HyperCard Comes Back From the Dead to the Web

TedCHoward writes "On the heels of the recent mention of HyperCard comes the launch of a brand new site called TileStack. Cnet's Webware blog writes, 'The idea behind it is to bring old HyperCard stacks back to life by putting them on the Web, meaning you can take some of those long lost creations from the late '80s and early '90s and make them working Web apps. You simply upload them to TileStack's servers and they'll be converted and hosted for just you or the entire world to use once again... Since the service runs without Flash... TileStack is perfect for the iPhone and other devices that run on the Web.' They also have a video showing the upload process."

3.5 inch floppy

[jamesl]

Now all I need is a machine that can read a 3.5 inch floppy.

Re:why?

[ChiRaven]

OMG WOW! I want to run some software from the late 80s, because it is obviously superior to modern software ~

Actually, I'd like to find a replacement for something like SuperPaint. An under $50 (call it $100 now) drawing program with multiple layers, on-screen coordinates for precise placement of objects, the ability to switch seamlessly between bitmap and object modes for creation (with "outline" ability), a really huge palate of available shapes, and a few other goodies I've forgotten over the years. I can't seem to buy anything like that these days.

Inventor of the web says HC was his inspiration.

[Anonymous Coward]

He says that he envisioned the web as a giant networked HyperCard Stack.

You want Inkscape with integrated GIMP, no?

[tepples]

An under $50 (call it $100 now) drawing program with multiple layers, on-screen coordinates for precise placement of objects, the ability to switch seamlessly between bitmap and object modes for creation (with "outline" ability), a really huge palate of available shapes, and a few other goodies I've forgotten over the years. I can't seem to buy anything like that these days.

So it looks like you want an SVG editor with an embedded paint program that lets you edit the PNG files in SVG image elements. Have you tried requesting this feature in Inkscape's issue tracker?

Re:HyperCard had a really cool syntax

[nuzak]

The problem with HyperTalk/AppleScript is that they still have rigid syntax that's intolerant of ambiguity, but now it's merely verbose and expressed in a language where you might expect some constructions to work, but they don't, because they're English, not Hypertalk.

A perfect example is "the location of me". You can't say "my location", which is a far more common idiom.

Of course the saving grace of HyperTalk was that it was also a pretty darn good language for its time, aside from the syntax.

Re:I'm new around here...

[McDutchie]

A lot of early games, especially choose your own adventure style ones, as well as multimedia presentations, and educational tools were created as HyperCard stacks.

What's more, even the original Myst was a set of HyperCard stacks [wikipedia.org].

Re:3.5 inch floppy CAN read old 400/800 McFloppys

[dsmall]

      The high density Apple floppies (1.44, etc) can be moved back and forth between PC's and Apples.

      The lower density Apple floppies used GCR recording, much like the Apple ][ floppies. Hell, in fact, it was exactly like the Apple floppies, except that the number of sectors per track varied. Apple sped up/slowed down the drive motor while doing disk I/O.

      I found out you could read these disks on a standard PC 300 RPM drive with a custom disk controller of about five chips. No speed changing. The disk controller changed its disk I/O frequency. The product we sold to do this (and to run Mac software on the 68000 Atari ST platform) was called "Spectre GCR"), and yep, it would boot Apple floppies, or hard disks, right out of the box.

      (This did not make Apple happy.)

      The only significant bugs that showed up were noise from the switching power supply near the frequency of the outer tracks and impedance mismatch on the read-data line.

      If I had to read Mac 400/800 floppies these days, I'd pick up a Mac on eBay with the "Super Woz Integrated Machine" that could read both formats, and bring the data over.

      All of this taught me that Steve Wozniak was one smart, smart guy. His low chip, very elegant solution was wonderful to learn. Writing the formatter was a bitch, yes ... but it was wonderful to learn.

      One of the problems with the DMCA is that people learn so much about coding by looking at other people's coding. Same for hardware design. I learned a great deal about 68000 coding from Andy Hertzfeld's beautiful Macintosh coding. I learned a great deal about elegant hardware design from John Ridges, who is possibly the best overall hardware and software person I've ever met.

      Thanks,
      David Small