History of xTalk Languages

[OpenXTalkPaul]

Just a placeHolder for now.

I've been trying to gather information for a comprehensive and accurate as possible history of all things xTalk, going back to the original ideas for HyperText circa 1960s.

[richmond62]

I have my own copy of this book:

https://archive.org/details/The_Complet ... d_Handbook

admittedly about 80% of it seems to consist of waffle, and I felt the same
about it when I abstracted it from the ESL Library of Malik Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, K.S.A.

[The Pakistani bloke who had the key to the ESL Library said that apart from his weekly visits
to clean the place I was the first visitor in something like 6 years (this was 1997) as the books had
all been donated by the British Council and the Islamic Ulema had determined that ALL the books
were banned and should be disposed of . . . he told me to help myself . . . which I did.]

Currently it is my 'bathroom' book, and I do find a 10 minute random dip in to it often produces
something either thought-provoking or a different approach to an aspect of xTalk.

[richmond62]

https://hypercard.org/

https://stacksmith.org/technical-overview/
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Seems to have been dropped in April 2019, and I cannot work out how to get a button to get started with.

Nor an email address for Uli Kusterer.

[susan]

A few years ago I had to move to a smaller place and a lot of books simply wouldn't fit in the new space. I had about five or six hypercard/hypertalk books that I had been hanging onto. But I couldn't take them all. In the end "The Complete HyperCard Handbook 2.0" by Danny Goodman was the one I decided to keep.

https://archive.org/details/completehypercar03edgood

[OpenXTalkPaul]

A few years ago I had to move to a smaller place and a lot of books simply wouldn't fit in the new space. I had about five or six hypercard/hypertalk books that I had been hanging onto. But I couldn't take them all. In the end "The Complete HyperCard Handbook 2.0" by Danny Goodman was the one I decided to keep.

https://archive.org/details/completehypercar03edgood

I still have my copy but it's in pretty bad shape

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The Resedit book literally nearly killed me, lol!

[OpenXTalkPaul]

https://hypercard.org/

https://stacksmith.org/technical-overview/
-
SShot 2021-09-13 at 13.45.02.png
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Seems to have been dropped in April 2019, and I cannot work out how to get a button to get started with.

Nor an email address for Uli Kusterer.

I saw that StackSmith thing a long while back, I thought it was similar or somehow related to the OpenXION project?
Just one person working on it.
It's written in C++, has script to bytecode compiler, has a VM engine, command line interpreter, (this sounds familiar!!!)
He also has some related UKKit and other object Xcode project repos on GitHub.
It would be great to get someone like that involved in this.
Or at least maybe we could use some of his OpenSource stuff (stack importer) in this project.
Very interesting stuff here:
https://github.com/uliwitness?tab=repositories

Wow, this Uli Witness person ported NeXT/Apple's AppKit to macOS classic just for laughs!
https://github.com/uliwitness/AppKitForClassic

[richmond62]

this Uli Witness person

I wouldn't use that tone if I were you, he is one of the pantheon of Gods who
mucked around with Macintosh systems before the advent of "X".

[OpenXTalkPaul]

this Uli Witness person

I wouldn't use that tone if I were you, he is one of the pantheon of Gods who
mucked around with Macintosh systems before the advent of "X".

No bad tone intended, I'm astounded that someone would take the time to back-port a core part of the current OS(es) to a previous version from two decades ago just for kicks! That's awesome!

Correction: His actual name is Uli Kusterer

[OpenXTalkPaul]

https://hypercard.org/

https://stacksmith.org/technical-overview/
-
SShot 2021-09-13 at 13.45.02.png
-
Seems to have been dropped in April 2019, and I cannot work out how to get a button to get started with.

Nor an email address for Uli Kusterer.

I actually just gave this StackSmith thing whirl on macOS 11 and while it's bit crashy, and making a new stack doesn't work properly, if you use a premade template it does actually work! It certainly is an interesting project that has an engine that compiles bytecode from xTalk script:

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