Welcome

[Ben Fisher]

Welcome to the group! This is a place to discuss & share ideas regarding ViperCard.

https://www.vipercard.net

-Ben

[William Byrd]

Thanks Ben!

ViperCard is super cool! I've been obsessed with HyperCard since 1990, and have been thinking of creating a HyperCardy-like program for my own uses for several months now. In fact, I ordered a bunch of books on HyperCard and HyperTalk just this afternoon, before seeing the ViperCard post on Hacker News.

Another set of programs I find very interesting are the "constructor" sets from the 1980s, such as Pinball Construction Set and Racing Destruction Set:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinball_Construction_Set

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc1EHDbun3U

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_Destruction_Set

THINK Pascal for the Mac was another incredible program from the 1980s. It's still the most user-friendly and responsive-feeling IDE I've ever used:

http://basalgangster.macgui.com/RetroMacComputing/The_Long_View/Entries/2010/3/20_MacPascal_and_Think_Technologies.html

I have been wanting to build Free Software for several projects that capture the feel of these tools. If you would be interested in more details, I can start a separate thread, or perhaps we could do a Google Hangout or Skype call.

Cheers,

--Will

[michael.p...@gmail.com]

Happy to contribute money to this project.

I would love to see iPad support as soon as possible.

[Ben Fisher]

---- On Sun, 25 Mar 2018 18:34:52 -0700 William Byrd <web...@gmail.com> wrote ----

> Thanks Ben!
>
> ViperCard is super cool! I've been obsessed with HyperCard since 1990, and have been thinking of creating a HyperCardy-like program for my own uses for several months now. In fact, I ordered a bunch of books on HyperCard and HyperTalk just this afternoon, before seeing the ViperCard post on Hacker News.
>
>
> Another set of programs I find very interesting are the "constructor" sets from the 1980s, such as Pinball Construction Set and Racing Destruction Set:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinball_Construction_Set
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc1EHDbun3U
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_Destruction_Set
>
>
> THINK Pascal for the Mac was another incredible program from the 1980s. It's still the most user-friendly and responsive-feeling IDE I've ever used:
>
> http://basalgangster.macgui.com/RetroMacComputing/The_Long_View/Entries/2010/3/20_MacPascal_and_Think_Technologies.html
>
>
> I have been wanting to build Free Software for several projects that capture the feel of these tools. If you would be interested in more details, I can start a separate thread, or perhaps we could do a Google Hangout or Skype call.
>
> Cheers,
>
> --Will
>

I think free software does well here. The rendering layer I wrote, UI512, can be used on its own to draw any classic-mac style UI. It could be a good starting point for these other projects. "uidemobasic.ts" is probably a good demo of what the api looks like, for example,
let btn = new UI512ElButton("id");
grp.addElement(app, btn);
btn.set("labeltext", "hello");
btn.setDimensions(100, 200, 30, 40);

which I feel works well for building a UI with static positions.

It would be fun if there were a central place where everyone posted re-creations of their favorite mac software, so you could click to link from one project to another. I guess there is Internet Archive, but those are emulations that aren't easily changed. I'll send an e-mail so we can be in contact.

There still is a place for more HyperCard-like software. I remember when Google tried to make a development environment for Android a few years ago loosely inspired by HyperCard, but it didn't feel quite right to me. It looks like Glitch.io is a modern step in the right direction.

As soon as I add custom icon support and full-screen support, it's worth looking into rewriting the Pinball Constructor Set in ViperCard itself.

-Ben