HyperCard is an application and a programming tool for Apple Macintosh and Apple IIGS computers. It was among the first successful hypermedia systems, and was a direct influence on many foundational Internet technologies, including Java, JavaScript, the wikiwikiWeb software that powers Wikipedia, and, indeed, the World Wide Web itself. It arguably spawned the category of multimedia "authoring," and was the foundation for influential titles such as Myst. Apple essentially ceased development and support of HyperCard in 1998, although the product remained in active use for many years, and spawned descendents like Toolbook, SuperCard, LiveCode, XTalk scripting languages, and many others.
This archive provides searchable, threaded access to messages distributed to the HyperCard mailing list, currently hosted at Yahoo Groups. This archive begins in February 1999 and includes material unavailable from Yahoo. The original version of this archive was built in part on (you guessed it!) HyperCard and collected messages for nearly 20 years. It is maintained by Geoff Duncan.
The archive currently spans 43,260 messages in 9,117 threads. A handful of threads are inaccessible or empty, either because their content was unintended (spam or blowback from mailer errors) or the author asked that the content be removed. Similarly, some message threads appear to be short — displaying fewer messages than the thread claims to contain — most often because messages were inadvertently duplicated during import.
The text of most messages in the archive is searchable. Some exceptions are messages that were received base64-encoded; while those messages should display correctly, they are not effectively searchable.
Searching for multiple search terms performs an AND search — narrowing your search scope — rather than an OR search. So, searching for compileit performance will return links to threads containing both the words compileit and performance. You can search for exact phrases by enclosing them in quotes: searching for "menu mark" will return messages about a little-known feature of HyperCard's script editor, for instance.
Some search results may appear to be false positives, with the message text not showing any of the search terms. Most likely this is due to using a very common search term (like hypercard) and it appearing in footers and other material that the archive strips off of messages prior to display.
The messages included in this archive were originally sent to mailing lists: they were generated by innumerable email clients and distributed using a number of different services. As a result, the display of particular messages may be less than optimal, particularly on mobile devices. The archive attempts to present material as legibly as possible while removing "cruft" and transient material; however, it does not attempt to remove quoted material (contents of previous messages) that list members may have included in their messages. If list users have poor mailing list manners, those manners will be reflected in this archive.
The archive makes an effort to redact email addresses of list members in thread displays, while still providing a bit of context, including sender names where available.
The archive logs IP address and browser information about devices that access it, but does not use cookies, trackers, advertisements, or other services that have potential privacy implications for archive users.
Feel free to contact Geoff Duncan directly with any issues.