[comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc] ToolBook/hypermedia/hypertext

efowler@milton.u.washington.edu (Eric Fowler) (07/11/90)

I am interested in hearing from anybody who has had a chance to try
ToolBook, Asymetrix' new product for Windows 3.0.  ToolBook is a
multimedia/hypermedia toolkit, and contains it's own OOP language,
OpenScript.  Any remarks &/or questions are welcome.  
=Eric Fowler

wallwey@snoopy.Colorado.EDU (WALLWEY DEAN WILLIAM) (07/11/90)

In article <4909@milton.u.washington.edu> efowler@milton.u.washington.edu (Eric Fowler) writes:
>
>I am interested in hearing from anybody who has had a chance to try
>ToolBook, Asymetrix' new product for Windows 3.0.  ToolBook is a
>multimedia/hypermedia toolkit, and contains it's own OOP language,
>OpenScript.  Any remarks &/or questions are welcome.  
>=Eric Fowler

Well as for running it on a 1 Meg 10 Mhz 286, ITS UNUSABLE!!!  IT is
slow on this configuration.  I get the feeling that the performance
might significantly be improved with more memory.  The reason I beleive
this is that the hard disk activity light is on almost all the time.
Maybe this is because the DLLs can't all fit in memory at the same time.
Other than that is seems really nice, but waiting 2 minutes to switch
between screens is just to slow for me!!  Can somebody comment on using
it on a 386 with some more memory???

Note: I just ran the demo that came with my Windows 3.0 update!

-Dean Wallwey


******************************************************************************
*-Dean Wallwey   wallwey@snoopy.colorado.edu  or  wallwey@128.138.238.103    *
*"If people drove cars like they run computers, 5% of the driving population *
*would die every business day in automobile accidents!"                      *
* #define DISCLAIMER \                                                       *
* The above comments are my own and not necessarly that of my employer or\   *
* school.    grammer, spelling errors, real heavy flames > NULL              *
******************************************************************************

efowler@milton.u.washington.edu (Eric Fowler) (07/11/90)

Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.apps,comp.os.msdos.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: ToolBook/hypermedia/hypertext
Summary: 
Expires: 
References: <26307@netnews.upenn.edu> <4909@milton.u.washington.edu> <23324@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Sender: 
Followup-To: 
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Keywords: Hypermedia, hypertext, object, toolbook


>Well as for running [ToolBook] on a 1 Meg 10 Mhz 286, ITS UNUSABLE!!!  IT is
>slow on this configuration.  I get the feeling that the performance
>might significantly be improved with more memory.  The reason I beleive
>this is that the hard disk activity light is on almost all the time.
>Maybe this is because the DLLs can't all fit in memory at the same time.
>Can somebody comment on using
>it on a 386 with some more memory???
>Note: I just ran the demo that came with my Windows 3.0 update!
>>-Dean Wallwey



Dean: You are running with the minimum hardware, which really eats into
performance.  Adding EXTENDED(not expanded) memory will help a lot,
especially as you go from about 1 meg up to about 3 megs.  I expect you
would get at least twice the speed with 2 more megs.  Also, the sample
apps which ship with Win3 are not really tuned for speed, so they don't
speak well for the whole product.  Daybook is an especially noticable
case.  While ToolBook is not famous for speed, it performs better than
you would think after watching Daybook run on your hardware.  I have a
33 mHz 386, and it goes like a bat(naturally).  Certain video drivers
can also drag it down-Email for details.  
=Eric 

(Incedentally, I'm from Boulder myself....)
.sig is in the mail....

jfadams@tc.fluke.COM (Jim Adams) (07/13/90)

In article <4909@milton.u.washington.edu> efowler@milton.u.washington.edu (Eric Fowler) writes:
>
>I am interested in hearing from anybody who has had a chance to try
>ToolBook, Asymetrix' new product for Windows 3.0.  ToolBook is a
>multimedia/hypermedia toolkit, and contains it's own OOP language,
>OpenScript.  Any remarks &/or questions are welcome.  
>=Eric Fowler

I've been playing around with Toolbook for two weeks now.  I'm in the
midst of creating a "book" (or "stack") application that predicts
tides from NOAA harmonic constants.  As an authoring tool, it's quite
nice.  Unfortunately, as your book gets larger i.e. more pages and
cross-referencing are added, the speed decreases.  I'm using a 386/20
machine with 4Mb RAM and the performance is tolerable.  I can't see
using anything less than a 386, however.

Compared to Hypercard, Toolbook is its superset.  Spinaker Software is
currently developing PLUS for Win3 that is on the same order as
Toolbook, but affords conversion of Hypercard stacks to PLUS format.
PLUS looks more similar to Hypercard than Toolbook, however, through
graphics images (bitmaps) you can make Toolbook apps look like
anything you want.  I learned yesterday that a Hypercard stack
converter is to be released (by someone) for Toolbook.

In summary, Toolbook offers a quick and easy way to develop Win3
applications without investing time and $ in MSC & SDK.
-- 
James F. Adams       John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc.        Everett, Washington USA
WORLD:jfadams@tc.fluke.COM
UUCP:{ihnp4!uw-beaver,ucbvax!lbl-csam,allegra,decvax!microsoft}!fluke!jfadams
ARPA:fluke!jfadams@uw-beaver.ARPA  GEnie:J.F.ADAMS  CIS:74036,2517 

moran@drivax.UUCP (Mike Moran) (07/13/90)

wallwey@snoopy.Colorado.EDU (WALLWEY DEAN WILLIAM) writes:
>In article <4909@milton.u.washington.edu> efowler@milton.u.washington.edu (Eric Fowler) writes:
>>
>>multimedia/hypermedia toolkit, and contains it's own OOP language,
>>OpenScript.  Any remarks &/or questions are welcome.  
>>=Eric Fowler

>Well as for running it on a 1 Meg 10 Mhz 286, ITS UNUSABLE!!!  IT is
>slow on this configuration.  I get the feeling that the performance
>might significantly be improved with more memory.  The reason I beleive
>this is that the hard disk activity light is on almost all the time.
>Maybe this is because the DLLs can't all fit in memory at the same time.
>Other than that is seems really nice, but waiting 2 minutes to switch
>between screens is just to slow for me!!  Can somebody comment on using

We have tried toolbook on several machines, mainly 386/25MHz systems with 4 or 8

Megs of memory.  Performance is too slow to be practical, whether using the
supplied scripts or others we have found.

-- 
Michael A. Moran
Digital Research
70 Garden Court B15
Monterey, CA 93940