chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (03/22/88)
Delphi Hypercard Digest Vol 1 #5
March 21, 1988
Subjects:
Re: HyperTalk Books, How to Judge? (Re: Msg 25722)
RE: Re: HyperTalk Books, How to Judge? (Re: Msg 25789)
floating Pt/Hypercard ? (2)
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25789 9-MAR-22:09: Network Digests
Re: HyperTalk Books, How to Judge? (Re: Msg 25722)
From: DDUNHAM To: CHUQ (NR)
> From: chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
> Subject: Re: HyperTalk Books, How to Judge?
> Shafer's, which, AS AN INTRODUCTORY TEXT, does its job well
As I say in my forthcoming review of Shafer's book in MacWEEK, I don't think
it's an introductory book at all. Do programming novices really need to learn
about object-oriented programming in chapter 2? I think (and Shafer has told
me) that the book is aimed at people who've had some exposure to programming. I
presume you've programmed before, at least in BASIC (in fact, the book is really
aimed at BASIC-hackers, not at toolbox-level programmers).
I found 24 errors in the book, and Shafer's bug list not only lists some I
didn't find, but doesn't fix all the ones I reported to him (possibly too late
to get into the 2nd printing).
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25803 10-MAR 15:24 Network Digests
RE: Re: HyperTalk Books, How to Judge? (Re: Msg 25789)
From: MACWEEKBOS To: DDUNHAM (NR)
I really enjoyed the Object Oriented Programming section of Shafer's book,
and I think it's one of the books strong points. Of course, I sometimes claim
I'm a programmer...
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26021 20-MAR 10:19 HyperCard
floating Pt/Hypercard ?
From: ROWLAND To: ALL
I sat down to write a physics stack and found to my chagrin that Hypercard
doesn't seem to know about floating point numbers (actually I assume that it
doesn't know about scientific notation). Has anyone written some routines to
remedy this ? Somehow I always seem to end up writting such things - I'm curious
as to why hypercard doesn't implement something that must be in the ROMs
somewhere already. Sigh.
Mike Burns
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26035 20-MAR 20:26 HyperCard
RE: floating Pt/Hypercard ? (Re: Msg 26021)
From: PEABO To: ROWLAND (NR)
HyperCard is supposed to obscure the details of data types from people, on the
assumption that it will be more user friendly. You could write an XFCN to
format numbers in scientific or engineering notation. Taking a good look at how
pocket calculators do this might suggest some other ideas that could be bundled
into the conversion.