New OLD Feature, sort of...HyperCard stacks!

Organizing tasks to work on, New Features Ideas, Building LCS & LCB Libraries & Widgets, Redecorating and Modifying the IDE, Hacking / Editing Tools, Compiling the Engine from Source, etc.
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OpenXTalkPaul
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New OLD Feature, sort of...HyperCard stacks!

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

So in my misguided HyperCard fanboy fervor, I made the OXT macOS 4-char fileType code "STAK", exactly the same as HyperCard's!

For those not in the know, on macOS there are these, supposedly long deprecated 4-char fileType codes which tell the Finder (file manager) what type of file a file is (there are also a creator codes that indicates what app created the file), this is separate from the now (for 20 years now) preferred filename ".dot" extension. The effect of having the same fileType code is that now HC stacks have the OXT File Icon, and when I double-click on HC stacks in the finder it tries to opens them in the OXT IDE.

I figured this should be OK because, again fileType codes are long deprecated and Apple no longer hosts their database of these codes (although apparently they're still commonly used), and because HyperCard's last official update was in the previous century (1998 to be exact), with sadly no hope of ever being revived.

Up until version 7.x, the engine / IDE was able to open and, at least partially, convert HC stacks, so I figured that could be useful. The problem is since v.7, if you try to open an HC stack it instantly makes the whole thing come crashing down like a tower of cards. This can be a problem if you still have HyperCard stacks around like I do, to use for reference or for retro fun in an emulator like vMac, Basilisk II, or SheepShaver. I see this has been repeatedly discussed in various forums/lists over recent years, so I know I'm not the only one. Nothing has been done about it, and in fact there is left over code in the IDE (something about the HCAddressing of stack ). That is until now...

No, I didn't fix the HC import mechanism, but this morning, after several accidental double clicks on HC stacks, I did create a catch / reroute files setup to handle it without crashing.

Intercept the HC stacks before they're opened by the IDE:
Screen Shot 2021-10-19 at 9.00.12 AM.png
Screen Shot 2021-10-19 at 9.00.12 AM.png (54.64 KiB) Viewed 6788 times

Then I changed it to launch the HC stacks in HyperCardPreivew.app, a 64bit OK, freeware app that can interactively display and extract/export as json or image formats of the text, scripts, and image parts of HC stacks and can display the scripts and properties of various HC stack items within it's UI. This could likely be used to ether manually cut & paste or perhaps create a more automated conversion method, to reuse/rebuild bits of HC Stacks in OXT.
Screen Shot 2021-10-19 at 1.45.11 PM.png
Screen Shot 2021-10-19 at 1.45.11 PM.png (738.54 KiB) Viewed 6788 times
xAction
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Re: New OLD Feature, sort of...HyperCard stacks!

Post by xAction »

You should get in touch with this guy. He moderates the hypercard subreddit, maybe you can be comoderator and then flood it with content, and with each hypercard post you can leave a cookie for somoene to find OpenXTalk. He does some programming, maybe he'll dig our gig.
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