HIFF - HyperMedia Group's Hypermedia Interchange File Format

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OpenXTalkPaul
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HIFF - HyperMedia Group's Hypermedia Interchange File Format

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

HIFF - Hypermedia Interchange File Format, specification by "The HyperMedia Group", was a format created in cooperation with several 'xTalk' development entities (small companies, most of which no longer exist) some time around 1988/89, a time when clones of Hypercard were just starting to appear, not just on Macintosh, but on Windows and Unix systems too (Linux didn't exist yet). I imagine this was around the same time that Apple was considering defining an official 'xTalk' standard of some sort.

It took a bit of detective work to track this document down! This is basically what I had in mind for 'XTCML' (XTalkCommunityMarkUpLanguage ? The name is not set in stone yet), but using XML instead of HIFF, which was a 'RIFF' chunk container style format. RIFF chunks might be more efficient to use than XML tagging. HIFF certainly would need to be expanded on as it's largely based on HyperCard 1.2 format, but I think it's generally a good starting framework. I wonder why it seems that it was abandoned, with the exception of Heizer Software's use in ConvertIt, after this document was released?
Read it here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20040530211 ... hiff1.html
Saved as PDF:
Hypermedia Interchange File Format (HIFF).pdf
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As a side note, this document mentions yet another xTalk I was unaware of: HyperPad! It seems that product is still around as Zendesk HyperPad, but apparently that went the same way as GainMomentum->RadBuilder, moving towards the 'no code' blocks/flowchart development paradigm ( and targeting 2D gaming I gather). I'd guess they're probably using JS now?
https://hyperpad.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/c ... perPad-App
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