Re: HyperCard IIGS Stack Authors wanted!

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

<pubpc1@library.ucla.edu> wrote:

> HyperCard IIGS is more powerful than HyperStudio.  It has a true
> object oriented (although interpreted) programming language.  In
> contrast, HyperStudio's SimpleScript is more like a tacked on
> afterthought.  [etc.]

Good summary - I agree entirely.  I used HyperStudio for a while after
it came out, but got bored with it.  HyperCard IIgs (and I'm also using
the Mac version now) is much more flexible.

> One thing I noticed about HCGS: HyperTalk scripts are not
> tokenized so stacks can get quit large.  Why is this?

How do you tokenise a free-form language?  About the only part that
could be tokenised is the reserved words used to control the structure
of the script (e.g. "on", "function", "if", "then", "else", "repeat",
"end", the comment marker, etc.)

These aren't frequent enough for much to be gained by tokenising.

HyperTalk preserves whatever formatting you use, and supports the full
Mac/IIgs character set, so you would have to use more than one byte per
character to tokenise anything (or used a reserved byte value as a
prefix before a token).

Tokenising the system message names (e.g. "mouseUp") would result in
rather ugly looking code, unless it saved an uppercase/lowercase flag
for each character.

Note that HyperCard 2.0 and later on the Macintosh _do_ tokenise the
HyperTalk script, in addition to keeping it plain text form.  This
allows the script to be executed faster, but is not intended as a
space-saving measure.

-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand