Discussion
Neuromancer / Count Zero / Mona Lisa Overdrive
latchkey: wow. .sea suffix, haven't thought about that in a long time.
scroot: Imagine if computing had continued down the path laid by systems like HyperCard
techknight: Once in a while I remember .arj
neals: Would anybody be so kind to enlighten me with some context?
steve1977: Good old StuffIt. Or well, let's just say old StuffIt.
caidan: And .ain which was even better but now seems to be half lost to time (no Wikipedia, just a few links repeating the same fragments of info like http://justsolve.archiveteam.org/wiki/AIN)
aldousd666: Hypercard is really kind of like the first implementation of HTML5. With applescript instead of javascript.
TuringTest: We're finally getting there. The model of web notebooks look a lot like Hypercard stacks in terms of usability; there's only missing someone packing them in and easy-to-use distribution and sharing environment that does not depend on users installing their own web server.And if that package includes some reasonable local LLM model, creating simple programs by end users could be even easier than it ever was with Hypercard.
trvv: PWAs could have been so good. redbean/llamafile might be the closest, though.
jandrese: I mused about the idea of a version of Hypercard where you could load cards from network resources, or even just stacks. Ultimately though it would have been an even bigger security nightmare than the original Javascript. Hypercard was developed long before security was even a consideration on consumer hardware. The only thing it had was 5 different access levels, from a view only mode to full developer support.It's as much of a fantasy as the one where Apple released a version of Hypercard for Windows 3.1 and blew Qbasic out of the water. It's a real shame Apple just chucked one of the most interesting beginner programming environments in the trash just as so many new people were getting interested in programming.
observationist: Proto-websites - technically called hypermedia, it was basically a locally stored website, and pioneers were trying things out like putting books and information and functionality in them. In this case, it's the Wintermute trilogy by William Gibson in Hypercard format, so this is also a retro computing discovery.
lobf: What exactly are you unclear on?
