Slashdot Mirror

If computers would be infinitely fast and thus also have nigh infinite memory and storage (because fractal compression at zero cost - duh) we'd all inmediately be using what is called a Direct Manipulation Interface (DMI) or Direct Manipulation Environment. Squeak comes close to that, but a good DMI would be something like Flash combined with RunRev using Python or something as a PL, including a touchscreen object modeller for contemporary tablets and some other niceties. The difference between programming and runtime environment would basically completely disappear.

There would be no files anymore, just "Objects" and no starting or stopping of programms, just saved "states" of objects or processes running in and on objects. Again, Squak or RunRev/LiveCode come close to this, but of course are a little flakey to be true contenders for the proposed computing utopia in the GP.

The best experiences I had actually were with Flash, although flashes timeline stuff always was a step backwards vis-a-vis hypercard, squeak and such. But still ... Need a loading bar? Draw one and apply something like >>bar.width = myFile.loading,percentage Done. Doesn't get any better than that short of the computer reading your mind.

I would love to have a Python or JS 2018 driven DMI/DME with triple-A 3D and Flash-style 2D vector graphics. Completely FOSS. That would totally rock!

My 2 eurocents.

I did my Multimedia Design Diploma in 2001. One big part of the curriculum was building Multimedia Applications in Director. Our class learned programming in Lingo (the programming language of Director). With some teacher who had learned programming in Lingo and thus knew literally less than nothing about programming.
After my training I had a gig for 9 months building SAP simulations with sliced up screenshots and buckets of cobbled-together Lingo code in Director. This was such an kafkaesk thing, you'd barely believe it.

Seriously, if you want to know why Director doesn't get any praise - aside from Adobe screwing things up ... again - look at Lingo. This abysmal disaster of a PL has no equal on this planet. It's basically a programming language designed by people who couldn't really tell the difference between a value and a variable. I'm not joking.

If you think PHP is a mess, you have seen nothing my friend. Lingo takes the cake and wins the battle of bizar 'programming' languages hands down with flying flags, even with RunRevs "Transcript", Typo3s/Neos' "TypoScript" (Don't ask, you don't want to know, seriously now) and older versions of SQL joining the fight.

Director had some nice animation and prototyping/RAD concepts, no doubt. But at a certain point they should've brought some people in who knew what they were doing - you know, like with ActionScript 2 in Flash.
They didn't and Director died a well deserved death.

I'm so glad JavaScript is slowly taking the place of the universal frontend/ui language and, trust me, if you'd've seen Lingo, you would be too.

My 2 cents.

Today, I just remembered this post that addressed many of your concerns. Please read this post in the forum page: "Why LiveCode - From an Educator's Viewpoint" http://forums.livecode.com/vie...

Current modern hypercard here:

https://livecode.com/

Please, visit http://livecode.com/download/ and download the most recent version of LiveCode Community Edition (Open Source) for your OS: (Linux, MacOS X, Windows) If you visit this webpage: http://downloads.livecode.com/... you will find all downloads available, including stable public releases, release candidates and developer previews. Choose one of the stable releases and install it in your computer. Then, you will understand why many developers still cherish and remember fondly, it's first encounter with HyperCard. You could download Livecode's source code from Git: https://github.com/runrev/live... Learn about Livecode's quality controls at: http://quality.runrev.com/ By the way, HyperCard found it's way to many platforms in the form of clones: For Commodore Amiga, there was UltraCard (later renamed Foundation): http://www.dreamtimestudioz.co... For Linux, there was MetaCard (today Open Source LiveCode): http://www.metacard.com/ For Windows, Oracle Media Objects: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...

Please, visit http://livecode.com/download/ and download the most recent version of LiveCode Community Edition (Open Source) for your OS: (Linux, MacOS X, Windows) If you visit this webpage: http://downloads.livecode.com/... you will find all downloads available, including stable public releases, release candidates and developer previews. Choose one of the stable releases and install it in your computer. Then, you will understand why many developers still cherish and remember fondly, it's first encounter with HyperCard. You could download Livecode's source code from Git: https://github.com/runrev/live... Learn about Livecode's quality controls at: http://quality.runrev.com/ By the way, HyperCard found it's way to many platforms in the form of clones: For Commodore Amiga, there was UltraCard (later renamed Foundation): http://www.dreamtimestudioz.co... For Linux, there was MetaCard (today Open Source LiveCode): http://www.metacard.com/ For Windows, Oracle Media Objects: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...

It has been revived and it has a free / open source version: http://livecode.com/

Far better than the original.

The requirements for Linux are "32-bit installation, or a 64-bit linux distribution that has a 32-bit compatibility layer".

Sounds like it's not compatible with any recent 64-bit Linux in that case, as the ia32-libs package is long gone. On Linux distributions released in the past few years, one must install 32-bit applications explicitly as 32-bit using a package manager which resolves the 32-bit dependencies on the fly. The LiveCodeCommunityInstaller-7_0_0-Linux.x86 file does not look like a deb or rpm package to me... In fact, it looks more like an ELF executable (danger!, warning!, warning!, danger!).

LiveCode. http://livecode.com/

It has been revived and it has a free / open source version: http://livecode.com/

Far better than the original.

Hypercard is owned by a third party now, and they do offer phone targets for the stacks.

It's kind of a shame. Hypercard was incredibly close to being a modern web browser before web browsers were invented. All it needed was a way to remotely load pages from a stack over your Appletalk network. Javascript might never have been born since HyperTalk would already be doing the job. People would eventually have to address the grave security concerns, but in the early 90s nobody gave a crap about security on home networks. Of course being a Mac only product would also put a serious crimp in widespread adoption (especially since this is the era where Jobs is at Pixar and NeXT so Apple is floundering badly).