Hi Tony,
Nice to see that you are still around.. despite the passing of HyperCard, over a decade ago!
The URL below is the correct one. The FreeGUI group, and the ware too, are still available. Take note, however, that FreeGUI was created with MetaCard, the version before it was taken-over by Runtime. Not sure but you may have to adapt it to work with RunRev.
Please keep me advised as to your progress in re-creating HyperCard with Java. Not just fyi; it's remotely possible that I/we may be able to make this Java thing work with Drupal (which is what I am currently working with *and* it supports inter-operating with Java). For those who don't know, Drupal is an open-source web-app framework to craft just about anything you can imagine. Sounds like HyperCard, eh! Except that, at this stage, Drupal is still FAR more complex (less user-friendly) than our dear beloved HyperCard. Drupal leverages JavaScript and PHP..., two "scripting" languages, but of-course neither of these close even close to HyperTalk.. well... javascript as it is now is getting warm. What sunk javascript at the time (nineties), and Java too for that matter, was the differences between the various browsers; deliberately maintained by MS and others, so as to snare their customer base. JavaScript is much better and simpler now, and much more
inter-operable across browsers now. But, I agree, with y'all, that JS is not HyperTalk. JavaScript has to deal with networking difficulties that our desktop environments didn't confront HC with. Other than scripting, though, Drupal can be made to look-&-feel like HyperCard, e.g. userLevels 1 to 4: Browse (easy), Edit (easy), Paint/Draw (cool plugins exist for this), authoring (Drupal excels at this). It's multi-user, multi-lingual, offers thousands of free plugins, hundreds of themes .... it's endless! Drupal has a feature called "Input Formats" that allow one to input various encoding schemes: text, markdown, wikipedia, HTML, PHP ; it could be adapted to inputting xTalk (of our design), aka a "Script Editor" with choice of scriptingLanguage (and encodings). Translating this ("Script Translator") to some executable form: JavaScript w/o ajax, and/or PHP; instead of Pascal! The ScriptEditor maintains un-compiled friendly version for the user(s). Choice of
what to compile-to is dependent on whether execution is client-side (JavaScript w/o ajax) or server-side (PHP) or perhaps even both.
In my mind we are not that far from our Holy Grail. Yet it's not quite in our grasp yet, so I suggest that y'all make use of Runtime Revolution while we await our Fair Lady of the Web. She won't be like our first love, but we may grow to like her, endearingly, if we can overcome our indelible grief at HyperCard's passing.
Regards to those whose flame of hope has not been extinguished by the winds of change,
Valiantly,
Al
PS: Oops! I almost forgot. Here are the freeGUI files (attached)
________________________________
From: Dr. Anthony G. Rich <lists@[redacted].com
To: HyperCard-Mailing-List
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 2:45:31 AM
Subject: [HC] Where is FreeGUI?
Hi, all.
My software engineering students are currently
working on their JyperCard (HyperCard-in-Java)
project. Thanks again to Rebecca Bettencourt
for supplying the OpenXION code.
I recall Alain Farmer saying that in his
FreeGUI project, he had taken screenshots of
every HyperCard dialog box.
If we could locate those, that would save my
students some time and effort.
Alain, are you still out there? If he's not,
does anyone know where a copy of FreeGUI and
those screenshots can be found?
I Googled for FreeGUI and found this page, but
its link to the Pantechnicon (
pan.uqam.ca)
seems to be dead:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/freeGUI/Thanks in advance for any help.
-- Tony Rich
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