HyperCard Mailing List

Hello everyone,

I just thought I would let this group know about a project I have been
working on for the past few weeks.

A few months ago the Internet Archive added support for in-browser
emulation of old Mac software. While this theoretically allowed HyperCard
stacks to be emulated online, most stacks are in StuffIt Expander files
(.sit, .sea, ...) and the process was slow and time consuming (requiring
the use of emulators or old Macs).

I have now developed an automated process to do all this, and the upshot is
that any stack in a StuffIt Expander-compatible file or a Mac disk image
can be uploaded in a few clicks to the Internet Archive, where you can run
it, emulated, in your browser (no plugins required).

With today (11th August) being 30 years to the day that HyperCard was
introduced, what better time to get your stacks running again. To upload
them, go to HyperCardOnline.tk <http://hypercardonline.tk/>; .

And if you don't have any stacks to upload, you can go to the HyperCard
stacks collection <https://archive.org/details/hypercardstacks>; on the
Internet Archive and run the hundreds - soon to be thousands - of stacks
that are already uploaded.

Andrew

P.S. I must extend a huge thanks to Jacque for making the AOL / MHC stacks
available to download a few years ago. That is what I have been uploading
myself, and the majority of the stacks online right now are from that
collection.

Additionally, if anyone knows of any other collections of stacks,
preferably ones that include some metadata (name, author and description is
enough) then please let me know so that I can upload them as well (I
already know about the University of Michigan's collection, HyperCard.de
and the info-mac archives).

WOW

I am currently learning mandarin chinese and am looking for stacks about that lol

On 11. Aug 2017, at 11:46, Andrew Ferguson andrewferguson500@[redacted].com[HyperCard] <HyperCard-Mailing-List> wrote:
> Additionally, if anyone knows of any other collections of stacks, preferably ones that include some metadata (name, author and description is enough) then please let me know so that I can upload them as well (I already know about the University of Michigan's collection, HyperCard.de and the info-mac archives).

There's stuff from the HyperCard Pantechnicon here:

http://hypercard.org/Pantechnicon/

might be of use as well.

Cheers,
-- Uli Kusterer
"The Witnesses of TeachText are everywhere..."
http://www.zathras.de

Ah, whoops, forgot to mention I've added the Pantechnicon stacks as well.
The unfortunate thing is that the metadata (author, description, date) for
those stacks disappeared with the original Pantechnicon. So they've been
added, but without any metadata. If you do see one in the collection
<https://archive.org/details/hypercardstacks>; (now 3000+ stacks) and want
to add any metadata to it, either email me or add a review to that stack (I
get an email whenever someone reviews a stack) and I'll update that stack.
That also applies if you find any stack that needs a correction,
metadata-wise.

Two emulators are currently running on a remote server... SheepShaver is
required for unpacking the files (Stuffit Expander 5.5 is far better than
previous versions, but needs a color Mac). Mini vMac is then used to
screenshot the stack because a Mac Plus is what the Internet Archive are
emulating. (The screenshot also serves as an indicator if the stack will
work or not for the approvals process - every stack is manually approved!).
I hope to publish a round-up video of the entire project in a few weeks,
but here <https://twitter.com/HyperCardOnline/status/896425825784000514>; is
a tweet featuring a picture of the backend-setup.

(And for the benefit of this group, although the website says that only Mac
disk images and Stuffit-compatible archives are supported, if you have a
stack in another format, email it to me and I'll do my best to get it
working in the online emulator.). Additionally, if anyone here has uploaded
a stack and the checkStatus URL says it has an error or is still
processing, let me know and I'll give things a poke.

Oh, and does anyone know if there is a way to force HyperCard to open a
stack that is missing its resource fork? I've had quite a few uploads of
raw stacks missing their resource forks, and this would be very useful.

On 14 August 2017 at 19:11, Uli Kusterer Witness.of.TeachText@[redacted].net[HyperCard] <HyperCard-Mailing-List> wrote:

>
>
> On 11. Aug 2017, at 11:46, Andrew Ferguson andrewferguson500@[redacted].com> [HyperCard] <HyperCard-Mailing-List> wrote:
> > Additionally, if anyone knows of any other collections of stacks,
> preferably ones that include some metadata (name, author and description is
> enough) then please let me know so that I can upload them as well (I
> already know about the University of Michigan's collection, HyperCard.de
> and the info-mac archives).
>
> There's stuff from the HyperCard Pantechnicon here:
>
> http://hypercard.org/Pantechnicon/
>
> might be of use as well.
>
> Cheers,
> -- Uli Kusterer
> "The Witnesses of TeachText are everywhere..."
> http://www.zathras.de
>
>
>

On 14. Aug 2017, at 20:26, Andrew Ferguson andrewferguson500@[redacted].com[HyperCard] <HyperCard-Mailing-List> wrote:
> Oh, and does anyone know if there is a way to force HyperCard to open a stack that is missing its resource fork? I've had quite a few uploads of raw stacks missing their resource forks, and this would be very useful.

You mean HyperCard just won't recognize them as stacks? Set their file type/creator code to STAK/WILD using ResEdit, that should make HyperCard recognize a file as a stack.

Of course, the resource fork contains icons, cursors, XCMDs, XFCNs, AddColor information and sounds, so if the stack had those originally, the stack will still not work, but really setting the file type and creator should be all that's needed.

I think there were a few XCMDs for setting a file's type/creator (check the Developer Stack 1.3r, ISTR that contained an external to do that, and Rinaldi likely had one as well), or alternately you can look for FTyper and MakeFTyper, which let you create a little droplet that changes type and creator of files that are dropped on it. You can also use the SetFile command line tool that comes with macOS X (Or maybe it requires Xcode to be installed), like SetFile -c WILD -t STAK /path/to/file

Cheers,
-- Uli Kusterer
"The Witnesses of TeachText are everywhere..."
http://www.zathras.de

Hi Uli,
Thanks very much for that (didn't realise it was so easy!). I've updated
the system so it now supports raw HyperCard stacks, as well as stuffit
expander-archives and disk images. The backend all runs on Linux, but there
is a handy utility called hattrib (part of the hfsutils package) that can
edit the type/creator code of files in HFS disk images - the syntax is
identical to the setFile utility you mentioned, but with hattrib in place
of setFile.
Andrew

On 14 August 2017 at 20:13, Uli Kusterer Witness.of.TeachText@[redacted].net[HyperCard] <HyperCard-Mailing-List> wrote:

>
>
> On 14. Aug 2017, at 20:26, Andrew Ferguson andrewferguson500@[redacted].com> [HyperCard] <HyperCard-Mailing-List> wrote:
> > Oh, and does anyone know if there is a way to force HyperCard to open a
> stack that is missing its resource fork? I've had quite a few uploads of
> raw stacks missing their resource forks, and this would be very useful.
>
> You mean HyperCard just won't recognize them as stacks? Set their file
> type/creator code to STAK/WILD using ResEdit, that should make HyperCard
> recognize a file as a stack.
>
> Of course, the resource fork contains icons, cursors, XCMDs, XFCNs,
> AddColor information and sounds, so if the stack had those originally, the
> stack will still not work, but really setting the file type and creator
> should be all that's needed.
>
> I think there were a few XCMDs for setting a file's type/creator (check
> the Developer Stack 1.3r, ISTR that contained an external to do that, and
> Rinaldi likely had one as well), or alternately you can look for FTyper and
> MakeFTyper, which let you create a little droplet that changes type and
> creator of files that are dropped on it. You can also use the SetFile
> command line tool that comes with macOS X (Or maybe it requires Xcode to be
> installed), like SetFile -c WILD -t STAK /path/to/file
>
> Cheers,
> -- Uli Kusterer
> "The Witnesses of TeachText are everywhere..."
> http://www.zathras.de
>
>
>

Wow Andrew, thanks for putting these tools and files together!! I hope it
inspires more people to get stacks out of archives and preserve them.
Having the screenshots is really useful. I found the online emulator is a
bit slow and buggy, but I guess that will change in time. At least if it is
something interesting, it is easy to download a disk image and open it in
mini vMac.

I am curious, what does the manual approval process entail?

Best,
Thom

On Tue, Aug 15, 2017 at 5:52 AM, Andrew Ferguson andrewferguson500@[redacted].com[HyperCard] <HyperCard-Mailing-List> wrote:

>
>
> Hi Uli,
> Thanks very much for that (didn't realise it was so easy!). I've updated
> the system so it now supports raw HyperCard stacks, as well as stuffit
> expander-archives and disk images. The backend all runs on Linux, but there
> is a handy utility called hattrib (part of the hfsutils package) that can
> edit the type/creator code of files in HFS disk images - the syntax is
> identical to the setFile utility you mentioned, but with hattrib in place
> of setFile.
> Andrew
>
> On 14 August 2017 at 20:13, Uli Kusterer Witness.of.TeachText@[redacted].net> [HyperCard] <HyperCard-Mailing-List> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 14. Aug 2017, at 20:26, Andrew Ferguson andrewferguson500@[redacted].com>> [HyperCard] <HyperCard-Mailing-List> wrote:
>> > Oh, and does anyone know if there is a way to force HyperCard to open a
>> stack that is missing its resource fork? I've had quite a few uploads of
>> raw stacks missing their resource forks, and this would be very useful.
>>
>> You mean HyperCard just won't recognize them as stacks? Set their file
>> type/creator code to STAK/WILD using ResEdit, that should make HyperCard
>> recognize a file as a stack.
>>
>> Of course, the resource fork contains icons, cursors, XCMDs, XFCNs,
>> AddColor information and sounds, so if the stack had those originally, the
>> stack will still not work, but really setting the file type and creator
>> should be all that's needed.
>>
>> I think there were a few XCMDs for setting a file's type/creator (check
>> the Developer Stack 1.3r, ISTR that contained an external to do that, and
>> Rinaldi likely had one as well), or alternately you can look for FTyper and
>> MakeFTyper, which let you create a little droplet that changes type and
>> creator of files that are dropped on it. You can also use the SetFile
>> command line tool that comes with macOS X (Or maybe it requires Xcode to be
>> installed), like SetFile -c WILD -t STAK /path/to/file
>>
>> Cheers,
>> -- Uli Kusterer
>> "The Witnesses of TeachText are everywhere..."
>> http://www.zathras.de
>>
>>
>
>

The manual approval process checks just one thing - the screenshot. When
the stack is converted into a disk image, it is then loaded into Mini vMac
and a screenshot is taken. This screenshot is used as a poor-man's verifier
that the stack will work in the online emulator. In some screenshots, there
are error messages explaining why the stack cannot be opened (more RAM
required, needs a color display, needs AppleScript, etc) and these give a
pretty good indication that the stack will not work in the online emulator.
If the screenshot is of a seemingly-perfectly working stack, then I take
the assumption that the stack will work.

With time, I hope that the online emulator will improve. The Internet
Archive are always experimenting with different ways to improve the
emulation. One particularly interesting one that I think is being talked
about is WebAssembly, which will supposedly improve things quite a bit. In
one of their emulators for another system (think it was a games console)
they recently got saving to work, where it would store changes you made
locally on your machine, and then automatically load them into the emulator
when you went back to play again. So there is definitely progress...

Oh, and if anyone in this group has uploaded a file and it is still
processing days later, email me the ID (given at the end of the upload
process) or filename of the stack, and I'll give it a poke.

On 7 September 2017 at 07:46, DTS daretospam@[redacted].com[HyperCard] <
HyperCard-Mailing-List> wrote:

>
>
> Wow Andrew, thanks for putting these tools and files together!! I hope it
> inspires more people to get stacks out of archives and preserve them.
> Having the screenshots is really useful. I found the online emulator is a
> bit slow and buggy, but I guess that will change in time. At least if it is
> something interesting, it is easy to download a disk image and open it in
> mini vMac.
>
> I am curious, what does the manual approval process entail?
>
> Best,
> Thom
>
> On Tue, Aug 15, 2017 at 5:52 AM, Andrew Ferguson
> andrewferguson500@[redacted].com[HyperCard] <HyperCard-Mailing-List> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Hi Uli,
>> Thanks very much for that (didn't realise it was so easy!). I've updated
>> the system so it now supports raw HyperCard stacks, as well as stuffit
>> expander-archives and disk images. The backend all runs on Linux, but there
>> is a handy utility called hattrib (part of the hfsutils package) that can
>> edit the type/creator code of files in HFS disk images - the syntax is
>> identical to the setFile utility you mentioned, but with hattrib in place
>> of setFile.
>> Andrew
>>
>> On 14 August 2017 at 20:13, Uli Kusterer Witness.of.TeachText@[redacted].net>> [HyperCard] <HyperCard-Mailing-List> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 14. Aug 2017, at 20:26, Andrew Ferguson andrewferguson500@[redacted].com>>> [HyperCard] <HyperCard-Mailing-List> wrote:
>>> > Oh, and does anyone know if there is a way to force HyperCard to open
>>> a stack that is missing its resource fork? I've had quite a few uploads of
>>> raw stacks missing their resource forks, and this would be very useful.
>>>
>>> You mean HyperCard just won't recognize them as stacks? Set their file
>>> type/creator code to STAK/WILD using ResEdit, that should make HyperCard
>>> recognize a file as a stack.
>>>
>>> Of course, the resource fork contains icons, cursors, XCMDs, XFCNs,
>>> AddColor information and sounds, so if the stack had those originally, the
>>> stack will still not work, but really setting the file type and creator
>>> should be all that's needed.
>>>
>>> I think there were a few XCMDs for setting a file's type/creator (check
>>> the Developer Stack 1.3r, ISTR that contained an external to do that, and
>>> Rinaldi likely had one as well), or alternately you can look for FTyper and
>>> MakeFTyper, which let you create a little droplet that changes type and
>>> creator of files that are dropped on it. You can also use the SetFile
>>> command line tool that comes with macOS X (Or maybe it requires Xcode to be
>>> installed), like SetFile -c WILD -t STAK /path/to/file
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> -- Uli Kusterer
>>> "The Witnesses of TeachText are everywhere..."
>>> http://www.zathras.de
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>