Comment Re:Hypercard could have been basis of internet (Score 1) 47
I wrote bankruptcy filing software for my own use in the late 80s on hypercard. Some things it generated itself, and some it sent a mail merge file to word 5.1 (the last version that could simply use a text file as input rather than those bizarre inserts). In fairly short order, it ended up transferred to supercars, which could have multiple stacks open (but I never transitioned back when hypercard 2.0 came out. I suppose I could have scripted that, but . .
I thought about making a commercial project of it, but then in '92 (?) new forms were coming out, and the court clerk told me that anything submitted would have to be pixel perfect when they got their new scanners in the coming months. Add that to Macs only having 1% market penetration in law offices at the time, and I ended up simply buy-in another program (to my secretaries' dismay!)
The next year, supercard shipped a PC version. Oh, well.
And more than 30 years later, no such scanners (nor will they ever be; we electronically submit pdfs these days).
Had I known *either* of those*, I could have been the biggest player in the field.
After being away for more than a decade and a half, I trie what was then the biggest player--and it *still* didn't do stuff that I easily did with hypercard in the 80s!
I ended up implementing it, largely from scratch, using LiveCode.
Initially metacard on the NeXT, then runner on several platforms, and now LiveCode, it's basically HyperCard on steroids able to use databases and so much more. Now they're pushing AI, and I'm retired, so not my problem any more.