Windows Equivalent of Hypercard

["George F. Hayhoe III" <george -dot- hayhoe -at- SRS -dot- GOV>]

Spinnaker Software of Cambridge, MA (617-494-9148) has (or had) a product
called Plus which runs on the Mac, Windows, and OS/2 platforms (files
created on one can be read on the other platforms). The Mac version of this
product can import Hypercard stacks which, when saved, can be read and
modified with the Windows and OS/2 products.

Plus is functionally identical to Hypercard in almost all respects, though
the interface is somewhat different and its performance is slower than
Hypercard's even on a low-powered Mac. Spinnaker also has (or had) a
product called OracleCard which uses Plus as a front-end to Oracle
databases. It was very slow and has probably become obsolete since Oracle
Forms has shipped on the Windows platform.

I haven't used Plus in about two years, but I found it a nice way of
porting some Hypercard stacks I had created over to the Windows platform.
All components of my stacks translated perfectly, including scripts and
graphics. (Plus's scripting language is a superset of Hypertalk.) The only
problem occurred if the Hypercard stack used nonPostscript fonts--Geneva or
New York, for example. Windows didn't know what to do with these. I suppose
that could have been fixed by fiddling with the WIN.INI font aliases, but
it wasn't a big enough problem for me to go to the trouble.

I haven't worked with Hypercard in several years and have the impression
that it isn't nearly as commonly used as it was a while back. But I do have
fond memories of working up some handy little applications with it.

--George Hayhoe
  Assistant to the President for Recognition Programs
  STC