Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!psuvax1!psuvm!cunyvm!byuvax!taylorj
From: taylorj@yvax.byu.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: HyperCard vs. SuperCard vs. PLUS
Message-ID: <832taylorj@yvax.byu.edu>
Date: 30 Sep 89 06:10:57 GMT
Lines: 31


I recently made a comparison of features of the two HyperCard clones (for a
demonstration at the university users group).  It's in Microsoft Word 4.0
format, and I can't create a plain text version because the text is too small
and I used the (wonderful!) table feature.  But if enough people are interested
I will be happy to post it.

In any case, for those considering either SuperCard or PLUS, here are my
opinions and recommendations:

PLUS is simply HyperCard with bells and whistles (and bugs) and some sorely
needed features such as larger windows, "library stacks" to hold shared
resources, multiple text fonts/styles/sizes in fields, color, etc.  It's
generally quite compatible with HyperCard stacks.  It seems to be basically
unusable (i.e. crashes frequently) on a Mac with less than 2 Meg of RAM.  The
manual is abysmal.  The english is actually so bad it's funny!  It's full of
useless trivia and devoid of useful details.

SuperCard is a magnitude or two above both HyperCard and PLUS.  It's incredibly
powerful but the power comes at a price: it's very difficult to use and it's
very SLOW!  But if you want multiple windows, high-powered graphics,
customizeable menus, fast animation, or anything else you keep wishing
HyperCard had, then SuperCard is the only way to go.  Once you get used to the
separate editor it's quite nice (copy and paste multiple cards, create and edit
icons, cursors, and color palettes, compare two scripts side by side).  Can
only run small stacks (projects) on Macs with less than 2 Meg of RAM, but since
the reason you need SuperCard is to make big complicated stacks you might as
well forget using them on 1 Meg machines.


Jim Taylor
Microcomputer Support for Curriculum
Brigham Young University
taylorj@byuvax.bitnet