I've used HyperCard for quite a variety of tasks, ranging from simple 10-minute text massagers to full-blown vertical apps and commercial software. In the order that I built them... 1) A graphics program for generating text for highway signing. This program would let the user select a font, and the size, and it would generate output. May not sound like anything special, but the key here is the format of the output - Adobe Illustrator files. The program would determine the kerning of the letters based on very specific tables, and then actually take Illustrator PostScript primitives (the PS definitions of each font character) and adjust their positions to build a true Adobe Illustrator file that could be opened and edited - it would contain precise outlines of the entered text, perfectly kerned. Later I added dimensioning lines as well. Finally I made a plotter control utility that would let the users output the data (converted externally to HPGL) to a vinyl cutter. I built this over 7 years ago, and to my knowledge it is still being used for all the overhead highway signing in Ontario. 2) Order Processing. At the same governmental agency, but a different department. A system for managing the distribution of reports. Requests would come in and the user would go to the accounts and enter the items requested. All the requests were done in one batch. The final step would output packing slips for all the customers, and a shopping list for the user indicating which bins to visit to get the physical reports. It also had a wide variety of reporting capabilities. I also made a standalone version of the reports database for users - they could search themselves, select reports, and it would output an order which they would mail in. 3) Statistical Analysis and report generation. Same department. They were spending about $50,000 a year on a DOS DBASE II system that summarized and reported on how money and manhours were allocated to various R&D projects. It was a dog, a mishmash hack that couldn't add. They even had to hire someone full time just to manage it and deal with the problems. The director asked if I could re-write the entire thing with HyperCard. The DOS consultant said "Macs can't do this stuff!" but I convinced the director I could do it for a measly $3,500. The final result was exactly what management had hoped for and more. It would import a FileMaker database, do full validation on the data, and then output a 300 page report complete with logos and borders. And the numbers all added up. You would basically just import, click a button and go home and the next morning there's the report waiting on the printer. I don't know if they're still using it, unfortunatly it wasn't Y2K compliant. Still, the program took the annual cost from $50,000 to $900. The director personally thanked me and actually told me that choosing to migrate this project to HyperCard was the single best decision he made that year. Wow. 4)Utility for FirstClass Intranet Server This commerical product (FC SuperTools) borrowed from some earlier projects of mine. It did two particularly cool things. First, using the comm toolbox, it would log in to a server and then recursively "crawl" the entire structure and map it out so you could get an overview of the hierarchial layout. The second thing is how it could output that structure. Either as an Excel file, as a folder structure in the Finder, as a Batch Adming file, or as a gigantic Adobe Illustrator EPSF file with the full folder structure laid out across multiple pages. I've also made some goofy things like "Homer's Pain" which would string together Homer Simpson sounds in random ways. I guess you have to hear it to understand :-) I still use HyperCard today for all kinds of things, mostly manipulating data and doing repetitive chores (like dishing out id's and passwords via e-mail). I think it will be a long time before I find something that can replace it. Oh I almost forgot this one... I also used HyperCard to make a program called 3D Quicktime Viewmaster. It's a nifty gizmo that lets you view certain QuickTime movies in 3D Stereo (I'm not kidding). Working from the basis of the "Pulfrich Effect" it provides stereoscopic vision of a movie by simulating the effect with two side-by-side frames of the same movie, shown at different time indexes. It requires an eye trick called "free fusing" where you kind of cross your eyes to merge the two images together so that each eye sees a different pane. The program includes some training tools to help you do this. As I said, it only works with certain movies, ones where the camera is travelling to the left or the right, but not panning (like shooting out your passenger window). It isn't hard to find shots like this on TV or in movies. Basically once you have a movie loaded, and you free-fuse, then you can just move the mouse left and right to move through the movie, all in perfect 3d. This works because any two frames taken of the same scene from slightly different angles will provide the brain with enough information to see depth. And a movie where the camera was tracking but not panning provides exactly that... views of the same scene from a whole line of perspectives. It also works great for movies of rotating objects (QTVR) Find it at: http://macinsearch.com/infomac/gst/mov/three-d-qt-viewmaster-131.html
Comments to: Oliver Kenkel
I made a good living from HyperCard several years ago as the one-man I.S. department of Standard Broadcast News. SBN was a Canadian news service providing audio and text via satellite to over 100 radio stations across the country. HyperCard was integral to our 24/7/365 operation, and enabled us to achieve considerable operational economies and flexibility. I used HyperCard, primarily in conjunction with the Comm Toolbox serial port externals, to: - Transmit several thousand wire stories a day to our satellite uplink. These wire stories were written and formatted in custom-designed HyperCard stacks and collected by another HyperCard stack that parsed them into "ANPA" structured text format. This system also operated in several news bureaus across the country, essentially without technical intervention. - Downlink, filter, reformat and re-broadcast several thousand weather reports a day. - Control client's remote tape decks via DTMF tones on the satellite audio feed with HyperCard's "dial" command. - Send alphanumeric pages to field staff. (This was a bit of a hack, there are better commercial products now.) - Interface with some particularly nasty mini-computers through a scripted serial connection to retrieve news stories from a local affiliate. (This system was called "NewStar" but I preferred to refer to it as "NewsTar".) - Generate and uplink real-time 1995 national referendum results on only a few weeks preparation time. - We were beginning the design stages of converting from a "folders & files" -based structure inherited from an earlier system to a using HyperCard as the front-end to a Butler SQL relational database. I was sorry to have to drop it when a better opportunity came along... The satisfying thing about the whole system was that I was able to respond to user feedback very rapidly and add features in a matter of hours or days. HyperCard's interpreted programming language made it possible to use an "interactive" style of development, with changes often made to the live system on a test-and-revise basis. All this was done on extremely modest capital outlay, and very reasonable payroll. Where I was not able to solve problems using HyperCard's extensive and unambiguous HyperTalk language I usually found a free code module, called an "XCMD" or an "XFCN", that gave me the feature or the speed that I needed (there are literally thousands of XCMDs available on the internet). In the final stages, we began using CompileIt to turn optimised HyperTalk code into lightning-fast XCMD code modules and WindowScript to design custom windows for data display or sophisticated user interfaces. [http://www.nobleswan.com/hypercard/]
Comments to: Ben Lawson
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Revised: November 6, 1998
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