HyperCard: What Could Have Been. | Hacker News Reader

HyperCard: What Could Have Been.

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27 pointsasciilifeform14 comments

I want HyperCard, exactly as it was, but for Windoze. How can we go about developing this? It's 1986 technology, so we should be able to reverse engineer it today, right? How about Python or Lisp to replace HyperScript?

Such a thing already exists, check out http://www.runrev.com

Requires browser plugin installation == Fail.

That's for the web version. Their primary product is the desktop version.

How about using a stripped down browser for the reader, html or text files for the cards, and a list of links to the cards in an html file for the "stack" of cards. I bet an interested programmer could get something like this working in a weekend, maybe less since I don't know whether there might already be a stripped down browser available.

EDIT: The link to Runtime Revolution was added while I was writing my comment. It's an upgraded version of HyperCard for networks. I was thinking more along the line of a least common denominator replacement for HyperCard.

I don't think it's being actively developed, but check out PythonCard: http://pythoncard.sourceforge.net

It looks to be exactly what you're after.

The reason why no one has been able to duplicate the success of HyperCard is that all of the contenders have focused solely on the attributes it had, rather than the ones it did not have - namely, the bloated, revolting, and limitless unnecessary complexity of today's programming environments.

An accomplished HyperCard user was justified in feeling like the "master of all he surveyed." Even trying to cultivate such a feeling in the users of "modern" computing systems is akin to building an amusement park on quicksand.

I remember a product in the early 90s called Toolbook, from Asymetrix (Paul Allen's company after he left MS). It was almost exactly like HyperCard for Windows 3.1.

According to Wikipedia, it's still in existence, but has evolved to specialize in creating education and training apps, so may not be quite the same as I remember it anymore.

http://www.tilestack.com/

That said, TileStack is what made me realize I don't want HC as it was; I want HC as it was, plus networking functionality. It just doesn't feel anymore like there's much point to writing apps that can't connect people to one another.

HTML Applications (HTAs) on Windows. You use any programming language you want (vb and js are the default choices) and it runs as a fully trusted executable.

Javascript seems more correct

I did some of my first programming in HyperCard in elementary school, so it's a nostalgic subject. It was a clever and flexible program. Its game-creation sibling was WorldBuilder, which I "borrowed" from my 5th grade computer teacher, because it had been discontinued when Aldus bought the Silicon Beach company and they wouldn't sell it to me.

I remember HyperCard being our main development platform.

And then one day someone showed me this application called NCSA Mosaic. It looked kind of like HyperCard but didn't seem to be quite as robust. I think I said something like "That will never catch on."

Okay, let's not kid ourselves here. The point of HyperCard was to create animations of stick figure skateboarders going off jumps during computer class when the teacher wasn't looking.

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