H O M E

Jonathan Cooper Manager of Information, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, AUSTRALIA

What's the Hype About HyperCard? (Part I)

Originally published in MACinations (Club Mac, Sydney, Australia) , June/July 1992

"I've had HyperCard on my hard disk since I bought it, but what on earth am I supposed to DO with it??"

Before we work out what to do with HyperCard, we had better work out what it is.

In its simplest form HyperCard can be (and often is) used as a simple flat-file database. This is a fairly obvious comparison, as HyperCard files are made up of cards (corresponding to database records) which in turn usually contain fields. However, most flat-file databses have more powerful reporting functions than HyperCard.

HyperCard used as a flat-file database

It would also be possible to use HyperCard as a very basic word processor. You could for example, create a one-card stack with one scrolling field on it, type away (up to 30000 characters), then choose "Print Field..." from the File menu. However, unlike most dedicated word processors, alignment is left, right or centre only (no full justification), there are no tabs or indents and there is no indication of where new pages start.

HyperCard used as a very basic word processor

Finally, HyperCard could be used as a simple paint program (in the form of a sketch book). It has all the standard MacPaint tools (not surprising, since both MacPaint and HyperCard were invented by the same person, Bill Atkinson) plus, in versions 2.x, free rotation and various other distortions. It is however, only black and white and cannot produce object-oriented (i.e. 'draw') graphics (1).

HyperCard used as a simple paint program

It is natural to try to compare something new and unfamiliar with something familiar. Unfortunately, this approach can give us a distorted picture. Imagine for example, a colony of intelligent periwinkles stuck to a rock by the sea. Now imagine that somehow, one of the periwinkles catches a glimpse of a human being. How would this enlightened periwinkle explain to the others what he has seen? First he would be asked "Does this creature have a shell?", to which he would have to answer "No." "Does it eat plankton?" "No." "Is it firmly attached to a rock?" "No." ...and so on. Following this line of explanation, the other periwinkles would build up a picture of a human as a famished, drifting blob of jelly!

Similarly, it is unfair to judge HyperCard according to how it performs tasks normally done by dedicated applications, since this approach is guaranteed to only reveal its shortcomings.

Scripts (sequences of instructions) and the buttons that usually contain them, turn HyperCard from a collection of cut-down, general purpose applications, a kind of pauper's "-Works" program, into an application that adapts to almost any task you give it; tasks such as hypertext/hypermedia (e.g. tutorials and other interactives), custom data handling and calculation (e.g. personal organisers and booking systems) or interfacing with external devices, such as weather stations or robots.

So, if I had to give a one-line definition of HyperCard it would be something like: "a computer solutions construction kit." That is, when you think to yourself "If only I could get the Mac to do exactly this...", the chances are no ready-made application(s) could provide the solution. This is despite the fact that many are very configurable (2). In HyperCard however, virtually anything goes, virtually anything is possible.

Bundled free with HyperCard are a number of documents (called "stacks") that, combined with HyperCard itself, act just like applications. Although they can be used as they are, each stack can also be modified and customised to any degree desired.

On the other hand, if you wanted to, you could create a very useful stack 'from scratch'. Even here however, you would not be left on your own. Five of the stacks that come with HyperCard 2.x are designed specifically to help you create other stacks (3). Think of them as prefabricated software parts!

If you 'open up' these software 'spare parts' and look at their scripts, you will find lines like:

if field "Name" is empty then go to first card.

Sounds a lot like English doesn't it? In fact HyperTalk (the language of HyperCard) is probably the easiest computer language to learn ever invented, because: a) it is so much like English that you probably know more than half of it already, and b) it is very forgiving and flexible in its syntax. So, for example the following three statements:

go to the second card of stack "Addresses"
go second card of stack addresses
go card 2 of stack "addresses"

...all mean (and do) exactly the same thing. In many other languages, put a comma in the wrong place and your program refuses to run!

In Part II [of this article], I will look at the basics of HyperCard and how its parts work together. Hopefully, this will inspire you to explore further on your own.

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1. Despite the limitations of graphics created within the application, HyperCard 2.x can actually display not only full colour still images but, with QuickTime, full colour movies as well.

2. E.g. Microsoft Word, since version 4.0, allows menu items to be added or deleted and many defaults and preferences can be set

3. Stack Templates, Readymade Buttons, Readymade Fields, Background Art and Power Tools.