Bill Atkinson: Reflections on the 40th anniversary of my joining Apple
folklore.org
folklore.org
So around 5:10 he starts to explain why the soft keys they thought to use were such a bad idea, because they would relabel with changing contexts but the user never would read the label again.
That's basically one of the major problems with the TouchBar.
The soft keys Atkinson describes are quite a bit different than the UI of the Touch Bar.
For many softwares, Touch Bar elements change shape, size, and color as well as text.
For example, in QuickTime Player opening a video shows a play button, a timeline/scrubber, and panel for brightness, volume, and Siri. Tapping the brightness button hides all the other elements and expands the brightness button into a slider with a dismissal "x". Tapping the "x" restores the controls to their original state. There is little (no) possibility of touching a button whose text label has changed in this case.
Other apps, like Mail, which do have changing text labels are dynamic enough that most (?) users would not be likely to tap a button by mistake due to a changing label.
In summary, Touch Bar elements are much more varied than what Atkinson describes with the Lisa prototype. The two don't present comparable usability models, so criticizing the Touch Bar based on how soft keys worked on the Lisa prototype doesn't really make sense.
Perhaps in Final Cut Pro I'm not able to lower the volume anymore because there's a video scrubber in the place of that key instead. So I cannot depend on that key anymore.
Yes, this is one of the tradeoffs the Touch Bar makes in order to have a dynamically changing touch interface. I wouldn't really call it a "problem", though many do in light of the Touch Bar taking the space of function keys.
I do miss the function keys, but I also sort of like the Touch Bar in certain circumstances.
Anecdotally, I was pretty fed up with my 2017 MacBook Pro (butterfly keyboard) and so made the change to the 16-inch. Apparently, I've gotten so used to the soft "Esc" key that I frequently rest my finger on the 16-inch's physical "Esc" key for a few monents before realizing I actually have to push down to activate it.
Anecdote: Steve Jobs came up to him standing in line to buy the original iPhone and said to him, “Bill, I already sent you one!” Bill responded, “But I need three more!”
I LOLed, Any Source on that? Great Story.
Mosaic was the first Mac and Windows web browser (1992-93) but the first UNIX/NeXT web browser was WWW, 1990-91.
Bill Atkinson (and HyperCard) are awesome though. Imagine a networked HyperCard ushering in the web in 1987; or Intermedia for that matter in 1985; or much earlier in the 20th century a la Vannevar Bush (1930s) or Ted Nelson (1960s); or if Netscape had focused on Gopher, WAIS, FTP, and/or NNTP and dropped HTTP as being superfluous.
- to make HC work on the hardware at the time it had quite a lot of optimised MC68000 assembly so it wasn't very extensible which was why it didn't take off like visual basic i.e. you could build stacks but not really apps
- there was no declarative format, stacks were binary files
- It didn't support networking at all as far as I can remember
- Networking at Apple based on AppleTalk so their thinking was very much in the local network, in fact their TCP/IP extension (not built into the OS at the time) was not very well supported.
HyperCard was great, but it was never designed with a browser model in mind, mainly sharing binary stacks between people.
HyperCard had more innovations that I miss. One of them was the ability to paint on the card background and foreground layers separately. This meant that you could cover black pixels in the background with white pixels in the foreground.
The HyperTalk language was kind of an oddball, quirky mess; it was designed to closely resemble English, but this actually tended to make it harder to come up with just the right syntax to do what you wanted. But that object-oriented model was carried over into AppleScript, and the whole scripting model for writing scriptable applications. It was not exactly easy to write code that would follow the OSA scripting model, but applications that supported it could be "puppeted" to do some amazing stuff. For example, I wrote a C++ program in PowerPlant which would "puppet" Quark XPress to generate customized newsletters.
Atkinson deserves a lot of credit for making a 68000 do things people could barely believe could be done without custom graphics hardware, and his whole region model (described in a patent) is amazing. And you can now browse the source code for MacPaint and QuickDraw: https://computerhistory.org/blog/macpaint-and-quickdraw-sour...
It's not really legible if you don't have some expertise in 68000 assembly language, but even if you don't, it's still a model of clarity and an inspiration.
For example, a very simple button might have a script that looks like:
on mouseUp
ask "What is your name?"
put it into card field "Name"
end mouseUp
I also tend to think that the idea of network aware Hypercard sounds super cool, but would have been a security nightmare. Hypercard wasn't written in an era of adversarial coding, it would have been knocked over 10 different ways every day by hackers. Code and content were heavily mixed together and there was no permission model beyond preventing people from editing your stacks by accident. Every stack or even card you loaded would be downloading and executing code.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_van_Hoff
Arthur later went on to Sun, wrote the Java compiler in Java, developed the AWT user interface toolkit, then formed Marimba with Kim Polesi and Jonathan Payne and others from the original Java team, where they developed Castanet and Bongo.
https://www.wired.com/1996/11/es-marimba/
>1996-11-01: Tuning in to Marimba. Kim Polese wants you to upgrade your HTML-based browser to a more interactive, more TV-like, Java-based "tuner" by the name of Castanet.
>Marimba's first product, scheduled to be announced in early October, is the punnily named Castanet, which aims to push Java toward its full potential. Java was created to deliver interactive content over distributed networks, and its much-hyped arrival last year promised to completely change the way information and entertainment are delivered electronically. The first popular Java programs have been based on HTML - for example, the Java applets that lend some animation to boring Web pages. But Java doesn't need the Web to fly. It was designed to communicate over any kind of decentralized system. [...]
Marimba developed Bongo, a Java-based gui toolkit / user interface editor / graphical environment, inspired by HyperCard (and HyperLook), which they used to develop and distribute interactive user interfaces over Castanet.
https://people.apache.org/~jim/NewArchitect/webtech/1997/10/...
>Feel the Beat with Marimba's Bongo, By Chris Baron
>In 1996, four programmers from the original Java-development team left Sun to form Marimba and produce industrial-strength Java-development tools for user interface and application administration. Bongo, one of Marimba's two shipping products, allows developers to create either a Java-application interface or a standalone Java-based application called a "presentation." A Bongo presentation resembles a HyperCard stack -- it allows developers to quickly create an application with a sophisticated user interface, but without the tedious programming of directly coding in Java or C/C++. Bongo's nonprogramming, visual approach makes it ideal for producing simple applications that don't involve a lot of processing, such as product demonstrations, user-interface prototypes, and training applications. Bongo is fully integrated with Castanet, Marimba's other product, a technology for remotely installing and updating Java applications.
Bongo was unique at the time in that it actually let you edit and dynamically compile scripts for event handlers and "live code" at run-time (in contrast with other tools that required you to recompile and re-run the application to make changes to the user interface), which was made possible by calling back to the Java compiler (which Arthur had written before at Sun, so he knew how to integrate the compiler at runtime like a modern IDE would do). Without the ability to dynamically edit scripts at runtime (easy with an interpreted language like HyperTalk or PostScript or JavaScript, but trickier for a compiled language like Java), you can't hold a candle to HyperCard, because interactive scripting is an essential feature.
Danny Goodman, who wrote the book on HyperCard, also wrote a book about Bongo. Arthur later founded Flipboard and JauntVR, and now works at Apple.
https://www.amazon.com/Official-Marimba-Guide-Bongo-Goodman/...
I've written lots more about HyperLook, NeWS and SimCity:
https://medium.com/@donhopkins/hyperlook-nee-hypernews-nee-g...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19837817
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18314265
I think that's true - but my experience was that it was a good language for beginners, but didn't "scale" well as you started working on more complex programs. The English-like syntax could get in the way as soon as you started to assemble more complex expressions, and you'd be left hunting for the right syntax as if you were playing an old Infocom game. It gave the impression that the parser was more accommodating and sophisticated than it really was, when really it had a rigid syntax like most other programming languages. And because most of the documentation was aimed at beginners, it was hard to find clear answers about _exactly_ what the syntax had to look like when assembling those more complex expressions. It has been a long time since I was writing HyperTalk, but I remember being very frustrated that I couldn't find a formal language spec (in BNF or a bubble diagram or something) the way I could for languages like Pascal.
Still, it really should get a lot of credit for encouraging a lot of beginners to write code and build quite sophisticated little databases complete with all kinds of animations and visual effects that would have been monstrously difficult to code from scratch in C or Pascal. I should also remember that as a programmer and Computer Science student, _I was not the real target audience_ for the language design.
https://www.wap.org/journal/showcase/
To give you an idea of just how exciting and groundbreaking and disruptive HyperCard was, and how many people were going totally and justifiably ape-shit about it when it was released, here are the first mentions of it I could find in just the October 1987 WAP journal, talking about how it was the hit of several Mac trade shows:
There was a WAP HyperCARD SIG, and Bill Atkinson even gave a demo of HyperCard at a special WAP meetings!
https://www.wap.org/journal/showcase/washingtonapplepijourna...
Washington Apple Pi Journal, October 1987
HyperCard SIG, Robert C. Platt, page 76:
President's Corner by Tom Warrick
[...] HyperCard (about which more later) requires a minimum of about 700K of RAM in which to run. If you actually want to run two powerful applications at the same time, you will need the next step up-2.5 megabytes of RAM. [...]
[...] Bernie reported that Bill Baldridge has done some interesting work on a HyperCard application which would describe WAP. Tom's picture is already on the HyperCard stack. Bernie hopes to see a complete package at dealers when we have it completed. [...]
[...] We ended on a happier note with a demonstration of Bill Atkinson's amazing HyperCard, the hit of the Boston Expo and a program which will no doubt be fully discussed elsewhere in the Journal. [...]
With Mac fever, all kinds of people clamored around the Expo floor with Mac tote bags, filling them up with complimentary copies of MacWeek, MacUser, MacWorld, MACazine, The Macintosh Business Letter (premiere edition) and hundreds of flyers being handed out by hawkers dressed in medieval costumes or business suits or T-shirts. Terms like Connectivity, MultiFinder, HyperCard and "stackware developer" were tossed about even more freely.
As everyone knows now, HyperCard was the main feature at the Expo; a new programming environment had been introduced. It was programming for "real people", as Jean-Louis Gassée explained it. Super star Bill Atkinson had created a combination operating system shell, database manager and programming environment with this "real person" user interface. No one could seem to clearly describe all that HyperCard could do; but everyone in the know alluded to its potential. John Sculley called it a "personal information tool kit" in Apple's press release. It is an organizer of words, numbers, sounds and pictures into programs coined "stackware". You will see "stackware" everywhere soon (already there are "stackware" downloads on WAP's BBS). You won't fully appreciate HyperCard until you have tried it. Let me warn you, HyperCard screams for memory, so it is a great lead-in for adding 1 meg chips or better yet, CD-ROM. Now, we need some import utilities so we can easily load existing databases into stacks regardless of the delimiters.
Jean-Louis Gassée was the Wednesday afternoon speaker. Sporting a three piece suit and diamond earring, he told his audience, "PCs are the wings of the mind" and that they would eventually enrich the quality of human life. He added, that HyperCard would also change the world and the way computers deal with information-in a more human like way. It really did sound like "hype card" might have been a more descriptive name for the software. I think I was supposed to leave that session on a kind of religious high, a Macintosh religious high. However, I was more intent on finding a rest room with less than 25 people in line.
The second-strongest impression I came away with was the number of companies that will not be around in two years' time, or that will be back in 10-foot by 10-foot booths instead of large, open displays on the show floor. In databases; for example, 4th Dimension was there solidifying its toehold on the high-end database market. With HyperCard--being distributed free with Macintoshes bought beginning August 11--capturing much of the low-end database market, it is easy to see those two products (along with, perhaps, dBase Mac, which may gain a niche in those businesses where dBase III is king) dividing the Mac database world amongst themselves. I would not want to be a stockholder in Blyth Software (Omnis) or Odesta (Helix). [...]
A few other MacWorld impressions: HyperCard was, to most, the hit of the show. It is hard to describe but easy to understand when you see it, which I urge everyone to do. It combines some aspects of a regular low-end database application, FileVision (a graphics database), and hypertext (such as Owl's Guide program). Bill Atkinson and others have put an enormous amount of work into making it very fast. But one of the most impressive capabilities is its "authoring" capability, that will let non-programmers set up programmable database applications without too much difficulty. For those a little more adventurous, HyperTalk is a relatively simple programming language that allows HyperCard to do some pretty sophisticated things. In many respects these "authoring" and programming capabilities represent something of the case of use and power that Applesoft BASIC represented for the Apple II: the return of the weekend programmer. Apple is, as noted above, bundling it free with Macs sold on or after August II, and the list price for us pioneers is $49.95.
Special Meeting
Saturday November 7, USUHS
9:00 AM until ?
Bill Atkinson and friends on HyperCard
Definite Maybe!
The Boston MacExpo, August 11-13, '87, had four major themes: big screens, color, accelerator cards and HyperCard. Those have been commented upon elsewhere, and I'll not repeat the technical descriptions in depth. My purpose is to give you the "smell" or personality of the Expo. [...]
The last major announced product is HyperCard developed by Bill Atkinson of MacPaint fame. He has been working on HyperCard for three years and it has been described by Bill as the greatest microcomputer announcement since the Macintosh. If you spent three years of your life working on one project. I guess you would like it to be called the greatest product since sliced bread.
Acceptance of HyperCard may be hindered by a lack of true understanding of just what it is. It is an innovative product that will eventually integrate graphics, text, music, voice and animation into a programmable interactive environment. It is supposed to allow users to organize data the way humans think and not the way computers impose on the user. It is also described as the first of a new kind of software applications called "stackware." Rolodex style index cards are used to store data and a group of cards is called a "stack." It is based on the idea of a card file, with each card equal to a screen full of information that can be searched and linked together. Searching stacks of millions of cards is reported to be very fast. Since I'm getting confused myself, I will quote from Apple's literature on this product. "You make notes, type, or draw on them just as you might on paper index cards. You can sort cards, browse among them, or quickly find specific information by pointing and clicking on "buttons." "Buttons do specific tasks, such as linking or connecting one card to another. Buttons can also do many other things, such as dialing a phone, printing a report, and even launching other applications." HyperCard also comes with "HyperTalk" which is a powerful English scripting language which permits users to write script directions to buttons. Professional developers can use HyperTalk to control external devices such as videodisc players, on-line information services and CD-ROM drives.
HyperCard requires a Macintosh Plus, SE or II with at least 1 meg of RAM, and 2 megs is required if you want to use HyperCard with other applications under MultiFinder. If your still confused you have lots of company. Only time will tell just how useful or great HyperCard really is. Apple will begin bundling it free with all new Macintoshes but it will be available with documentation for $49 to current Macintosh users.
Book Reviews, by Robert C. Platt.
"The Complete HyperCard Handbook" by Danny Goodman (1987 Bantam Computer Books, 720 pp., $29.95)
This book is such a hot seller that copies at each of the B. Dalton's sold out within three days of the book hitting the shelves!
HyperCard is a hypertext manager for the Macintosh which Apple will now bundle with each new Macintosh as system software. "Hypertext" in turn is a data base-like concept pioneered by Ted Nelson in a book Literary Machines, which I reviewed in the August 1983 WAP Journal. Hypertext links individual frames of information into a complex web of cross-references, unlike a normal book which is linear from the first page to the last HyperCard implements this concept through a me card metaphor. Each frame is a card that is the shape of an original Mac screen. The user can navigate between frames according to cross-references developed by the author. Cross-references can be symbolized by icons (called buttons.) In addition, cards can be retrieved using a "find" command in the message window in a manner similar to that of a classic data base.
Goodman was brought into Apple's HyperCard project at an early stage, and it is no accident that his book is out simultaneously with the product's release. In fact, his book is available before the beta version of a promised Inside HyperCard reference book for programmers. The downside is that Goodman is a bit of a gushing HyperCard evangelist. Along this line, the book includes a gushing forward by John Sculley and a 12 page interview with HyperCard's creator Bill Atkinson.
The book devotes most of its pages to the introductory levels of HyperCard--the browsing and authoring levels. In my opinion, Goodman's treatment of HyperTalk, the HyperCard programming language could have used more complete examples. Certainly Goodman does a much better job of presenting authoring than does the Apple manual that is bundled with the HyperCard product. In fairness, I note that Apple promises to distribute a HyperCard Technical Reference through APDA. However, Goodman should have expanded Part 4, "Applying HyperCard and HyperTalk." That section gives the complete listing for a Corporate Directory (a locator map system with "hard links"); a Telephone Logbook (a rolodex which also records individual calls); an Attorney Time Sheet; a "To do" list; a metric/English measurement converter; and a project planner. Although these examples are impressive, I fear that a number of programming subtleties are not covered.
On the whole, I recommend the book, despite its hefty price. But be aware that the serious HyperTalk programmer will need more documentation than just this book. (Ed. Note: Rich Wasserstrom has arranged a group purchase on this book and it is available at the office for $17.95 plus tax, while the supply lasts.)
Data Bases
Bill Amon on 09/03
At 4:30 pm today (Thursday, Sept. 3), Ashton-Tate issued a news release indicating that dBASE Mac is now shipping. The last beta version was 1.0x1l4. I understand that they already have an order backlog of 10,000 copies! I asked about what the final version's performance situation was--according to product development, there are substantial improvements. I'll be getting my copy within a week or two and I'll let you all know! For David Gursky--yes--NOW we can start our testing. I have already received HyperCard and 4th Dimension--I really think they should be included. Most data base applications I firmly believe could be done easily in HyperCard--I love it! Well, let's get on with it.
Bill Baldridge on 08/28
Received the Course Builder demo disk today--pretty fast! The interesting thing is it was written by William C. Appleton, of World Builder fame, if memory serves... Anyway, I haven't really played around with it yet (too busy with HyperCard right now), but so far my main criticism is they use Macintalk to voice text and dialogs; [...]
HyperCard
Bill Baldridge on 08/30
Describing HyperCard in one sentence is as easy as writing the Gettysburg Address on a 22 cent stamp with a dull pencil. A simple description would be an application with which a user may build a stack of cards--each card storing information in any computer retrievable format (i.e., graphic, alphanumeric, digital, etc.). Any part of any card may be tied to any part of any other card by a relation--the relation to be defined by the creator or user (at lower levels) using "scripts." Scripts allow specific tasks to be performed by a button, field, card, or stack (here presented in inverted hierarchy). Lastly, any STACK may be tied to any other stack by these relations... The mind boggles.
Jeffrey Barnes on 08/30
I have pretty well finished reading the HyperCard manual and have "fooled around" with the application a bit. I bought it because I didn't know any way to find out what it was other than to get the thing. It is my opinion that HyperCard can be referred to, among other things, as:
1 - A high level language specifically designed for the Mac. I have programmed the Mac in BASIC and C and I would liken such programming as similar to programming graphic workstations hooked to mainframes--TEDIOUS! It's sort of like playing the banjo--something I would like to know how to do and then not do it.
2 - A very rich job control language for the Mac. I would liken it to DCL on a VAX in the sense that the lexical functions in VAX DCL are equivalent to the graphics "hooks" in hypercard.
3 - A sort of "graphics database language". The capability to "link" cards to other stacks/cards really opens up many possibilities.
4 - Has the promise of being a really useful and efficient macro generator for the Mac. I have TEMPO and TOUCH-NGO and consider them very crude. I am hoping for better things with Hypercard. In short, I think that all of the packages for the Mac that I am familiar with, such as MS WORD, are merely a standard computer application written for the Mac. Admittedly, such packages follow the Macintosh interface and that is a great leap forward but any standard interface puts the burden on development programmers.
The real test will be--how complex an application will Hypercard allow a programmer to construct.
Rick Stickle on 08/30
Bill, I don't believe this--I got HyperCard at Clinton yesterday and signed on tonight to suggest that a Hypercard section be set up! I now see there are just some people that you can't get the jump on.
[... and much more discussion about HyperCard from the WAP BBS ...]
HyperCard SIG by Robert C Platt
WAP is organizing a HyperCard SIG for persons interested in exploring Apple's new hypertext driver. The group will focus upon available stackware and the HyperTalk programming language. In order to identify potential members and what they want in a SIG, two organizational meetings will be held at the end of the regular WAP meetings on Saturday, September 26 and October 24. A permanent meeting location and time will be selected at the October session. See the review of Danny Goodman's HyperCard Handbook elsewhere in this issue for more information on HyperCard.
No, but I wrote a couple of articles on how to write XCMDs/XFCNs for the Washington Apple Pi Journal, then also some stuff for MacTutor. I was a student at the College of Wooster then (in Ohio) so I never actually _went_ to a WAP meeting... but my roommate Ken Knight was from the DC area.
This is in stark contrast with the other hypertext browsers, authoring tools, and user interface design tools of the time (the cutting edge of which was the NeXT Interface Builder), that made a distinction between "run time" and "design time", and did not enable ordinary users to switch into design or edit mode while the normal application was running, which was absolutely essential to HyperCard.
At the beginning of the web, browsers did not have the ability to author hypertext (and server-side authoring tools like Medium or even AJAX-y client-side authoring tools did not exist yet). So authoring tools (and user interface editing tools) were big and expensive and complex and not user friendly, and there was often a compilation step between editing and browsing in a different program, so you couldn't just pop into edit mode and tweak the actual specification then pop back into browsing like you could do with HyperCard.
Eventually Netscape and Internet Explorer got some shitty half-assed WYSIWYG editing abilities that were sub-par, and produced terrible HTML, and couldn't be applied to any web page, and required a lot of other user interface support to be usable even for the most trivial kinds of editing, but that was a far cry from the comprehensive fully integrated high fidelity WYSIWYG browsing/editing tool that HyperCard was from day one.
In fact, one of the earliest tools that enabled anyone, even children, to author and publish their own interactive dynamic web applications with graphics, text, and even forms and persistent databases, was actually based on HyperCard and the MacHTTP/WebStar web browser on the Mac:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16226209
>One of the coolest early applications of server side scripting was integrating HyperCard with MacHTTP/WebStar, such that you could publish live interactive HyperCard stacks on the web! Since it was based on good old HyperCard, it was one of the first scriptable web authoring tools that normal people and even children could actually use! [8]
>[8] MacHTTP / WebStar from StarNine by Chuck Shotton, and LiveCard HyperCard stack publisher:
CGI and AppleScript:
http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/cgi-and-applescript/1...
>Cal discusses the Macintosh as an Internet platform, then describes how you can use the AppleScript language for writing CGI applications that run on Macintosh servers.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7865263
MacHTTP / WebStar from StarNine by Chuck Shotton! He was also VP of Engineering at Quarterdeck, another pioneering company.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110705053055/http://www.astron...
http://infomotions.com/musings/tricks/manuscript/0800-machtt...
http://tidbits.com/article/6292
It had an AppleScript / OSA API that let you write handlers for responding to web hits in other languages that supported AppleScript.
I used it to integrate ScriptX with the web:
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/scriptx/scriptx-www.htm...
The coolest thing somebody did with WebStar was to integrate it with HyperCard so you could actually publish live INTERACTIVE HyperCard stacks on the web, that you could see as images you could click on to follow links, and followed by html form elements corresponding to the text fields, radio buttons, checkboxes, drop down menus, scrolling lists, etc in the HyperCard stack that you could use in the browser to interactive with live HyperCard pages!
That was the earliest easiest way that non-programmers and even kids could both not just create graphical web pages, but publish live interactive apps on the web!
Using HyperCard as a CGI application
http://aaa-proteins.uni-graz.at/HyperCGI.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20021013161709/http://pfhyper.co...
http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/cgi-and-applescript/1...
https://web.archive.org/web/19990208235151/http://www.royals...
>Livecard has exceeded all expectations and allows me to serve a stack 8 years in the making and previously confined to individual hospitals running Apples. A whole Childrens Hospital and University Department of Child Health should now swing in behind me and this product will become core curriculum for our medical course. Your product will save lives starting early 1997. Well done.
- Director, Emergency Medicine, Mater Childrens Hospital
The following is taken from the LiveCard web site
(http://www.royalsoftware.com):
"LiveCard is a HyperCard add-on that enables remote users to browse
and interact with HyperCard files, called "stacks", on your web
server. Once installed, you'll be able to serve any HyperCard stack
without extensive preparation - often with no preparation at all.
This means you have all the advantages of HyperCard as part of your
server solution, plus you can now serve those stacks to anyone on
the Web, regardless of whether they're using a text- or
graphics-based browser and regardless of their platform: Macintosh,
Windows, UNIX, whatever."
"LiveCard implements a CGI (Common Gateway Interface) between
Macintosh servers, such as WebStar, and HyperCard. It makes the
HyperCard interface available as high-resolution, compressed
image-maps and HTML form elements, and transforms user gestures in a
web browser to a format HyperCard can understand. LiveCard
translates between HTML, HTTP, and HyperCard "on the fly," requiring
little or no preparation of the HyperCard stack. LiveCard generates
HTML dynamically - as stack content and functionality changes, these
changes are reflected live in the remote users browser."
What does this mean for you? Well, if you have access to a Macintosh
web server running WebStar, MacHTTP, or similar server software that
is cgi-aware, you can serve your stacks using LiveCard. LiveCard can
generate an HTML forms page using the text fields on the card, an
image map with stack graphics and buttons that responds to user
clicks (although the buttons can't highlight), or a combination of
the two. In addition, each generated page has a header and footer
that can be set by scripting...and is HTML aware. This gives an
incredible amount of flexibility.
Note that LiveCard requires a Macintosh web server (not really a
criticism... I love Mac servers...but you do have to have access to
the server, and it *has* to be a Mac, since LiveCard is
HyperCard-based). And to fully realize the potential of LiveCard,
you need to learn some new commands...but there aren't too many, and
they make sense. Plus, the examples provided are very helpful. At
this point in time LiveCard has a limited ability to work with
QuickTime...you can kludge your way around the limitations, but if
your stack relies on a lot of QuickTime, you have to do some serious
modifications. Rumor has it that future versions will have more
QuickTime functionality. But for static graphics (color spoken
here!), there are no modifications.
Where LiveCard really shines is in the area of forms and databases.
I created a stack to be used for a course I was teaching...very
simple, with about 5 text fields for the students name, college,
major, and a topic they were interested in. I then just dragged this
stack into my server folder where LiveCard resides. That was it. I
called up my page on a browser (remember, any browser, any
platform), went to the LiveCard page, clicked on the link to my
stack (automatically created by LiveCard), and there was a
forms-based page with all of the fields...including their labels. I
filled the page out and hit submit. Voila...the data appeared on the
stack residing on my server. Now that is cool.
Pros: Can serve your stack mostly without modification. Can use
externals in the stack. Browser is *completely* platform independent
since a plug-in is not required. Data can be easily transferred
between web page and stack. Leverages existing HyperCard stacks,
especially databases and order processing.
Cons: Requires a Macintosh web server. Limited ability to work with
QuickTime. Can be a tad slow. Lose button highlights and card
transitions.
3. Convert your stack to a SuperCard project. Allegiant (makers of
SuperCard - http://www.allegiant.com) has recently released
Roadster, which is a plug-in for Netscape navigator. Roadster is in
public beta at this time (December '96), and is available for both
Mac *AND* Windows 95. Can anyone say cross-platform? Before you get
too excited, remember that you first have to convert your HyperCard
stack into a SuperCard project. This is fairly painless
however...unless you use externals. Externals present two problems
for the SuperCard/Roadster approach...they don't always convert, and
more importantly, at this time Roadster does not support *any*
XCMD's. This is due to security concerns (you could do some nasty
damage to a client computer...kinda like a java applet gone bad). A
future intranet version of Roadster may show up that supports
externals. Another potential problem is that Roadster only supports
a single window. Now this might not be a problem for HyperCarders,
since one window is the norm. But for dedicated SuperCard people
that have grown used to multiple windows in projects, some tinkering
has to be done.
Since Roadster is a plug-in, you get some more good news and bad
news. The bad news is that people have to download the plug-in and
install it into their Netscape Plug-ins folder before they can view
your project. The good news is the plug-in is free, and your project
runs in the browser exactly as it does on the desktop...buttons
highlight, transitions work, etc... And perhaps even more
importantly, Roadster is available for Windows, so you can finally
get your stack into the hands of the unfortunate Intel-laden masses.
Pros: Project looks and runs just like on the desktop.
Cross-platform. Ability to transfer information via forms commands.
Ability to cache and preload graphics. Very good with external media
such as QuickTime, audio, etc.
Cons: Have to convert your stack. Browser requires plug-in. Lose all
functionality of externals.HyperTIES was an early hypermedia browser and authoring tool developed at the University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction Lab under the direction of Ben Sheniderman. (I helped develop the NeWS version of HyperTIES in PostScript, FORTH, and Emacs MockLisp on the Sun.)
It had both text and graphical "embedded menus" as links, that highlighted text and popped up magnified arbitrarily-shaped cookie-cutter targets with drop-shadows when you pointed at pictures with embedded links, and it highlighted all of the text and graphical links at once when you clicked on the background.
We had a cool demo of the The Hubble Space Telescope with a diagram that popped up all the different parts of the telescope. And also a photo with pop-up targets on the three heads of the Sun founders!
HCIL Demo - HyperTIES Browsing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZi4gUjaGAM
HCIL Demo - HyperTIES Authoring with UniPress Emacs on NeWS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmU2B79EDU
User Interface Strategies (UIS) 90 - Ben Shneiderman - Applications sections and demos. HyperTIES Space Telescope Demo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uyO-xUTt6Y&t=12m42s
Ben also showed a fun NeWS / PostScript / PSIBER / PseudoScientific Visualizer / ARPAnet map demo later in that talk, which also shows clicking in the background of the PSV to highlight everything at once (the X-ray view of the ARPAnet map, at 28:10):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uyO-xUTt6Y&t=24m56s
Designing to Facilitate Browsing: A Look Back at the Hyperties Workstation Browser:
By Ben Shneiderman, Catherine Plaisant, Rodrigo Botafogo, Don Hopkins, William Weiland. Published in Hypermedia, vol. 3, 2 (1991)101–117.
https://medium.com/@donhopkins/designing-to-facilitate-brows...
>Implications of Graphics in Hypertext
>Hyperties incorporates graphics while preserving the embedded menu approach used for text only documents. A displayed page can mix text and graphics while allowing arbitrarily-shaped regions to be designated as targets, which provide links to other articles. The addition of graphics provides significant advantages (14). Information that is structured in the form of charts, graphs, maps, and images may be explored with the same facility as text. But the use of graphics in hypertext requires more work on the part of the author to produce comprehensible documents. There is no simple technique for emphasizing the targets that is acceptable in all cases, and the author must laboriously link targets to their references (they are not “self-naming”, as in the text case). In the Sun version of Hyperties rudimentary tools have been developed to simplify the author’s job of establishing graphical links between entries. These consist of editors for designating arbitrary regions of an image using rectangles or polygons, associating names with these regions (which are used by the system to locate references), designating their appearance when highlighted, as well as overall management facilities for keeping track of graphics that have been produced.
>Identifying Selectable Items
>Several existing hypertext systems permit the browsing of mixed graphics and text, but none has carefully addressed the problems inherent in this more complex realm. Apple Computer’s HyperCard (15) makes minimal distinction between textual and graphical elements of a database entry; anything can be selectable (linked to a reference) if the author so chooses, but it is left to the author to provide hints to the user about what is selectable. (However, it is possible to obtain a temporary display of selectable regions, highlighted by bounding rectangles, via a modifier-key combination.) Brown University, in its Intermedia system (16), has, in a sense, eliminated selection of graphical and textual elements entirely; instead, all links are indicated by special icons, which the author may place at will. This scheme has the advantages of simplicity and clarity, but risks obscuring pertinent information in a welter of special symbols, and may introduce ambiguities of reference: for example, in a map of the United States, does a particular icon refer only to New York City, or to the entire state of New York? A slightly different approach is taken by Guide (17), which provides four different types of linkages; the presence of a link and its type are indicated by changes in the appearance of the screen cursor as it is moved about the display and encounters selectable objects.
>An important problem is how to indicate to a user the selectable elements of a graphic. It is clear that some scheme is needed to do this — expecting a user to hunt after the targets in an image by trial and error is apt to cause frustration with the system and limit its use. Any scheme chosen must satisfy certain requirements: it must unambiguously identify the location and scope of the target, it must not itself interfere with comprehension of the image, and it must require little effort on the part of the user. Possible solutions include highlighting the targets by dynamic indicators, outlines, inverse video, fixed symbols, color, shading, and image manipulation (13,14).
>The approach taken in Hyperties has been to allow arbitrarily-shaped regions of an image to define these link targets. Normally, these regions are not distinguished in any way (other than visual cues that an author may choose to provide); however, when the mouse cursor passes over a target region, it becomes highlighted. The highlighting scheme developed is novel, and has met with favorable comments from users: it is referred to as pop-out, and consists of offsetting the highlighted object vertically and horizontally by a small amount, and placing a drop-shadow beneath. This gives the appearance of having the object pop out of the screen (Figure 5a); in addition, the slight movement of the object makes it readily detectable to the eye. Because of the use of arbitrary regions, there is no ambiguity of reference; because highlighting only occurs in response to user demand, the image itself is not cluttered; and because the targets highlight automatically in response to mouse movements, the interface requires minimal effort.
>One remaining problem is that it is not possible to identify the links in an image at a glance. However, certain user behaviors were noticed: when confronted with an image with hidden targets, they tend to sweep across the image until a target is highlighted (becomes designated), or try to select what they think might be a target until one is found. This suggested that the system could highlight all of the targets automatically (for a short time) whenever it appears that the user is searching for targets, as when sweeping the display, or clicking in non-target areas. This latter strategy has been implemented in the NeWS version of Hyperties. Whenever a user attempts to select in a non-selectable region (like the background), all targets are revealed (Figure 5b). This technique was found effective and generally very well received by users.
>Figure 5: (5a: left) The main view of the telescope. The cursor is now resting on the Faint Object Spectrograph which “popped out” to show the existence of a link (compare with Figure 1). Of course the dynamic effect cannot be rendered in this figure. (5b right) A click on the background shows all targets available on the picture.
https://miro.medium.com/max/1501/1*RWavUqU14c4PVeausFPKAA.pn...
I want to do this badly. Has anyone taken LSD here on HN? What can you share about this, almost sounds like an urban myth, claim that one can have revolutionary ideas, profound realizations that otherwise cannot be had?
Standard psychedelic advice is to try them with experienced friends if at all possible when getting started. Trips can also be bad and scary (and sometimes, that is a necessary step on the road to positive change)
Best case scenario w.r.t. real-world engineering challenges, drugs enable some lateral thinking and allow you to make connections you might not have otherwise. Very often this best case scenario is not going to be the case though ha ha ha.
People on DMT have experiences of being given messages, but it always seems to be things about themselves (stop worrying or whatever).
A drug induced discovery that couldn’t possibly be explained by lateral thinking would be an incredible event.
https://erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_health1.shtml
"Reactions that are prolonged (days to months) and/or require hospitalization are often referred to as "LSD psychosis," and include a heterogenous population and group of symptoms."
"In spite of the impressive degree of prior problems noted in many of these patients, there are occasional reports of severe and prolonged reactions occuring in basically well adjusted individuals."
Also, one famous example of "bad trips" (maybe with "prior problems"):
https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/thats-one-hell-of...
it can be mind-bending for sure, it's hard to describe. You might have profound ideas, or not, it's hard to predict; and not all of these will seem so profound when sober the next day. It does seem to increase one's senses of curiosity and wonder and open-mindedness. You might also get new focus/energy/direction/ideas about your passions and life trajectory generally. art/music/nature are enhanced as well.
it almost certainly won't make you an overnight savant (speaking a new language, factoring 4096-bit numbers in your head). but if you're already good at something (musical instrument, painting, engineering/programming, etc) and you are able to spend a bit of your trip thinking hard about a problem you are trying to solve in that domain, you might indeed have some new perspective on the matter. Visualizing abstract CS/math-y things (data structures, networks, algorithms, linear algebra, etc) is great fun. Good luck!
Smile, relax, and remember that you are great.
My advice is to stay far far away from psychedelics. I took LSD a few months ago after hearing about what great insights it can enable, or the euphoria it lets you feel.
I ended up having a bad, panic-inducing trip which caused something in my brain to flip and start having panic attacks and dissociation. The dissociation/depersonalization faded after a couple weeks (although those weeks were hell) but the anxiety and general feeling of weirdness still affect me.
I don't really feel like I've ever gotten back to how I've been before I took the drug. As some other commenter on HN said, "it's like throwing a wrench in your neurological cogwheels." The rewards definitely don't outweigh the risks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film)
So if you have some worries, even deep inside, and not acknowledging them, LSD will bring that up for you even if the setting is super relaxing and safe. Also the opposite, if setting is threatening, you will have bad trip.
Doing this with anybody else wouldn't achieve any of this insight, I presume a lot fo energy would be spent managing communication with other person or attempt to stay more grounded rather than let it go.
For rest of us, it is often a life changing experience and defining moment of our lives. It was for me (mushrooms grown from spores from Netherland, never did acid but should be +-similar). One trick with shrooms - raw lemon juice makes it way more intense and shorter experience, which is combination I prefer for introspection.
Then, if you decide to try it, prepare yourself for a very special journey -- one that you'll only be able to go on once in your life (as you'll never again have a first time with that particular substance.. an experience many chase over and over again later in life, but few ever manage to recapture it). You'll want to be in a safe, supportive environment, ideally with an experienced trip sitter you like and trust, and without any prior commitments for that day and ideally the next. The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide has more specific advice on how to prepare.
[1] - https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd.shtml
[2] - https://www.amazon.com/Psychedelic-Explorers-Guide-Therapeut...
[3] - https://www.amazon.com/LSD-Spirituality-Creative-Process-Gro...
For a non-pharmacological trip, I highly recommend “Psychedelic Information Theory”: http://psychedelic-information-theory.com/pdf/PIT-Print-Web.... [PDF]
Psychedelics are not a magic band-aid to fix all your problems. But they can nonetheless change your life for the better, if you approach them right.
I recommend that you study psychedelics intensely before making the decision. LSD may not even be the psychedelic for you. There are also psilocybin mushrooms, as well as N,N-Dimethyltryptamine.
Honestly, meditation is another path to similar kinds of insights — it just requires more patience. But it’s also free, and legal.
For about three years it was my favorite thing, but after that it didn't do much for me. Not because the drug wasn't working, but because it wasn't showing me anything new anymore.
I did it a lot for those three years. Often enough to discover that taking it more than about once every four days was self-defeating, because I built up a tolerance so fast.
You can have what seem like revolutionary ideas and profound realizations, and later discover that they were no such thing. That experience is common enough to be a running joke.
You can have legitimate revelations, too, but you can also have those without a drug.
It seems to me like the main effect it has on inspiration is it temporarily disables some of your machinery of categorization. For a little while, your thoughts and feelings and sensations don't stay in their lanes, and the resulting mishmash can offer some new looks at things that you might not have experienced otherwise. I think that's probably mostly randomness at work, and if you want that, there are other ways to get it.
It feels like amazing cosmic revelation, but that's probably at least partly because of the way it amplifies your emotions. That amplification is probably also a cause of bad trips. Bad trips are rare--according to the medical literature in 1978 when I wrote a paper about the subject, they were somewhere around one in a thousand--but I can testify that they are very unpleasant indeed. It's about six or eight hours of unadulterated terror and hopelessness, so be advised.
I don't regret my experiences with it. On the other hand, I don't miss it, either. I am glad that responsible researchers have lately managed to start studying psychedelics seriously. They seem promising for treatment of alcoholism, depression, anxiety, and maybe some other things. There might also be a place for them, wisely and judiciously applied, in making the lives of some healthy people better.
I wouldn't recommend doing what I did with it. I was lucky, but not everyone will be lucky.
There's some interesting stuff about LSD and psilocybin that you can find by googling for something like "LSD OCEAN personality traits". A few researchers have tried measuring the Big Five personality traits before and after psychedelic therapy. They have generally found that psychedelics move some of the trait scores significantly, which is a big deal in personality research, because conventional wisdom is that nothing other than horrific trauma makes much difference in the Big Five.
(The big five correspond to the acronym OCEAN: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism--all measurable personality traits that tend to remain pretty stable over time.)
Some papers claim that psychedelics cause lasting shifts in the traits. This one:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/acps.12904
If true, that's probably a further reason for caution. Those reported changes might seem good (they seem pretty good to me), but if it's true that the only other thing that makes significant changes in the Big Five is horrific trauma, then maybe we ought to regard a drug that can do it with some wariness.
Oh, to be so used.
Also the date in the article header "1979" is a typo, as the ID on the picture proves. That one should refer to 1978, but of course can't be changed here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21726302
Bill Atkinson is the humblest, sweetest, most astronomically talented guy -- practically the opposite of Rony Abovitz! I think they're on very different drugs. The Psychedelic Inspiration For Hypercard, by Bill Atkinson, as told to Leo Laporte.
"In 1985 I swallowed a tiny fleck of gelatin containing a medium dose of LSD, and I spent most of the night sitting on a concrete park bench outside my home in Los Gatos, California." ...
https://www.mondo2000.com/2018/06/18/the-inspiration-for-hyp...
Full interview with lots more details about the development of HyperCard:
https://twit.tv/shows/triangulation/episodes/247?autostart=f...
Bill Atkinson's guest lecture in Brad Meyer's CMU 05-640 Interaction Techniques class, Spring 2019, Feb 4, 2019:
https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=...
Including polaroids of early Lisa development.
About PhotoCard:
http://www.billatkinson.com/aboutPhotoCard.html
PhotoCard by Bill Atkinson is a free app available from the iTunes App store, that allows you to create custom postcards using Bill's nature photos or your own personal photos, then send them by email or postal mail from your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch.
Bill Atkinson, Mac software legend and world renowned nature photographer, has created an innovative application that redefines how people create and send postcards.
With PhotoCard you can make dazzling, high resolution postcards on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch, and send them on-the-spot, through email or the US Postal Service. The app is amazingly easy to use. To create a PhotoCard, select one of Bill's nature photos or one of your own personal photos. Then, flip the card over to type your message. For a fun touch, jazz up your PhotoCard with decorative stickers and stamps. If you're emailing your card, it can even include an audible greeting. When you've finished your creation, send it off to any email or postal address in the world!
His trip description really resonated with me, just having finished Rovelli’s “Reality is Not What it Seems.”
Then Mondo 2000 published a transcript of that part of the interview on June 18 2018, and I think a few other publications repeated it around that time.
And later on Feb 4, 2019 he gave a live talk to Brad Myers' "05-640: Interaction Techniques" user interface design class at CMU, during which he read the transcript.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/uicourse/05440inter2019/schedule....
It's well worth watching that interview. He went over and explained all of his amazing Polaroids of Lisa development, which I don't think have ever been published anywhere else.
See Bill Atkinson's Lisa development polaroids:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/uicourse/05440inter2019/Bill_Atki...
Then at 1:03:15 a student asked him the million dollar question: what was the impetus and motivation behind HyperCard? He chuckled, reached for the transcript he had off-camera, and then out of the blue he asked the entire class "How many of you guys have done ... a psychedelic?" (Brad reported "No hands", but I think some may have been embarrassed to admit it in front of their professor). So then Bill launched into reading the transcript of the LSD HyperCard story, and blew all the students' minds.
See video of Bill's talk:
https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=...
The next week I gave a talk to the same class that Bill had just traumatized by asking if they'd done illegal drugs, and (at 37:11) I trolled them by conspiratorially asking: "One thing I wanted to ask the class: Have any of you ever used ... (pregnant pause) ... HyperCard? Basically, because in 1987 I saw HyperCard, and it fucking blew my mind." Then I launched into my description of how important and amazing HyperCard was.
See video of Don's talk:
https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=...
Here is an index of all of the videos from Brad Myers' interaction techniques class, including Rob Haitani (Palm Pilot), Shumin Zhai (text input and swipe method), Dan Bricklin (spreadsheets, Demo prototyping tool), Don Hopkins (pie menus), and Bill Atkinson (Mac, HyperCard):
https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Sessions/List.a...
What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry
You might ask similarly, what was the role of psychedelics in Hollywood? of course it was there, but to be a business, you had the business people, who were not-at-all about expanded consciousness, but competitive and territorially aggressive, ego-driven, etc. Same but different at corporate Phase II Apple. By the time of the Macintosh, a feeling of Big Corporation was in the air already, and the tie-dye was not often worn on the outside. Steve must have taken psychedelics, but was way too arrogant, aggressive and lets say it, dangerous (he was at NeXT in Fremont by then). Steve personally traded tie-dye for scary and intimidating black luxury cars early on. So how do you categorize that ?
“Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.” Steve Jobs
edit -- Aurobindo and Paramahansa Yogananda were both Bengali, but different teachings..
Our Xdata data publishing plugin for QuarkXPress uses HyperTalk as its scripting language, since we shipped it first 30 years ago.
Still shipping, though XPress is dying...
Market Pressure?
The application layer of Nextstep was written in Objective-C. So Objective-C became Apple's new application-programming language.
By the time of the NeXT acquisition, Pascal was already out of fashion. Apple's officially-blessed application framework, MacApp, was originally written in Object Pascal, but Pascal wasn't particularly popular with programmers inside or outside of Apple. People liked C better, and most of them used it whenever they could.
When it came time to plan for development of MacApp 3.0, the development team was hearing a lot of complaints about Pascal and hopeful wishes about C. I remember a meeting where Steve Friedrich, the lead developer on MacApp, wrote down all the options he could think of on a whiteboard and crossed them off one-by-one. All the objections boiled down to what programmers inside and outside Apple would put up with. The last thing left on the list was C++, so MacApp 3.0 was written in C++.
Only a handful of programming-language nerds complained about the change. Ironically, one of the complainers was Steve himself. He was a Smalltalk guy, but he was there to give Mac developers what they wanted, not to push his linguistic preferences.