Supercard no more?

[Heather Iatrogenopoulos]

Trying to visit the SuperCard site shows it to be down. Is this truly the end, or has the site registration just lapsed?

[Peter Van Olinda]

I’m afraid it is the end.

You might try LiveCode

On Jun 18, 2024, at 2:04 AM, Heather Iatrogenopoulos <stelia...@gmail.com> wrote:

Trying to visit the SuperCard site shows it to be down. Is this truly the end, or has the site registration just lapsed?

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[Haroldo Mauro]

Looks bad. Very depressing.

On Tue, Jun 18, 2024, 03:04 Heather Iatrogenopoulos <stelia...@gmail.com> wrote:

Trying to visit the SuperCard site shows it to be down. Is this truly the end, or has the site registration just lapsed?

--

[Bill Bowling]

Be patient … maybe Go-Daddy is being pesky.

Bill B

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/supercard-talk/A0F7643A-1D99-401F-94B0-06DC67FE0179%40nyc.rr.com.

[Joe Koomen]

https://solutionsetcetera.com/ is down too.

 

Joe

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/supercard-talk/AAFBC221-DE33-46E2-9B35-5A382F2ED454%40me.com.

[Collection PhotoGraphex]

Hello Mark, Scott and fellow SuperCarders,

What can be done to help the developers?

Best regards,

André Tremblay

[MARK LUCAS]

Hi Gang,

I've refrained from commenting about this since I don't have much actual information to share, but FWIW:

No, I have no more idea what's happened to Scott than you do. 

If (as it would appear) this amounts to a deliberate 'French exit', he didn't see fit to share his plans for it with me. He's not responding to emails or phone calls, and he's on the other side of the country so I can't just go bang on his door. I've scoured the web for reports of death, hospitalization, arrest, imprisonment, change of residency, property transfers, yada yada yada, but (aside from switching another web domain to personal ownership a couple of weeks ago) found nothing.

So for the moment (unless somebody here happens to live in the Tahoe area and feels like taking a nice drive) I guess all we can do is cross our fingers and hope he's OK.

-Mark

[Terry Michaels]

What state?  If local enough in Texas I can check, perhaps others can too in other places depending on where he lives.

Don't give his address publicly.

[MARK LUCAS]

Hi Terry,

LOL! I know Texans are used to driving long distances, but… ;-)

Scott lives about thirty miles west of Lake Tahoe, which even for a Texan is probably a bit of a haul!

Very kind of you to offer though...

-Mark

[Collection PhotoGraphex]

Hello Marck, 

It's reassuring to read from you! 

This news sent a chill through my spine! 

Le 23-juin-2024 à 13:05:42, 'MARK LUCAS' via SuperCard Discussion <superca...@googlegroups.com> a écrit :

If (as it would appear) this amounts to a deliberate 'French exit', he didn't see fit to share his plans for it with me.

Or maybe he opted for the version of the other side of the English Channel and performed the act of “Filer à l’anglaise”! 

As I mentioned previously, is there anything we can do to help for the continuation of SuperCard and to preserve its rich legacy? 

Best regards,

André

[André Tremblay]

[Alec Hole]

Really sorry to hear this, I hope Scott is OK.

All the best,

Alec

[MARK LUCAS]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks mainly to the dogged persistence of David Coggeshall, this afternoon I finally received official confirmation from the El Dorado County Sheriff's Office of what by now I think we probably all feared: Scott apparently passed away in early April.

I'm trying to contact his next of kin to obtain access to his computer, which hopefully still contains the motherlode. If I succeed in recovering your registration info and related documents I'll let you know.

For now though, I'm afraid that's all I have to report.

The loss this represents to the SuperCard community is beyond calculation.

Rest in peace bro...

-Mark

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[John Johnston]

Hi Folks,

Sad new indeed. I only knew Scott from this list, but he was always a gentleman. 

Best wishes to all Supercardians. 

Cheers

John

 

On 1 Jul 2024, at 8:04 PM, 'MARK LUCAS' via SuperCard Discussion <superca...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/supercard-talk/D0BBFD98-9A10-4840-BC88-94810E9729F9%40aol.com.

[Ricardo Salvador]

Thanks for sharing the news (and for patiently pursuing the matter), to you and to David.

I’m so, so sorry to read this news.

r

On Jul 1, 2024, at 3:04 PM, 'MARK LUCAS' via SuperCard Discussion <superca...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/supercard-talk/D0BBFD98-9A10-4840-BC88-94810E9729F9%40aol.com.

[Joe Koomen]

This is very sad news. Scott was always wonderful to work with. I once mentioned on the list I was having trouble with creating something, and he looked up my number and actually called me to help solve the problem.

 

RIP Scott.

 

Joe

 

From: 'MARK LUCAS' via SuperCard Discussion <superca...@googlegroups.com>
Reply-To: "superca...@googlegroups.com" <superca...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Monday, July 1, 2024 at 3:04 PM
To: "superca...@googlegroups.com" <superca...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [SuperCard Discussion] Supercard no more?

 

Hi Everyone,

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/supercard-talk/D0BBFD98-9A10-4840-BC88-94810E9729F9%40aol.com.

[Collection PhotoGraphex]

To the grieving community,

Having read the email, on the move, a few hours ago about the sad news delivered by Mark about the confirmed death of Scott … I am still under shock!

I wish to offer my condolences to his relatives, his friends, while sharing griefs with the SuperCard community!

I still try to fathom the gravity the loss, for all of us!

Requiescat in pace, Scott!

André

[Keith Martin]

This is deeply sad news. Scott has been an integral and key part of SuperCard for so long. SuperCard has meant more to me than *any* other application I have ever used in almost four decades. (Yes, more than Photoshop.) Scott, Mark and all the others that have been a part of SuperCard's development and life, I salute you. I have been wishing and hoping for a miraculous update that would bring this absolutely incredible 'swiss army knife for the mind' into the modern macOS world, although I do realise that was never really likely.

Rest in peace, Scott.

Keith

---

Keith Martin
360 media specialist https://Mister360.co.uk
Contact and info https://ThatKeith.com
+44 (0)7909541365

---

On 1 Jul 2024, at 20:04, 'MARK LUCAS' via SuperCard Discussion <superca...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/supercard-talk/D0BBFD98-9A10-4840-BC88-94810E9729F9%40aol.com.

[Alec Hole]

I'm so sorry to hear this, my deepest condolences.

Alec

[Drs Mark Schonewille]

Dear Mark and dear SuperCard group members,

Mark, thank you for sharing the tidings with us. My sincere condolences to everyone who has been involved in the SuperCard community. Scott's passing obviously is a big loss to everyone.

I didn't write much, but I have always kept an eye on SuperCard. I hope Scotts work will live on somehow .

All the best,

Mark Schonewille
Economy-x-Talk
KvK 50277553
VAT NL002099948B21
https://ecxtalk.nl
https://www.nt2.nu

Programming LiveCode for the Real Beginner
http://www3.economy-x-talk.com/file.php?node=programming-livecode-for-the-real-beginner

Op 1-7-2024 om 21:04 schreef 'MARK LUCAS' via SuperCard Discussion:

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/supercard-talk/D0BBFD98-9A10-4840-BC88-94810E9729F9%40aol.com.

[Michael Corrinet]

Thank you for your efforts, crying for our brother.

Love you all.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/supercard-talk/63E68AC3-3543-44ED-A637-ACAD17BE8D23%40mac.com.

[Ian Bridges]

Devastating news, I'm so sorry to hear this, and heartfelt condolences to you Mark, and Scotts family. 

Ian

[komouton]

I got very shocked and sad on the news about him.

RIP Scott.. pray from distant Japan.

2024年7月2日火曜日 4:56:14 UTC+9 John Johnston:

[Edward Wall]

Sad to hear this.

Ed Wall

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/supercard-talk/D0BBFD98-9A10-4840-BC88-94810E9729F9%40aol.com.

[Jonathan Feinstein]

So sorry to hear of Scott’s passing. His many years devotion to keeping the SC vision alive were a gift to us all. I am sure that he would not want that vision to die with him. 

Jonathan 

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 2, 2024, at 6:58 AM, Michael Corrinet <spiralmatr...@gmail.com> wrote:



To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/supercard-talk/2096104427.95366.1719864269047%40mail.yahoo.com.

[MARK LUCAS]

Hi Folks,

Thanks so much to everyone for all your kind words.

You might've noticed an annoying delay recently in some of your messages posting. Unfortunately that's because for some reason Google's spam filter on this group has gone hog-wild, and is inexplicably blocking much of the traffic (sometimes even my own posts, and I'm the bloody moderator!). While in the past I was always notified promptly via email of messages awaiting approval, of late the turnaround has sometimes stretched out to multiple days.

So between the two, some of your messages have been getting rudely delayed. I'm sorry this is happening (ESPECIALLY right now!) but there doesn't appear to be anything I can do about it beyond trying to remember to check the group administration site manually more often for impounded traffic (and hoping THAT interface gets updated faster, as blocked traffic doesn’t always appear there promptly either).

Again SO sorry about this!

Also just so you know, I'm still in the process of trying to contact Scott's next of kin to find out more about this wretched turn of events, and hopefully recover the SuperCard-related material from his files. According to our contract upon the death of either of us the other automatically became sole owner of SuperCard, but whether his surviving relatives may decide to contest that arrangement or will agree it entitles me to anything from his computer and/or file cabinets (and how exactly that might happen) all has yet to be determined.

So just administratively speaking, right now the business end of things is temporarily frozen. I have no way to accept payments, and while I can generate valid serial numbers I don't have any way of knowing which are already in circulation (so I might end up accidentally reusing one if I just start randomly issuing them again, and I can't look yours up for you if you lose it). So all I can really say is that I hope to have more information about all this to share with you soon. 

Unfortunately as should be obvious by now there wasn't a big red box on the wall with a glass door and a hammer on a chain containing detailed plans for what to do in case of this eventuality, so it's going to take some figgerin'.

It's very encouraging that so many are offering to help with whatever comes next, and I'm grateful and humbled (and still more than a bit spun of course... =:-O).

Please give me a few days to try to get my ducks in something better resembling a row here, and I promise I'll have more to say.

In the meantime if anyone's interested in playing with them, there are recent bug-fix updates to SC and SE (with a few new features scattered here and there too) sitting on my Desktop, but all the tools I wrote a dog's age ago for assembling them into a .dmg file as usual for distribution are on Scott's computer (and at this point I haven't a clue what they did) so if anyone wants to try them I'll have to just post a zip file and trust you all know how to install SuperCard by now… <crosses fingers> 

Lemme know if I should set that up.

Thanks again,

-Mark

[Dan Kelleher]

Hello everyone.

Thank you Mark Lucas, You and Scott Simon have made the world a better place - a much better place, and it doesn’t get any better than that. I’m feeling sad and thoughtful and imagining - sharing as best i can in your loss, Scott’s family’s loss , and that of his many friends, due to the shock of his death. Memories return. When I started using SuperCard in late 1996 I almost gave up when I couldn’t figure out how to write text to a file (or find the file, theFilePath, what’s that, it creates it for me ?). The Ambassador at 4th World, Richard Gaskin emailed me and explained.  i probably shared my discovery with the group  ha - i imagine Scott’s thoughts! 

Little by slow,

-Dan

Daniel....@umassmed.edu

iPhone 774 452-1025

Kelleher DJ

Worcester, MA 01602

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[Keith Martin]

Hi Mark – alongside everything else, I'm sure we would all like to pass on our respects and gratitude to Scott's family, somehow, if that's appropriate.

Scott – and you – kept the SC flag flying against so many odds over the years. For me it really has been the most monumentally important software, so much that I struggle to know how to begin explaining it. It's not just that it enabled me to turn ideas into tools, although that's been magical; the process of logical thinking and learning that is part and parcel of using SC helped refine how I think about, learn and teach all manner of things, from even before the MacUser years, through those, and beyond into my lecturing years. It helped develop *me*.

If I can help somehow in the short, medium and/or long term, pleased let me know.

Keith

---

Keith Martin
360 media specialist https://Mister360.co.uk
Contact and info https://ThatKeith.com
+44 (0)7909541365

---

On 5 Jul 2024, at 19:03, 'MARK LUCAS' via SuperCard Discussion <superca...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



[MARK LUCAS]

On Jul 5, 2024, at 5:30 PM, 'Keith Martin' via SuperCard Discussion <superca...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Hi Mark – alongside everything else, I'm sure we would all like to pass on our respects and gratitude to Scott's family, somehow, if that's appropriate.

I understand, and I’ll do my best to arrange that.

Scott – and you – kept the SC flag flying against so many odds over the years. For me it really has been the most monumentally important software, so much that I struggle to know how to begin explaining it. It's not just that it enabled me to turn ideas into tools, although that's been magical; the process of logical thinking and learning that is part and parcel of using SC helped refine how I think about, learn and teach all manner of things, from even before the MacUser years, through those, and beyond into my lecturing years. It helped develop *me*.

Unlike (I suspect) most xtalk scripters, I started out coding nearly half a century ago in assembly language using decks of punch cards (that I keyed myself on a console the size of a Fiat that made the ground shake when you typed), so when I first came across SuperCard I’d already written countless lines of code in dozens of other languages. I think that’s probably why I instantly fell head over heels in love with it - I knew from bitter experience how effing HARD programming (especially event-driven programming) normally is! The idea that I could just sit down and knock out an entire fully-functioning hundred-screen prototype of an ATM touchscreen application set in a single night using a tool I’d never even heard of on a ‘toy' computer I’d only tried for a few minutes without even a user manual to guide me simply beggared explanation or belief. Admittedly the alternative was defenestration come morning for someone else’s screwup (so I WAS highly motivated) but even still the experience completely reoriented all the points of my mental compass. I’d held lightning in a bottle right in my hands, and henceforth my life could only be completely different.

I can’t claim I’ve loved EVERY moment I spent using SuperCard since (‘cuz let's be honest it was pretty slow and buggy back then, and it ate a LOT of projects). Somehow though I feel that helped teach me patience and discipline and humility… ;-)

But I think it’s fair say everyone here knows exactly what you mean about the special place SuperCard holds in your heart. We all have our own stories of how we encountered it, what it taught us, how incredibly empowering it felt to suddenly be able to weave our very own spells to summon the mysterious genie who dwelt within our otherwise inscrutable Macs and bend him to our will. I wish we could all get together and share them sometime over a beer (or your beverage of choice).

If I can help somehow in the short, medium and/or long term, pleased let me know.

Thank you again, and I will certainly try to figure out some way all the heartwarming sentiments being expressed here can be translated into something practical (suggestions are welcome).

Unfortunately though sometimes a briefcase full of Benjamins can quickly accomplish what a mountain of good will can't, and sadly this might turn out to be one of those situations.

Time will tell.

-Mark

[MARK LUCAS]

BTW since I was too lazy to include it last night, here’s a list of those latest tweaks and fixes.

I expect regular users of either SuperEdit or the uprops editors would find them helpful.

Given the recent weirdness with those SN AppleScripts though, I’m guessing there may now also be glitches with downloading SC builds codesigned under Mojave (and the project I built to wrap it requires SuperCard, so I might need to recreate that widget with other tools for Sonoma to stomp this annoyance). Since the issue usually doesn’t appear on a machine where code was compiled though, it’s hard to test that here.

Anyway please let me know if anyone wants to volunteer to bang on it...

SE4.8 Fixes:

- Fixed crashing Font panels caused by ATSUI bugs

- Tightened up drawing code in Script Editor

- Tightened up drawing code in User Property Editor

- Tightened up drawing code in clut Editor

- Tightened up drawing code in Cursor Editor

- Tightened up drawing code in Icon Editor

- Tightened up drawing code in Window Info dialog

- Tightened up drawing code in Window Sizes dialog

- Tightened up drawing code around File->Revert

- Fixed window rotation code so it doesn't stall at minimized windows

- Consolidated screen unlocking when opening multiple windows (so when Use ZoomRects is off they all draw in a single pass)

- Modal dialogs should now ALL open in the HIG-specified Alert location (instead of some centered onscreen and others centered over the target object, both of which are officially 'wrong' nowadays)

- Added workaround for Apple bug that was disabling contextual menu clicks in top 25 pixels of overview wds

- Fixed bug that could hide last three Help menu items when a script editor window was open

- Editing project, window, card, bkgnd, menu, or item userprops and then hitting Cancel no longer sets the project's 'modified' flag (unfortunately there's no way to edit spot uprops in SE without clicking on the object, and any click in a card window sets the 'modified' flag)

- Opening project, window, card, bkgnd, menu, or item scripts no longer immediately sets the project's 'modified' flag (there's no way to edit spot scripts in SE without clicking on them, and any click in a card window sets the 'modified' flag)

SE4.8 Additions:

- Changed default Use ZoomRects option to OFF

- Added Minimize item to Windows Menu.

- Changed last item in Windows menu to "Zoom All Windows".

- Zooming list and card windows now opens them only to their 'ideal' size (instead of to full-screen, which is almost never the size you actually wanted). You can still zoom all the way out if you want to by Option-clicking the window's zoom box.

- Window Tiling now ignores minimized wds.

- Windows now tile on the monitor containing the top document window.

- Added Search & Replace + Multi-Level Undo/Redo to uprop editor.

- Added support for decompiling unprotected compiled AppleScript files in uprop editor either via Import popup item or Command-Drag.

- Added Command Key shortcuts for locking/unlocking and grouping/ungrouping selected objects.

- Added popup menu to uprop editor to provide a visual interface for new and existing editing features:

It's a modal window ergo it can't use the menu bar, so a popup seemed the best available option for a UI (and to remind users of the keyboard shortcuts, which of course sadly differ between SC and SE but at least are consistent within each tool).

- Added titles to uprop editor windows

- Added much-requested Command-N shortcut to uprop editor to create new property

- If all remaining windows left open after Close Child Windows were minimized, the first is now automagically un-minimized (so user isn't left staring at a blank screen)

- Windows no longer 'remember' their tiled-out locations, nor any subsequent move or resize until they're either tiled back in or else closed and reopened.

SC4.8 Fixes:

- Tightened up drawing code in User Property Editor.

- Fixed multiple bugs in encode() and decode() functions that appeared when you fed them more than about 16K of data.

SC4.8 Additions:

- Added title <titletext> option to ask, answer, and alert commands (mirroring ask list's recently added title feature).

- Added Search & Replace + Multi-Level Undo/Redo to uprop editor.

- Added support for decompiling unprotected compiled AppleScript files to File Import in uprop editor either via popup menu or Command-Drag.

- Added popup menu to uprop editor to provide a visual interface for new and existing editing features (i.e., Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo, Redo, Select All, Set Find String, Insert HFS Path, Insert POSIX Path, Insert File Contents, Import File Contents, Insert Unique Identifier, Insert Long Date & Time, Insert International Date). It's a modal window ergo it can't use the menu bar, so a popup seemed the only option for a UI (and to remind users what the keyboard shortcuts for them are, which of course sadly aren't the same in SC and SE but at least are consisten within the tools).

- Added much-requested Command-N shortcut to uprop editor to create new property.

- PathTools XFcn updated to add 'extensionFromPath' option.

- FlattenText XFcn added to trim and convert all runs of whitespace in text to single spaces (optionally treats '¿' as whitespace to aid parsing CSV).

- Bigly XFcn added to emulate 'Show In Large Type' overlay window from Address Book.

- Added deflate() and inflate() functions to apply Darwin zlib deflate and inflate (a combination of Lempel-Ziv and Huffman coding compression) to input data.

- Added ROT13() function to apply simple Rotate13 encryption to data.

- Added RTE Command Key shortcuts for locking/unlocking and grouping/ungrouping selected objects.

- Changed Command Key shortcut for editing user props of a spot under the Browse tool from Command-Option-Shift to Command-Shift

[Keith Martin]

Hi mark,

> Anyway please let me know if anyone wants to volunteer to bang on it...

Let me know what you need, I'm happy to do it.

k

[Joe Koomen]

Hi Mark,

 

I haven’t had much time to code in Supercard lately, but having a new beta to mess around with would probably give me some incentive. 😊

 

Thanks

 

Joe

 

 

 

From: 'MARK LUCAS' via SuperCard Discussion <superca...@googlegroups.com>
Reply-To: "superca...@googlegroups.com" <superca...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday, July 6, 2024 at 1:18 PM
To: "superca...@googlegroups.com" <superca...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [SuperCard Discussion] Supercard no more?

 

BTW since I was too lazy to include it last night, here’s a list of those latest tweaks and fixes.

 

It's a modal window ergo it can't use the menu bar, so a popup seemed the best available option for a UI (and to remind users of the keyboard shortcuts, which of course sadly differ between SC and SE but at least are consistent within each tool).

 

- Added titles to uprop editor windows

 

- Added much-requested Command-N shortcut to uprop editor to create new property

 

- If all remaining windows left open after Close Child Windows were minimized, the first is now automagically un-minimized (so user isn't left staring at a blank screen)

 

- Windows no longer 'remember' their tiled-out locations, nor any subsequent move or resize until they're either tiled back in or else closed and reopened.

 

 

SC4.8 Fixes:

 

- Tightened up drawing code in User Property Editor.

 

- Fixed multiple bugs in encode() and decode() functions that appeared when you fed them more than about 16K of data.

 

 

SC4.8 Additions:

 

- Added title <titletext> option to ask, answer, and alert commands (mirroring ask list's recently added title feature).

 

- Added Search & Replace + Multi-Level Undo/Redo to uprop editor.

 

- Added support for decompiling unprotected compiled AppleScript files to File Import in uprop editor either via popup menu or Command-Drag.

 

- Added popup menu to uprop editor to provide a visual interface for new and existing editing features (i.e., Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo, Redo, Select All, Set Find String, Insert HFS Path, Insert POSIX Path, Insert File Contents, Import File Contents, Insert Unique Identifier, Insert Long Date & Time, Insert International Date). It's a modal window ergo it can't use the menu bar, so a popup seemed the only option for a UI (and to remind users what the keyboard shortcuts for them are, which of course sadly aren't the same in SC and SE but at least are consisten within the tools).

 

- Added much-requested Command-N shortcut to uprop editor to create new property.

 

- PathTools XFcn updated to add 'extensionFromPath' option.

 

- FlattenText XFcn added to trim and convert all runs of whitespace in text to single spaces (optionally treats '¿' as whitespace to aid parsing CSV).

 

- Bigly XFcn added to emulate 'Show In Large Type' overlay window from Address Book.

 

- Added deflate() and inflate() functions to apply Darwin zlib deflate and inflate (a combination of Lempel-Ziv and Huffman coding compression) to input data.

 

- Added ROT13() function to apply simple Rotate13 encryption to data.

 

- Added RTE Command Key shortcuts for locking/unlocking and grouping/ungrouping selected objects.

 

- Changed Command Key shortcut for editing user props of a spot under the Browse tool from Command-Option-Shift to Command-Shift

 

 

 

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[MARK LUCAS]

Excellent! Thank you!

You should be able to grab the files here.

If you're already using one of the many 4.8.2 builds floating around you should probably first zip up (or at least rename) the associated folders, just in case this update turns out to have issues.

Next, drag the SuperCard 4.8.2 folder into /Library/Application Support (authenticating as needed).

Finally either just drag SC and SE into /Applications, or make yourself a folder inside it to hold them. They're codesigned but under Mojave (which used to still make everybody happy, but now that seems to be in doubt). Please let me know if GateKeeper gives you any guff when you try to launch them, and if so whether running xattr as before fixes it.

Unlike the release versions these builds should NOT ask for a registration number on first launch, nor should they regularly sniff around on the local net for other copies running the same S/N or phone home to Scott's web site periodically for newly voided registrations. Thus if you see anything like that please let me know (and if possible describe exactly what you did to elicit it).

The dweeb factor (especially on some of these uprop editor tweaks) is definitely pretty high for SuperCard (as the features are deliberately aimed mainly at expert users) so please don't hesitate to ask questions.

And thanks again! :-)

-Mark

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[Joe Koomen]

Hi Mark,

 

All those things.

 

Launched Superedit, it asked for Username and Serial. It crashed (crash report attached).

 

Launched SuperCard, added in Username and Serial, got the app verified  by Gatekeeper. Launched okay.

 

Can’t launch SuperEdit. Deleted app and installed new version again. Same error/crash report.

 

OS is Sierra 10.12.3

 

I’ll look into this more tomorrow.

 

Thanks

 

Joe

 

From: 'MARK LUCAS' via SuperCard Discussion <superca...@googlegroups.com>
Reply-To: "superca...@googlegroups.com" <superca...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday, July 6, 2024 at 3:32 PM
To: via SuperCard Discussion <superca...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [SuperCard Discussion] Supercard no more?

 

Excellent! Thank you!

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/supercard-talk/6C278E3C-4845-44B1-968E-7CF94F8FA204%40aol.com.

[MARK LUCAS]

D-OH! 

Here's a link to an updated build. Hopefully I just accidentally posted outdated files last time... <crosses fingers>

Sorry about that!

-Mark

[MARK LUCAS]

Hi Joe,

Thanks for that crash log BTW!

It says (among other things) that yes I apparently uploaded the wrong zip file. Sorry, it’s tough to get good help these days… ;-)

Here with those updated builds upon first launch I go directly to the Translocation bypass dialog, and entering an admin password successfully launches both apps.

This might be relevant somehow since that other SE was failing to locate the Sharedfile, which (assuming it was actually there) would suggest it might have been running translocated (and thus be being fed scrambled file paths by the OS) at the point of failure.

So if you encounter launch issues with these new builds, please try the xattr trick and see if it helps.

Thanks again,

-Mark

[Joe Koomen]

Hi Mark,

 

Reinstalled new apps and SC pouch. Supercard launches without needing the registration number. BUT every time I launch, it needs me to locate the shared file.

 

Launched Superedit and got the error “A fatal error occurred. End of file error reported. This disk may be damaged.”

 

Crash log attached.

 

I may need to reformat the drive and reinstall everything. I have the drive partitioned for Snow Leopard and Sierra. I think I’m just going to stick with Sierra.

 

Joe

 

 

From: 'MARK LUCAS' via SuperCard Discussion <superca...@googlegroups.com>
Reply-To: "superca...@googlegroups.com" <superca...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday, July 6, 2024 at 9:07 PM
To: "superca...@googlegroups.com" <superca...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [SuperCard Discussion] Supercard no more?

 

Hi Joe,

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[MARK LUCAS]

OK Just to be clear then, this happens even though you’d already put the INCLUDED SuperCard 4.8.2 folder (the one containing SC Pouch, NOT whatever folder the archive unzips as) in /Library/Application Support/?

Thanks,

-Mark

[MARK LUCAS]

OK sorry I have no clue WTF is going on here (yet), but somehow google seems to have totally mangled the contents of the Pouch folder I uploaded (which I downloaded and tested last night before posting the link).

So here's a link to YET ANOTHER zip file I've just uploaded, downloaded, installed, and successfully run here.

If this one doesn't work, I'm clearly going to have to recreate the DMG tools…

SO very sorry for the inconvenience!

-Mark

[Joe Koomen]

No problem. 😊

 

From what I recall, the last few updates weren’t installers, just a DMG directory with “Drag this to your applications folder” type instructions.

 

Able to launch both apps successfully! Apps no longer need me to locate the sharedfile.

 

Help app error “ SuperCard Help.app is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the trash.”

 

Joe

 

From: 'MARK LUCAS' via SuperCard Discussion <superca...@googlegroups.com>
Reply-To: "superca...@googlegroups.com" <superca...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sunday, July 7, 2024 at 12:10 PM
To: via SuperCard Discussion <superca...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [SuperCard Discussion] Supercard no more?

 

OK sorry I have no clue WTF is going on here (yet), but somehow google seems to have totally mangled the contents of the Pouch folder I uploaded (which I downloaded and tested last night before posting the link).

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[MARK LUCAS]

Apparently GateKeeper doesn't like the code signature (or whatever’s left of it) on that either.

Please repeat the xattr -cr step with the SuperCard Help app too. I think I’ve figured out how to suppress this warning going forward (so you should just get the regular annoying ’This is a dowloaded app’ warning instead).

Lordy I so miss the days when only nice people had computers…

-Mark

[Joe Koomen]

Did the xattr step. Works fine now. All good.

 

Joe

 

From: 'MARK LUCAS' via SuperCard Discussion <superca...@googlegroups.com>
Reply-To: "superca...@googlegroups.com" <superca...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sunday, July 7, 2024 at 12:59 PM
To: "superca...@googlegroups.com" <superca...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [SuperCard Discussion] Supercard no more?

 

Apparently GateKeeper doesn't like the code signature (or whatever’s left of it) on that either.

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[Keith Martin]

I downloaded your earlier uploads but didn’t have time to look at them so I missed this particular bit of fun. ;) So this is your ‘yet another’ zip…

In macOS Mojave (10.14.6), the ‘retired’ MBP that has SC on it, I was able to get both SuperCard and SuperEdit installed and running with little actual technical fuss, although the Gatekeeper warning dialog – which I don’t think I’ve ever seen before – could alarm some. :)

The SuperCard 4.8.2 folder containing the SC Pouch was installed with a simple admin password authentication for editing the /Library/Application Support directory.

The folder with SuperCard and SuperEdit was added to /Applications

When opening SuperCard 4.8.app the steps involved were:

1. The common “is an app downloaded from the Internet” warning dialog. I clicked Open.
2. An untitled warning dialog telling me that “SuperCard 4.8 has been quarantined by GateKeeper!” I chose the Authenticate button, the default option.
3. An untitled info dialog telling me that “SuperCard 4.8 was successfully un-quarantined!” I clicked OK and it launched

This was the same with SuperEdit. No use of Terminal was needed, nor was right-clicking and choosing Open. Now both apps launch normally without interruption. The dialog in ‘2’ had more text than I expected so it’s attached.

k

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[Keith Martin]

Okay, SC and SE are fine, but I didn’t run xattr -cr on the SuperCard Help app, and it claimed to be damaged when I launched it from the Help menu. But now that I’ve run that Terminal command on it, it opens without fuss.

k

On 7 Jul 2024, at 22:05, 'Keith Martin' via SuperCard Discussion <superca...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I downloaded your earlier uploads but didn’t have time to look at them so I missed this particular bit of fun. ;) So this is your ‘yet another’ zip…

In macOS Mojave (10.14.6), the ‘retired’ MBP that has SC on it, I was able to get both SuperCard and SuperEdit installed and running with little actual technical fuss, although the Gatekeeper warning dialog – which I don’t think I’ve ever seen before – could alarm some. :)

The SuperCard 4.8.2 folder containing the SC Pouch was installed with a simple admin password authentication for editing the /Library/Application Support directory.

The folder with SuperCard and SuperEdit was added to /Applications

When opening SuperCard 4.8.app the steps involved were:

1. The common “is an app downloaded from the Internet” warning dialog. I clicked Open.
2. An untitled warning dialog telling me that “SuperCard 4.8 has been quarantined by GateKeeper!” I chose the Authenticate button, the default option.
3. An untitled info dialog telling me that “SuperCard 4.8 was successfully un-quarantined!” I clicked OK and it launched

This was the same with SuperEdit. No use of Terminal was needed, nor was right-clicking and choosing Open. Now both apps launch normally without interruption. The dialog in ‘2’ had more text than I expected so it’s attached.

k

<Screenshot 2024-07-07 at 21.49.00.png>

On 7 Jul 2024, at 17:10, 'MARK LUCAS' via SuperCard Discussion <superca...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

OK sorry I have no clue WTF is going on here (yet), but somehow google seems to have totally mangled the contents of the Pouch folder I uploaded (which I downloaded and tested last night before posting the link).

So here's a link to YET ANOTHER zip file I've just uploaded, downloaded, installed, and successfully run here.

If this one doesn't work, I'm clearly going to have to recreate the DMG tools…

SO very sorry for the inconvenience!

-Mark

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[MARK LUCAS]

Yeah all this tomfoolery is part of the ’security theater' Apple has imposed on people who try to distribute binaries outside the App Store (which of course would never allow SuperCard, as it's too much of a security hole).

That dialog (and the un-quarantining code it calls) was something Scott had me add so people would stop calling him about the issue. It definitely *is* kinda verbose, but he was concerned people would be unwilling to enter an admin password in what obviously NOT a system-generated auth dialog (and end up calling him anyway) unless we told them EXACTLY why we needed it.

If you can think of better (or even just shorter) wording, I'm all ears...

-Mark

[MARK LUCAS]

I think you can probably see better now why I’m so eager to get my hands on those DMG creation tools I wrote for Scott!

Apps distributed on codesigned DMGs don’t go through this crap.

My recollection is that I also enabled this bypass dialog for standalones, so if Apple quarantines them you don’t have to explain to your users what to do to fix it.

OY!

-Mark

[MARK LUCAS]

If you want a quick tour of some of the drawing tweaks, launch a previous version of SuperEdit and do the following:

- Open Preferences and turn off 'Use ZoomRects'

- Select File->Open and navigate to /Library/Application Support, and then drill down into one of the older SuperCard folders until you can open some previous version of the Runtime Editor

- In the main window, try right-clicking just below the window's title bar. This used to be broken (in roughly the top 25 pixels of windows) due a longstanding Apple bug I could never get them to fix, but should work in the new build.

- Now press Command-A to select all the windows.

- Press Command-Down-Arrow to open them

- Press Command-` to rotate back to the root window.

- Press Command-2 to switch to the menu view.

- Again Press Command-A to select all the menus, and Command-Down-Arrow to open them.

- Navigate to a window with a bunch of cards (e.g., the Button Info wd).

- Select All and open these too.

It works but it's ugly, right? Windows trickle in one at a time and redraw repeatedly in an 'unfinished' state. There's no way to make a window the 'right' size except by manually dragging the grow box in the bottom right corner and guesstimating the proper dimensions. Worse yet, if you foolishly click the Zoom Box in any window it opens to full screen, which (at least in my experience) is almost NEVER what you really wanted.

Now Quit (without saving) and repeat the same steps in the latest build.

Cleaner, right?

Now select Windows->Zoom All Windows. Voilà! All open windows are now shrink-wrapped to their 'ideal' size (or as much of that as will fit onscreen). Select it again to zoom them back to their original sizes if you prefer them. Zooming wds individually also observes the 'ideal' size constraint, but you can still Option-click in the Zoom widget to zoom all the way out if you want to.

Next choose Windows-> Tile Windows. Tiling (introduced in 4.8?) provides a handy way to get an overview of a project. Unfortunately it had some flaws.

- One was that if your Dock was visible on the left edge if the main screen, the tiled columns would have gaps the width of the Dock (and refused to un-Tile back to their original locations). 

- Likewise if you moved a tiled window, it wouldn't un-Tile back to its original location.

- Tiling always happened on the main display (whether it was the largest or not).

- All windows (even minimized ones) were Tiled (making it hard to focus on areas of interest).

Now when you select Tile Windows it isn't just a simple toggle between Tile and un-Tiled states of the open windows. Instead:

- Tile Windows now only un-Tiles windows back to their original positions if all visible wds are currently in their 'Tiled' locations.

- Windows don't remember their positions if they're closed while Tiling is in effect.

- Any windows opened while tiling is active are incorporated into the grid with the next call.

- Minimized windows aren't Tiled.

The net result of this is that you can (for example) open a project, drill down into a window with multiple cards and open them, minimize all the rest of the project's wds, and then Tile to present a grid of just the card wds you want to work on. You can also drag the frontmost wd to any active display before Tiling, and Tiling will now happen on that monitor instead of the main display.

Each time you choose Tile Windows, if all the open wds aren't in their 'ideal' grid location then wds are moved around to achieve that and you remain in 'Tiling mode' (as it were). Only if all visible wds are already Tiled 'out' are they then un-Tiled back to their original positions. This way you can't accidentally (and except for Revert, unrecoverably) mess up the default layout of your project windows by moving one of them while it's Tiled.

Hopefully it sounds more complicated than it is to use... ;-)

Most of the rest of the SE tweaks are in the uprop editor, so to try them you'll probably want to make a test project to work in.

Opening the uprop editor (which should now draw a bit more snappily) if you create a property and then right-click in the text area you'll see a new popup menu which offers a helpful UI for both the old and new features.

Two major additions are Search & Replace and Multi-Level Undo/Redo.

The editor has long supported dragging files into it, and depending on the modifier key and file type it would do stuff like insert the file's Posix or HFS path, insert the raw contents, or massage the data somehow to try to extract plain text. Now there are menu items for that, so you don't have to remember the keyboard shortcuts. Also in addition to various rich text formats and binary plists, compiled AppleScripts can now be imported.

Also added is the ability to generate and insert timestamps (in both local international formats) or a UUID (i.e, Universally Unique Identifier).

There are also two items that will prompt you for a Unix shell expression to run. One of these (Copy From Shell) puts the result onto the clipboard, and the other (Paste From Shell) inserts it in place of the selected text (or at the insertion point).

For both if the expression you supply starts with a vertical bar '|', the selected text in the uprop (or the entire property if there's no selection) is piped to standard input. So for example you wanted to delete all but just the lines of the property that contained the word SuperEdit, you could select all in the editor and then Paste From Shell, and enter '| grep SuperEdit' (without the quotes).

Other menu items offer the ability to convert the selection (or entire proerty if none) to MacRoman or UTF8, swap returns and linefeeds, apply simple Rotate13 encryption (to obfuscate the text in a uprop so casual observers can't read it), UUEncode or UUDecode the selection/prop body, and to compress or decompress it using zlib's popular and efficient deflate/inflate algorithms.

Obviously you could already do this stuff yourself by copying and pasting data back and forth to other apps, but this way you don't need to worry about niggling cross-app details like text encoding changes.

You'll also find complementary new functions in SuperTalk for inflate/deflate and rot13, and I've fixed those encode/decode bugs I mentioned, so now you can reverse any of these operations on the property data at runtime to get the original back.

Does any of that make any sense?

-Mark

[Keith Martin]

Hi Mark,

On 8 Jul 2024, at 01:52, 'MARK LUCAS' via SuperCard Discussion <superca...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

If you want a quick tour of some of the drawing tweaks, launch a previous version of SuperEdit and do the following:

- Open Preferences and turn off 'Use ZoomRects’

I don’t see that option in the prefs window for SuperEdit 4.73. It’s in SE 4.8.3d1 (along with a new PictureData Compression Quality option) so I tried disabling it there.

When Use ZoomRects is turned off the speed of things being displayed is blazing, and zooming windows works very nicely – it feels modern, and now the old zoom-resize behaviour feels positively 20th century!

k

[MARK LUCAS]

On Jul 8, 2024, at 12:41 PM, 'Keith Martin' via SuperCard Discussion <superca...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

When Use ZoomRects is turned off the speed of things being displayed is blazing, and zooming windows works very nicely – it feels modern, and now the old zoom-resize behaviour feels positively 20th century!

Right? I can't tell you how many hours I've wasted over thirty-odd years trying to manually resize SuperEdit windows to be that pretty... ;-)

This sort of 'icing on the cake' was just prohibitively expensive (computationally speaking) when SuperEdit was written, but happily today the biggest obtsacle was simple intertia.

Back when I still had the mindshare to be a heavy SuperCard user myself, I spent probably at least three fourths of my time in either SuperEdit or the Script Tracer (both of which for some reason most 'normal' users seem to avoid like the plague, though IMHO they're by far the best, most empowering 'features' SuperCard offers).

Internally SuperEdit is truly something of a technical marvel, considering all the incredible punch it packed into a 256K memory footprint. I could never understand why Allegiant was determined to abandon it in favor of a far less capable and prohibitively intrusive runtime equivalent.

It was only after I'd been on the IncWell payroll for several months that I finally discovered the terrible state secret everyone had been hiding - Allegiant didn't inherit all the SuperEdit source code! For some reason most of the gnarliest core assembly-language graphics routines (which it apparently shared with SuperPaint) now existed only in the form of a hand-me-down 68K binary 'blob' clients called into via a table of function pointers to various offsets. This made any hope of porting it to Windoze (their actual goal when they acquired SuperCard) slim to non-existent (and thus one critical step in the subsequent 4.6 Intel port was to back-engineer all that code - along with the HyperCard converter, which worked the same way - myself).

Anyway between that and updating it many times over the years in various ways I've come to be just in awe of the elegance and efficiency of MOST of the SE code (and hopefully managed to fix MOST of the rest).

One weird legacy from its inception at the Dawn Of Mac though is that it was obviously originally written to load as several independent 32K code segments, each managing a different window type (are you old enough to remember doing the Floppy Shuffle every time you clicked in a different kind of SE window?) so as to operate within the onerous memory constraints of the time. In effect it was written to act as a team of semi-independent tag-teaming 'specialists', and although nowadays they do all live in memory at the same time they still don't interact much. As a consequence synchronizing seemingly simple behavioral changes across multiple window types can be, well, let's just say 'interesting'.

I confess I'd long forgotten my early yearning for cleaner SE window management by the time I actually got my hands on the source code though, and AFAIK nobody ever made a feature request through channels, so it never made my To-Do list. I freely admit it's long LONG overdue that I finally looked into improving this particularly funky and obsolete aspect of it.

So much code, so little time...

-Mark

[MARK LUCAS]

Another wee tweak I'd appreciate feedback on is the change(s) to various Command-Key equivalents in both SE and the RTE.

Does anyone else find them useful? Do they feel less, um, annoying?

Scott and I used to fight bitterly sometimes about the stupidest things, and one of them was Commmand Keys. 

For some reason I could never grasp he was adamantly convinced that SC and SE's Group/Ungroup and Lock/Unlock menu items should either NOT have Command Keys at all, or that if they did they had to be different in different contexts. If I tried to sneak them in, he'd take them back out again and yell at me.

Likewise he inexplicably believed it was utterly obvious that the shortcut for editing spot userprops should be the same as editing their scripts (but with one additional modifier), so you not only needed to remember what the three-key combination was, you also had to remember to press the keys in the right order.

To me (coming from a decade of prototyping for UI user acceptance testing) frankly such things sounded like utter lunacy, but as there were only two of us I was sometimes forced to concede some issues (including several I felt quite strongly about) in order to obtain his buy-in on others I felt even MORE strongly about.

Well he may have been right, but I swear if I had a dollar for every time I screamed in rage when I accidentally opened the script editor instead of the uprop editor I'd drive a MUCH nicer car. I know I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but to me that's a hint something might be wrong with that shortcut! And no, locking/unlocking or grouping/ungrouping spots still definitely should NOT require taking my hand off the keyboard!

What I have much less confidence about is whether the particular new Command Key assignments I plucked out of the air (admittedly without much deep consideration) are optimal (given what's already taken), and that they don't conflict with other SC/SE shortcuts or the many and varied annoying macOS features I typically just turn off.

So if ya got somethin' to say about 'em, please sing out! I'm all ears...

Thanks,

-Mark

[JONATHAN FEINSTEIN]

I agree with you on all of the stuff below. Haven’t yet tried the updates, but will forward comments if I run into anything worth sharing.

Jonathan

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