RE: [Pythoncard-users] put on your marketing caps

> > PythonCard brings visual software development on Open Source tools
> > to the masses, picking up where Apple's immensely popular but
> > now-abandoned HyperCard product left off. Written entirely in the
> > widely used and respected object-oriented Python scripting language,
> > PythonCard enables end users to create applications and interfaces in
> > a style that is reminiscent of Microsoft Visual Basic without the
> > baggage of over-complexity for non-programmers. It then enables the
> > developer with some minimal amount of programming or scripting
> > experience to give the user's designs life and power through Python
> > scripting.
>
> To me implying that PythonCard picks up where Hypercard left off suggests
> that PythonCard does what Hypercard does and more so and it
> doesn't. Someone
> downloading PythonCard expecting it to have similar functionality to
> HyperCard is going to be very disappointed.

We should probably be clear about what it is and where it is going as you've
made clear in the other posts to the list. Revising the home page, the SF
summary and so on is in order. I would say that we are heading towards
picking up where HyperCard left off, so wording to the effect of "The goal
is to pick up where ..."

The word smiths can do a better job than I on that stuff. Of course, all
projects start out with goals, it is just in the open source world you see
the project from beginning to first release shipment while commercial stuff
doesn't generally get seen outside the development group until beta. I think
people familiar with open source understand this, but maybe it is better to
emphasize the alpha quality; alpha means the design is still very fluid.
However, in the case of PythonCard every release is usable as is even if you
never upgrade and keep your own code in sync with th latest changes.

> Hypercard isn't abandoned - Apple still sells it. - see
> www.apple.com/hypercard.

Yes it is being sold, but it is old and stale and hasn't changed since 1998
or something like that and hasn't had major changes since the early
nineties. It will not be ported to OS X. To paraphrase the good doctor,
"It's dead Jim."

> How is it reminiscent of Visual Basic? Does PythonCard really want to
> associate itself with VB? When I develop in VB, I either expect to use an
> editor for this clunky language or I expect a design/script UI
> tool that has
> multiple panes with a visual layout editor, lists of functions, attribute
> lists, lists of available controls and tons of online badly done help etc.

Again, probably a where we are heading, not where we are at. The naming
convention for event handlers will be somewhat familiar to VB folks. Once we
move to a component model it will be even more familiar, especially if there
is an IDE/editor. Having been a casual VB programmer at one time I see
transitioning to Python and PythonCard even now as pretty easy for simple
stuff.

> The user is not the developer? It takes a developer to give the user's
> designs life and power?

Well Dan just through it up as a straw man, so it still needs some trimming
with the hedge clippers or perhaps a little fire here and there.

ka