Hacker News Reader

Comment by hyperhello | Hacker News Reader

I gotta ask. Your scripts have comments like -- handlers_math.hypertalk.txt at the top. Are you using some kind of build process for a stack?

View on HN

More of a copy-paste process. The scripts are written as .txt files in Nova on my Mac Studio, then pasted one at a time into HyperCard's script editor on the classic Mac. The files are kept separate because SimpleText has a 32 KB text limit.

As an alternative, you might consider letting Hypercard itself open the text files and 'set the script of' as needed.

Yup, that would have been easier. It's been decades since I've done anything with HyperCard. I had to re-take the built-in intro course again :)

Would that overcome the size limit?

Does HyperCard implement its on text handling for the HyperTalk editor that doesn't rely on the TextEdit toolbox service (which IIRC is the source of SimpleText's 32 kB limit)?

Fields appeared to use TE and I suppose the script editor was pretty much limited to 32 kB of text for that reason, although you could have any size of text in a variable.

Curiousity got the better of me, and I just tested it in Infinite Mac.

The HyperTalk editor is indeed limited to 32 kB.

It's certainly possible that this limit only applies to editing scripts, as it's unlikely TextEdit was used in the process of interpreting them, but I don't have time tonight to investigate.

Later versions of HyperCard supported OSA scripts as well, now I'm also curious what the size limit is for (presumably) compiled AppleScripts stored in HyperCard stacks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com