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GeneralRe: What was so great about Hypercard? Pin
OriginalGriff26-May-18 19:37
mveOriginalGriff26-May-18 19:37 
GeneralRe: What was so great about Hypercard? Pin
Daniel Pfeffer26-May-18 21:49
professionalDaniel Pfeffer26-May-18 21:49 
QuestionRe: What was so great about Hypercard? Pin
Eddy Vluggen26-May-18 14:18
professionalEddy Vluggen26-May-18 14:18 
GeneralRe: What was so great about Hypercard? Pin
BillWoodruff26-May-18 14:38
professionalBillWoodruff26-May-18 14:38 
GeneralRe: What was so great about Hypercard? Pin
CodeWraith26-May-18 20:24
CodeWraith26-May-18 20:24 
GeneralRe: What was so great about Hypercard? Pin
BillWoodruff26-May-18 22:35
professionalBillWoodruff26-May-18 22:35 
GeneralRe: What was so great about Hypercard? Pin
Marc Clifton27-May-18 6:37
mvaMarc Clifton27-May-18 6:37 
GeneralRe: What was so great about Hypercard? Pin
kalberts28-May-18 4:29
kalberts28-May-18 4:29 
I never embraced Hypercard, partially for the same reason that it took me a long time to accept WWW:

I came to know Hypertext from the book in which it was invented - the 1974 Ted Nelson: Computer Lib / Dream Machines. The concept allows for two alternate approaches: Either the text is placed as blobs in the network nodes, or the text is what runs along the edges from one node to the other. Ted Nelson presents both approaches, and to me, the second is the best one by far to handle my concepts: You read along a thread (edge), can go out on textual side tracks, detour for some extra explanation, make a choice among several alternative text edges to follow from there. The node only holds the "arrow roadsigns" to tell you where the roads go, no real content.

I even made a design for a text presentation system based on this approach, and started implementing it. But support tools (especially for screen presentation) were too primitive in those days, so I never got around to complete it. Every now and then I see my 1980 design in the bookshelf and think: Today, our tools are so much better, and it would be simple to complete! Maybe I will one day -- but today, people's brains are so much formed by WWW that noone will want it Frown | :-(

The problem with Hypercard (and web pages) is that it is so incoherent. Each card / web page is formed independently of others, and when going on to another one, you switch context completely. It isn't one where the text is hyperstructured, just independent linear texts hooked together in a directed graph. The alternate model is to a much larger degree oriented towards coherent documents with an internal hyperstructure: You follow sidetracks, fetch an explanation, choose where to go on.. And the text before and after the selection point form a continous whole, presented as one running text. In my design, you could also set a verbosity level and choose tags, with text along an edge having parts that were optionally displayed if chosen by tag/verbosity.

I saw neither Hypercard nor the web as a realization of "real" hypertext; they were fake, cheap poor-man's implementation of the concept. (Besides, when HTTP/HTML came out, I had been teaching the old Gopher protocol to engineering students. My reaction was "So, what's new?" You embed jump links in the text, and you had somewhat improved functions for supplying client data with your request, but at the protocol level, there isn't that much to HTTP if you know Gopher... So I was not impressed.

But blob-and-link model of Hypercard and WWW won. And Hypercard lost to WWW in the long run. Maybe I will dig up my old Nest design (NEtwork Structured Text) and implement it, just to have something to show to people as an example of alternate concepts that never made it to the market.
GeneralRe: What was so great about Hypercard? Pin
GuyThiebaut27-May-18 6:58
professionalGuyThiebaut27-May-18 6:58 
GeneralThe ultimate frustration Pin
kmoorevs26-May-18 9:38
kmoorevs26-May-18 9:38 
GeneralRe: The ultimate frustration Pin
Sander Rossel26-May-18 9:54
professionalSander Rossel26-May-18 9:54 
GeneralRe: The ultimate frustration Pin
OriginalGriff26-May-18 9:57
mveOriginalGriff26-May-18 9:57 
PraiseRe: The ultimate frustration Pin
lopatir26-May-18 10:06
lopatir26-May-18 10:06 
GeneralRe: The ultimate frustration Pin
kmoorevs26-May-18 11:32
kmoorevs26-May-18 11:32 
JokeRe: The ultimate frustration Pin
lopatir26-May-18 9:59
lopatir26-May-18 9:59 
GeneralRe: The ultimate frustration Pin
kmoorevs26-May-18 11:28
kmoorevs26-May-18 11:28 
GeneralRe: The ultimate frustration Pin
Nelek27-May-18 6:33
protectorNelek27-May-18 6:33 
GeneralRe: The ultimate frustration Pin
swampwiz26-May-18 14:11
swampwiz26-May-18 14:11 
GeneralRe: The ultimate frustration Pin
kmoorevs28-May-18 2:41
kmoorevs28-May-18 2:41 
GeneralRe: The ultimate frustration Pin
Amarnath S26-May-18 18:55
professionalAmarnath S26-May-18 18:55 
GeneralRe: The ultimate frustration Pin
GenJerDan28-May-18 19:45
GenJerDan28-May-18 19:45 
GeneralAnd then there were four... Pin
OriginalGriff26-May-18 9:32
mveOriginalGriff26-May-18 9:32 
GeneralRe: And then there were four... Pin
jsc4226-May-18 9:55
professionaljsc4226-May-18 9:55 
JokeRe: And then there were four... Pin
lopatir26-May-18 10:16
lopatir26-May-18 10:16 
GeneralRe: And then there were four... Pin
Mike Hankey26-May-18 10:32
mveMike Hankey26-May-18 10:32 

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