Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!nrl-cmf!ames!claris!apple!dan
From: dan@Apple.COM (Dan Allen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: The BAD news for Feature Requesters
Keywords: Hypercard, Multifinder
Message-ID: <21421@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 30 Nov 88 05:13:21 GMT
References: <1182@mmm.UUCP>
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA
Lines: 47

Many people have mentioned problems, limitations, and restrictions with
HyperCard.  Most requests are valid and are things we want to do.  Here
is a reply to various requests...

HyperCard does not and will not in the near future be able to get an app
to open a document if the app is already running under MultiFinder.
Sorry.

And in reply to several other questions, I'm afraid it is all bad news:
no, you cannot currently change the default font when printing reports.
I know it really is a pain, but we hope to greatly improve reports
sometime in the future.  Until then, write an XCMD or use PrintReports
or some such.

Someone else asked about increasing the recursion limit: no, you can't
increase the limit.  Recode your program using iteration rather than
recursion.  Create your own stack in a variable and you put before and
put after and you can probably make the script run faster anyway.

Yet another person asked about driving the polygon tool from a script.
Nope, you are right, it CAN't BE DONE.  Sorry once again.  Maybe
someday...

SUMMARY OF THE PROBLEMS:  HyperCard will never be finished.  There are
zillions of things we can do to improve and refine it.  We are trying to
do our best with four programmers working full-time on the improvements
that we think will be appreciated by the greatest number of people.  Our
philosophy is to please the mainstream user, not the esoterica.  Hence
color always takes a back seat to other improvements because very few
Mac users have color monitors.  When more than have of our users have
color then we'll probably think about doing color, and doing it right,
which means, color text, color paint tools, lots of RAM needed, etc.

Keep your cards and letters coming.  We will continue to fix bugs and
add great new features to HyperCard.  We are doing so even as I speak.
Right now the HyperCard to get and use is 1.2.2, just now getting into
the distribution pipeline.  Make lots of great stacks and if you need to
do something, WRITE AN XCMD.

Sorry for the bad news to the specific questions of late.  I hope that
you all will not be disappointed when HC 2.0 comes... it will be worth
the wait.

Dan Allen
Software Explorer
HyperCard Team
Apple Computer