HN Can Do ?

[JWScott]

First, thank you for responding to my question(back in September!)
  To put it bluntly, what kind of programs should I be able to make with HN?  
  I heard about HyperCard many years ago, and have found several card-based programs lately. The problem is that many just don't have much in the way of information about their program, and I found one site, supposedly an "archive" of  HyperCard things, pretty much empty because I guess people don't think card-based programming is worthwhile anymore. I'm sure you, the other sites I have visited, and members of this forum would definitely disagree!
  So, what are examples of what is possible?
  Sorry if this seems general and long-winded; I want to give HN another try; I'm trying to understand it and its programming. I'm willing to do a lot of reading!
  Thanks again very much.
  Jon

[Malkom]

First, thank you for responding to my question(back in September!)
  To put it bluntly, what kind of programs should I be able to make with HN?  
  I heard about HyperCard many years ago, and have found several card-based programs lately. The problem is that many just don't have much in the way of information about their program, and I found one site, supposedly an "archive" of  HyperCard things, pretty much empty because I guess people don't think card-based programming is worthwhile anymore. I'm sure you, the other sites I have visited, and members of this forum would definitely disagree!
  So, what are examples of what is possible?
  Sorry if this seems general and long-winded; I want to give HN another try; I'm trying to understand it and its programming. I'm willing to do a lot of reading!
  Thanks again very much.
  Jon

Hi Jon, welcome back.

Card based programs are ideally suited to software that only requires one screen be visible at a time - so there is a huge range of software that one could write. By the way, most smart phones currently only have one screen visible at a time and that isn't seen as a limitation. For me software is a tool that does something and many things can be done with just one visible screen especially with something like Hypercard, HyperNext that can have dynamic cards and stacks of cards. Hypercard was used a lot by GUI designers as it could be used to rapidly create a screen with buttons fields etc. Perhaps you could play around with some of the HyperNext examples to get a feel for what it can do.

About the Hypercard archive - unfortunately Hypercard was dropped by Apple about a decade ago when they made the transition from OS 9 to OS X.  I doubt many people are using OS 9 now. By the way, there is Runtime Revolution, a really great successor to Hypercard - they have some trial versions to download. They have very active forums and lots of info to help.

Perhaps you need some goal, a piece of software you would like to create. Once you have an idea then you could try to see how it fits around the card metaphor. I hope this helps a bit.