I have created a HyperCard-based scheduling system for the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the major public art museum in Sydney, Australia. It is used for scheduling guided tours, lectures, performances, films, workshops etc. into four specific spaces as well as the general gallery floor. It handles the allocation of staff and other resources and produces various types of printed output such as daily summaries, statistical reports and confirmation letters. Thanks to HyperCard's AppleEvents support, it is a multi-user system, using a server/client model. Each day-card on the client stack is updated from the server only if necessary (referring to a hidden time-stamp field). If a booking is edited on the client, a temporary file is created on the server's hard disk, to be processed the next time the server is not being used directly. An advantage of this method is that a client stack still works (with some provisos) even if the connection to the server is temporarily lost. Other features include: * Sub-bookings, or bookings within bookings * Repeated and cloned bookings * Statistical functions,broken down according to topic, geographical area and type of group * Auto-entry of school contact details, using an external database * Automatic and 'one button' back-ups * Booking filters on day-cards, to show only certain kinds of bookings * In-built contextual help. This scheduling system (called Museum*ARTS -- for "Museum * Activities - Resources - Time - Space") has been in use at the Art Gallery since May 1996 and over 50,000 bookings have been made on it, as of Feb 2004. (To download a demo of Museum*ARTS, visit http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/sub/jcooper/stacks/.) We are aware of the potential problems with using customised software, particularly when it (currently) only runs on Macintosh computers and the rest of the Gallery uses IBM-compatibles. But at the moment we know of no viable alternatives. We have actually tried a commercial software package that is advertised as an event scheduler for museums but we have found it unnecessarily complex for 99 per cent of our needs and completely unable to handle sub-bookings (an essential for us). Like most commercial software, it was created by professional developers who made assumptions or guesses about their end users' needs. So, at the moment at least, management is willing to tolerate a separate sub-network of Macintosh computers because my software is mission-critical and unique. Creating Museum*ARTS, and seeing it being used successfully in a real life situation, has convinced me more than ever that HyperCard is a software platform without equal when it comes to creating solutions to problems you are very familiar with. You don't have to be a professional programmer to create useful HyperCard stacks: you are either the user yourself or the users are people you work with. As a result, you get instant and constant feedback and so the software can be continually improved as required. HyperCard's open-endedness is its biggest advantage. You dream of what you want to do with a computer and then you just create something that does it!
Comments to: Jonathan Cooper
I am a Mac consultant with hundreds of clients. In 1988 a law firm asked me to automate their substantial debt collection business. After searching through all the software available at that time (including non Mac), it was determined that none met all of their requirements. The brief version is that I wrote for them a new application that did everything they wanted. It was in HyperCard. I called it Total Collections. They have used this EVERY day since 1988, collecting money owed from tens of thousands of debtors. Starting in 1992 I started selling this program to others interested in collecting debts, and continue to do so today. You can see our web site, with screen shots, at http://www.northnet.org/brvmug/DebtCollection.html Again, EVERYTHING was and is in HyperCard. Simply a marvelous tool...
Comments to: John Droz, jr.
I am a baker and a wedding cake designer and I have a small bakery that specializes in only wedding cakes. I have created an invoice on HyperCard that makes my *Wintel* oriented brides and grooms jump out of their chairs and ask me *Where did you get that program?* I tell them I wrote it myself. (They are often employees of huge corporations used to working with obtuse, inflexible programs with odd quirks that must be memorized. Some have even watched me edit the invoice background while they are sitting there.) "WHAT program IS that!?!?" I tell them it's basic to my Mac... (I grin with glee!) "It's hypercard. Been around since '87 or something." They just go nuts! The invoice includes all their information, ie; time, date, contacts, etc. then moves on to calculate the cost of the cake with different prices for each flavor of each layer. Then it figures delivery costs and sales tax (ho-hum...) Then it brings up my bookkeeping program where I enter the sale...then I bring up diagrams of cake designs and paste their choice on the invoice, adding flowers, lace and fountains where they want them... (By this time they are hanging over my shoulder!) "How can you DO that?" "Oh, you can do anything when you're MacEnabled," I tell them. Then I print it so they can take it home. They usually go away mumbling under their breath about IBM and MicroHard..... Without any prior experience I created my web page, www.thecakery.com/ on hypercard in 2 days. See, you can do anything when you're MacEnabled!
Comments to: Jeannie Lawrence
I've used HyperCard to build custom databases since I got it with my newfangled Mac SE in 1987. I've held onto a couple of jobs because of HyperCard's ability to let me tell it how I want it to work. I could click a link and get the necessary info faster than anybody else. Full fledged database apps are often faster, but none are as versatile and customizable. Currently I'm using it as the billing/inventory/scheduling backbone for my business because, guess what, FileMaker Pro won't do what I need done. There's no other program that gives the Macintosh a unique software advantage.
Comments to: Edward Nutter
I started programming with HyperCard at the age of 12, and have continued to program with it ever since, till I am now 17. In that time, I have programmed everything from games, to multimedia, to cgis, to musical score writing aids. Twice, I have come up with stacks that wowed even my staunch IBM loving friends. The first was a very simple multimedia stack which ran on 6 different computers in a lab at once, communicating via appleEvents over an AppleTalk network. While there was nothing fancy about the stack, the effect of pressing a button and having 6 computer screens change was something that amazed the entire audience. The second time was with a novelty stack I wrote, called "Match Maker". It simply asked a heap of questions and then searched a database for a person which matched those questions. All that made it great was a soft pink colour scheme and some soft background music provided by a QT MIDI movie. That stack was a sure fire way to attract an entire classes attention. Hopefully, with the onset of HC 3.0, this stack will run over the internet providing a way to waste time and dream for millions. :) There is so much more to tell about what I've done with HyperCard, but many others have said that kind of thing, and so my testimony to HC needs to be no longer. If you do want to know more, feel free to email me. So long, and happy scripting, Adrian Sutton
Comments to: Adrian Sutton
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Revised: November 6, 1998
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