, but if you can only afford two books, the two Goodman books are probably the best combination. o Dan Shafer's Hypertalk book. Now out in a new edition for 1.2, this is the best in a really average morass of HyperTalk me-too books. Buy it if you have the budget, after you've bought all the rest. It'll come in handy, but I wouldn't go out of my way. There are something like 20 HyperCard/HyperTalk books out there last I looked, with more on the way. Can you say glut? I'd say you only *need* the first three (assuming you have the budget). Hypercard fanatics could keep these five. I have eight or nine of them, and most of them are really un-inspiring (of course, I've been getting paid to review some of them, so it's not *quite* that bad for me). I spend most of my hypertalking time with the first Goodman and the Kaehler book, for what it's worth. Chuq Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM Delphi: CHUQ Editor/Publisher, OtherRealms
dan@Apple.COM (Dan Allen) (09/22/88)
In article <69395@sun.uucp> chuq@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: >o Carol Kaehler's "HyperCard Power: Techniques and Scripts" -- a really > neat book, both an introduction and a design/scripting book. > Most other books generally talk about scripting, but don't > really get into stack design (or they do and the author > doesn't really have a good design sense). The first book I > would give any new person, and if I could only own one book, > this would be it. >o Gary Bond's XCMD's for HyperCard -- Only if you're going to do some > serious HyperCard programming, of course. In my list of books submitted yesterday I forgot these two, as I was thinking more of strict HyperTalk books. I agree with Chuq that these are good books, each for a variation on a theme of HyperTalk programming, Carol's for stack design and Gary's for getting into XCMDs. Dan Allen
ns@cat.cmu.edu (Nicholas Spies) (09/23/88)
In re HyperCard books: ...so only books written by HyperCard team members or those with an inside track (Goodman) are worth getting... mmmm :-) I tried to answer "div" problem with mail but couldn't: just try exp2(30) div 64 in message box ...then try trunc(exp2(30) / 64) to see what div should have done (in H-C 1.2). -- Nicholas Spies ns@cat.cmu.edu.arpa Center for Design of Educational Computing Carnegie Mellon University
dan@Apple.COM (Dan Allen) (09/28/88)
In article <3077@pt.cs.cmu.edu> ns@cat.cmu.edu (Nicholas Spies) writes: >In re HyperCard books: ...so only books written by HyperCard team members >or those with an inside track (Goodman) are worth getting... mmmm :-) Actually, since I mentioned the books that were on MY reading list, I have found another nifty quick reference guide done by Microsoft Press and written by Lon Poole, who didn't have an inside track to my knowledge. It is one of the MS Press Programmer's Quick Reference Series and is called simply "HyperTalk". If someone out of the "inside track" writes a good book then great, but I'll stick with those on the inside track because they know what is right and wrong. No one seems to mind that Kernighan and Richie wrote THE C book: in fact everyone uses their book as the bible of C. Apple has done the samething with their HyperTalk Script Language Reference Guide. If you had a means of checking on the motives of many of the HyperTalk authors, you would find there to be lots of people out to make a buck who have accuracy as the last thing on their minds... as their books attest. Dan Allen Apple Computer > >I tried to answer "div" problem with mail but couldn't: just try >exp2(30) div 64 in message box ...then try >trunc(exp2(30) / 64) to see what div should have done (in H-C 1.2). > > > >-- >Nicholas Spies ns@cat.cmu.edu.arpa >Center for Design of Educational Computing >Carnegie Mellon University
ns@cat.cmu.edu (Nicholas Spies) (09/28/88)
Actually, I agree with your book list completely...and for the reason you gave, namely, << If someone out of the "inside track" write a good book then great, but I'll stick with those on the inside track because they know what is right and wrong.>> Although I think the HyperTalk Script Language Reference Guide is a wonderful step in the right direction, I won't be completely satisfied until Dan or Bill writes a book as good as "Smalltalk-80: The Language and it's Implementation" (Goldberg, Robson), for example, or Guy Steele's "Common Lisp, the Language". This sort of a HyperCard book would be worth a great deal to its readers as well as its author(s), who would deserve every penny they earned... Although Apple's near-term interests are served by treating HyperCard as a proprietary secret, in my opinion Apple's long term interests would be better served by creating a solid specification for the virtually inevitable clones that will grow up. After all, we all agree that the Mac would be the preferred development machine, right? So what's the problem? I'm sure there would be 10 times the number of eager HyperCard developers coming out the woodwork if it ran, as an Apple-inspired standard application on PC's and workstations, too. Then, too, third-party developers, which have been a mainstay of Apple's success, could jump in to at least try to develop native-code compilers for HyperTalk, stand-alone clickable applications, new HyperCard objects, etc. Surely this would be a better situation than having to rely only on the resources of the HyperCard development team for carrying their remarkable product forward. A HyperCard Virtual Machine should be defined to allow an orderly, compatible development on many fronts, both inside and outside of Apple. ...but then again, John Sculley hasn't been asking me for my opinion of late, and it hasn't seemed to have made much difference! BTW: Dan, thanks for your extremely helpful info and feedback and as they used to say: De gustibus non disputandum... -- Nicholas Spies ns@cat.cmu.edu.arpa Center for Design of Educational Computing Carnegie Mellon University