Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!plaid!chuq
From: chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: Hypertalk instructional book request
Keywords: hypertalk, book
Message-ID: <69395@sun.uucp>
Date: 21 Sep 88 18:15:12 GMT
References: <3074@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: chuq@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
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Organization: Fictional Reality
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>I'm looking for a Hypercard/Hypertalk book which would be useful for a
>new programmer, that is, an instructional book for someone who wants to 
>learn how to program using Hypercard.  Suggestions? Reviews?

I recommend three HyperCard books:

o Carol Kaehler's "HyperCard Power: Techniques and Scripts" -- a really
	neat book, both an introduction and a design/scripting book.
	Most other books generally talk about scripting, but don't
	really get into stack design (or they do and the author
	doesn't really have a good design sense). The first book I
	would give any new person, and if I could only own one book,
	this would be it.

o Danny Goodman's original HyperCard book -- A good, solid reference work.

o Gary Bond's XCMD's for HyperCard -- Only if you're going to do some
	serious HyperCard programming, of course.

Honorable mentions:

o Danny Goodman's second HyperCard book -- a little on the esoteric side,
	with a lot of concept and very little hard substance for my
	tastes. Good, but not great. There's nothing in here that isn't
	covered in more depth somewhere else, but if you can only afford
	two books, the two Goodman books are probably the best combination.

o Dan Shafer's Hypertalk book. Now out in a new edition for 1.2, this is
	the best in a really average morass of HyperTalk me-too books.
	Buy it if you have the budget, after you've bought all the rest.
	It'll come in handy, but I wouldn't go out of my way.

There are something like 20 HyperCard/HyperTalk books out there last I
looked, with more on the way. Can you say glut? I'd say you only *need* the
first three (assuming you have the budget). Hypercard fanatics could keep
these five. I have eight or nine of them, and most of them are really
un-inspiring (of course, I've been getting paid to review some of them, so
it's not *quite* that bad for me). I spend most of my hypertalking time with
the first Goodman and the Kaehler book, for what it's worth.






Chuq Von Rospach			chuq@sun.COM		Delphi: CHUQ
Editor/Publisher, OtherRealms