LMAO. I wondered who would blink first regarding thalo's avatar, me or him. I loved it but I was beginning to feel intimidated by those fists always coming towards me. I felt that thalo was creating a hostile posting environment and I was preparing to sue him. But, alas, he beat me to it and came up with a less-is-more avatar.

LOL. Actually it was HH who blinked first. He blocked the Avatar in his browser.

Oh I crack myself up with the baiting.

Hey, if anybody wants an animated one, or a custom... email it to me and I'll put it on the server. If you're a mod you can change the URL, if not, I'll do it for you.

The spec is 48 pixels square.

Now that I know what bugs HH, I can't wait to come up with a doozie, all sorts of wild animations and icons turning somersaults. But I see they're easy enough to block. Would he block bouncing boobies? LOL.

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That's why I don't bother to block Brad's picture; he'd just come up with something worse. But he'll pay in the end--nothing undermines his serious philosophical essays more than that stupid psychedelic clown. It would really be more appropriate for Rico's political spews.
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quote:

Now the father was not any ordinary Photographer. He had been a personal photographer to the Kennedy Family.

Jacques Lowe?
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That's why I don't bother to block Brad's picture; he'd just come up with something worse.

LOL. Oh, that just about made me spit raw carrot out of my mouth. (I'm Bugs Bunny munching on one now.) Don't worry, the psychodelic avatar won't be up there much longer. Even I'm getting sick of it.

But he'll pay in the end--nothing undermines his serious philosophical essays more than that stupid psychedelic clown.

Now, you see, that's exactly the part of it I like. One of the biggest, most dangerous, and most pervasive influences/fallacies is the fallacy of expert opinion. Whether I have a bust of Socrates or a picture of a turd in the avatar space, it should make no difference in terms of the words and ideas actually expressed. I know you're just pulling my leg, Markle, but that's actually a big deal to me to get beyond the judging of a book by its cover, whether we're talking the glibness of Obama or the rich and deep traditions of religious liturgy. "Thou shalt not kill" doesn't need fancy robes, stained glass, and the trappings of ooga-booga to make it a powerful idea. If it does, then I'd say people aren't really grasping the essence of the idea and are more likely just getting wrapped up in cultural milieus of group-think proportions.

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Grats on post #8,000. Don't spoil it too soon...
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It's easy to snort at people for being distracted from the "words and ideas actually expressed" by external, superficial "trappings," but it's a denial of human nature to think that dressing something up with a picture of a turd won't influence the way people receive the substance of your message. Packaging matters. The more shit you shovel on something, the harder you make it for yourself to get your ideas across. You can say it's apples and oranges and it shouldn't matter, but the reality is that it does.
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It's easy to snort at people for being distracted from the "words and ideas actually expressed" by external, superficial "trappings," but it's a denial of human nature to think that dressing something up with a picture of a turd won't influence the way people receive the substance of your message.

That's a great point, Markle. But I'm not denying it. I'm challenging it. And by challenging it I think one can learn just a bit more about human nature. I try to keep the "Don't judge a book by it's cover" idea in mind even while acknowledging the ridiculousness of searching 80-year-old Swedish grandmas at the airport. In our everyday lives you bet your sweet bippy that we judge books by their covers, whether talking restaurants where we intend to eat or people we might select as friends or dates. And we do it to great effect. But regarding intellectual ideas, there's something severely wrong with me if I judge the ideas by the package they're delivered in. If some urine-coated and yak-smelling bum says to me on the street, "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine", then if I dismiss it merely because of the package, I'm a thoughtless and not very complex idiot. (Thomas Jefferson, by the way.)

Geez, 8000? Same thing with post counts, though. I'd prefer that it wasn't even listed because I've had (like shirley many of you have) the experience at other forums of people being given credence and deference merely because of how many posts they have, which is by no means a reliable indicator of anything but loquaciousness.

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Thalo (or anyone), I received an email from someone and the text of the message itself was shown by Mail as an html attachment ("Text.htm) instead of being displayed in the body of the email message. I had to open it with Safari to view it. Am I missing a setting or something in Mail?

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By the way, I tried out a demo of Revolution (the Studio version), and it looks to be a very fine program. But it's not quite as compatible as SuperCard with my existing stacks. That's not a slam against Revolution because that's sort of a minor function, but a damn useful one if that's what you need to do. But it's not even close. SuperCard is so much more like HyperCard. The changes I had to make in the code are relatively minor considering we're talking about two different software products. SuperCard it is, and I qualify for a $130.00 upgrade price which is a good deal.

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I just noticed a setting in Mail: "Use Small Mailbox Icons." And I nearly fell off my chair when I discovered that. I was momentarily disoriented and confused. Bewitched, Be-Xed, and bewildered. Was this OS X's Mail? Was I unknowingly back in Outlook Express? Was I sitting instead in front of my Windows box? An option to make something smaller and less intrusive? In OS X?

I'd better double-check that just to be sure I read it right.

quote:

Thalo (or anyone), I received an email from someone and the text of the message itself was shown by Mail as an html attachment ("Text.htm) instead of being displayed in the body of the email message. I had to open it with Safari to view it. Am I missing a setting or something in Mail?

That's a new one on me. Check your Mail preference under the "Viewing" tab, and see if you have "Display remote images in HTML messages" checked.

LOL, yeah, I put my Mail icons on small on Day 1 and have never turned back. Same as I can't even LOOK at the interface in the "Aqua" theme, as opposed to the graphite. When I see the traffic-light buttons, I cringe. I can't change it to graphite in Appearance fast enough.

I wonder if my old SuperCard legacy license entitles me to upgrade to the OS X version?

I'll never, ever find the serial number or manual.

That's a new one on me. Check your Mail preference under the "Viewing" tab, and see if you have "Display remote images in HTML messages" checked.

It was checked. I've check and unchecked it, quit the program and launched again, all to no avail. I'll keep an eye on it. One of the benefits of prefnesia was that I opened Outlook Express (in Classic, of course) and it downloaded all of today's messages, including the one I was having problems with. Mail still isn't deleting the messages from the server. Eyeroll with slight fist pounding. And the message that was showing up as an HTML attachment in Mail displays as just a normal email message in Outlook Express. Perhaps I'm now remembering why I wanted to stay with Outlook Express.

Oh, and although some things I want smaller and subtler, I just found the "Display unread messages with bold font" in mail. Jeez, that helps. They were tending to get lost in the clutter.

And this is hardly the first version of Mail. It's been in development for years now. Hell, in the same amount of time, Illustator and Photoshop became Grandmasters of their category.

I wonder if my old SuperCard legacy license entitles me to upgrade to the OS X version?

All I needed was a scan of my original HyperCard floppy disk. They also will accept the front page of the manual, which I have. Since you're a legitimate SuperCard user of old, I could always just scan the manual for you and you could submit that to them. You'd get the same price break.

If you do go for that upgrade of SuperCard, thalo, I can tell you that I've gained nothing but confidence as I've worked in it. I can't say that this scripting environment is more powerful than another. But I can tell you that it seems that what is presented is presented fairly well. It's relatively simple. You're not overwhelmed with stuff and too many options so that you don't know where to start. It very much has the feel of HyperCard. Granted, if one was writing applications for a living then perhaps the $400 Revolution program might be better. Only a closer scrutiny (and by those who really know the ins and outs of development) could judge that. But from the amateur level, it seems very approachable.

And if I drop a nickel on this program I can pretty much guarantee that in 3 months or less there will be an announcement of an OS X version of HyperCard by Apple. But that would be worth every penny I suppose.

I think one of the reasons I went into web design from the print world, was that I loved HyperCard and SuperCard so much.

Never was fond of how SuperCard split up the app and the runtime editor into separate programs.

If these guys were smart, they'd make it so you could output stacks into WIDGET form for OS X.

Never was fond of how SuperCard split up the app and the runtime editor into separate programs.

I think you have different options on that now. They have a Developer Edition that sounds more like what you're talking about. But like a lot of people, I like chunking in a bit of script and then trying it out immediately. Whatever the hell they call the version I've been using in the demo, it's acted pretty much like HyperCard. But whatever the case may be (and sounds like you've done a fair amount of scripting), there's also a free runtime editor out there called ModuloPI. It looks pretty good. It seems this guy has taken more of an Adobe approach where the palettes are context-sensitive. One palette can do the work of many depending on whether you have a button, field, or whatever selected. But first and foremost, I've been running my converted stacks via the demo and they haven't crashed once yet. And I know this is pretty much unknown in the software world these days -- especially in the OS X world -- so don't write me off as some kind of conspiracy theory nut case, but HyperCard (at least that last version they produced), never ever crashes. They say "never say never" but it hasn't crashed once in about four years. Oh, it will now occasionally pop out of existence when I'm running it in Classic. But that doesn't count as far as I'm concerned.

If these guys were smart, they'd make it so you could output stacks into WIDGET form for OS X.

Well, they got most of the Aqua interface thingies in there. You can even make all your stacks look like mind metal if you want. I would guess that someone has already written some kind of external command or something that will do that. I'll let you know if I see anything like that. Hell, another project neither me or you probably have the time for, would be to write a Finder replacement. Just some minimalist browser that with 10% of the features does 90% of what you want done and does it fast.

Cool idea, but I think there's too much code overhead with the HyperTalk language. Unless there's some compiling scheme for developed projects when you're done. But it's probably like Visual Basic. You can write apps, but they're slow, huge, and ungainly if you actually try to do anything useful.

I'm pretty sure I forgot all my HyperTalk skills, but the great thing about that language was how intuitive it was. How much like English. That's what AppleScript should have remained. I'd use it more, but it got so mumbo-jumbo-y, too geeky, so I lost interest.

But a widget-maker would rule. Something that applies the widget container to your stack, and puts it on your Mac with the turd splash and everything. Most widgets are simple one-note apps like many HyperCard stacks used to be.

One thing I think needs to be improved in the iCal app. All I've wanted in a Calendar app for over ten years has been this: A simple monthly calendar, when you click on a day, you get a text field beneath it to type whatever you want. Whether it's pages or just a few words.

With iCal, you double-click on a day, which adds an event, which you have to twiddle with respect to time and duration. Fucking idiotic. It's faster to just type something like "3pm Doctor's appointment"... rather than mess with checkboxes and pulldown menus and crap.

Calendar 2.1 is probably my all time favorite Mac program. It's broken now, even in Classic (paste pastes TWO of whatever's in the clipboard). But it had the perfect interface. Click on a day, boom, there's the text field for that day. Click another day, boom, a different text field, but in the same spot. Text is auto-saved in the day, and the square on the map representing the day is shaded, to show that you have contents there.

Cool idea, but I think there's too much code overhead with the HyperTalk language.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure HyperTalk is what they call an interpreted language as opposed to a compiled language. The former is very friendly, but much slower. The latter is extremely complicated, but faster.

You can write apps, but they're slow, huge, and ungainly if you actually try to do anything useful.

You can get buggy from commercial apps or little stacks. What SuperCard or HyperCard allow you to do is write specialty apps that would probably never otherwise get done by commercial companies. But these companies have (and apparently do) create some amazing stuff via these type of programs. The original Myst, for example, is a game run via the HyperCard engine. And apparently most closed captioning before modern methods was done via a HyperCard stack. And apparently much of the inspiration for the web itself came from HyperCard. That's why the cursor turns into a little hand, for instance, when you hover the cursor over a link in a web browser. As I just read from an interview with HyperCard creator, Bill Atkinson, he wished he'd thought of the idea of linking card to card, not just across stacks, but across computers. He says then perhaps the world wide web might have begun ten years earlier than it did.

I'm pretty sure I forgot all my HyperTalk skills, but the great thing about that language was how intuitive it was. How much like English. That's what AppleScript should have remained. I'd use it more, but it got so mumbo-jumbo-y, too geeky, so I lost interest.

I'm not a programmer by nature. I just play one on TV. I once tried the Cocoa sample project and was totally and completely flummoxed. I also have a hard time picking up the gist of AppleScript. It's similar to HyperTalk (in that it's a scripting language), but it just doesn't seem as simple or intuitive to me. Yes, the actual techniques of programming are quite separate from the languages themselves as far as how do do anything via programming. There are subroutines, loops, and just the general logic of how to do powerful things when you combine many small steps. That doesn't change despite the language one may be using. But I always found HyperCard to flow much more easily, at least in the way I thought. In contrast, when trying to use AppleScript I'm constantly fighting the way that language wants to do things. In HyperCard that's rarely the case.

But a widget-maker would rule. Something that applies the widget container to your stack, and puts it on your Mac with the turd splash and everything. Most widgets are simple one-note apps like many HyperCard stacks used to be.

I've got a widget for ya. Here's the main program loop. You design the interface and I'll stick this in the guts of it:

on turdSplash
go to address "thalo.net"
click at loc of bkgnd link "Mac Discussions"
for x = 1 to the number of X-men
if OS X = "svelte" then
go to ISP
end thalo.net
else
masterbait
end if
end x (please)
end turdSplash

One thing I think needs to be improved in the iCal app. All I've wanted in a Calendar app for over ten years has been this: A simple monthly calendar, when you click on a day, you get a text field beneath it to type whatever you want. Whether it's pages or just a few words.

That I could do.

With iCal, you double-click on a day, which adds an event, which you have to twiddle with respect to time and duration. Fucking idiotic. It's faster to just type something like "3pm Doctor's appointment"... rather than mess with checkboxes and pulldown menus and crap.

I'm with you on that. I'll actually give that project some serious consideration. You could run it, of course, without having SuperCard because you can just either make it a stand-alone app or you can get the free SuperCard player. I'm not actually sure how that would work at the moment. I don't have Calendar 2.1. A quick Google isn't showing me anything. If you still have it, why don't you stuff it and send it to me.

Here's MenuCalendarClock which is a very handy calendar. Better than wClock which I had been using. But it still doesn't let you enter quick little notes. It still relies on Calendar.

It's official. My computer and applications crash more, and cause me to restart more in Leopard than at any other time in Mac operating system history, going way back to 1984.

Leopard is truly, a piece of crap. No kidding around, this is not a stable release. Not if you're running it on a G5, anyway.

Now, it's all well and good for the intel X-men to sit back with that smug look on their face and say "Buh-buh-buh-whaaaat? My computer doesn't crash!" But fuck them. Fuck 'em. It's APPLE, INC. who says my system meets the requirements and is therefore compatible to run Leotard. It didn't say anything about: Expect big, work-losing crashes daily... expect to restart your friggin' computer ALL THE TIME. It didn't say anything about your keyboard going unresponsive or Adobe Apps being a complete and total MESS running under this beast. Here's what my Photoshop File menu looks like now:


What's wrong with this picture?

I restarted the app, I restarted the computer. It actually seemed BROKEN that way. Permanent. Come on. How did I fix it? Chose the default workspace. Of course then I lost all my workspace customization. So those redraw errors were somehow a flavor of prefnesia, or prefrruption.

I know I'm repeating myself for a change when I say NEVER have I felt so bullied and strongarmed into buying new Apple Hardware. It's getting to the point where I can't function in Leotard. I'm willing to go buy a whole flippin' new COMPUTER in the hopes that an Intel architecture will be friendlier to my apps and OS than my G5, the Radiator.

That's what Apple does to you. They get you to blame the victim, then throw good money after bad. Just on the frikkin' wing and a prayer that the problems you are experiencing are because your hardware is out of date, and their clueless lazy engineers might have brain-farted less on this software if it's running on an Intel-based CPU.

I really have to start thinking about ordering a new Mac. I'm not sure I can get through next week under these conditions. I'm slowly being driven nucking futz. It's not even 10AM and I'm ready to bust out an ice-cold martini. Not to DRINK... just to rub over my throbbing temples.

Why can't you revert to Tiger? That's what I did. I used Leopard for a few days, decided it was not a good release, that it brought me little that was truly useful and more grief than real benefit, and I moved back to Tiger.

Don't use it. It only encourages them.

I have never downgraded in my life, and I'm not about to start now. There's too many things that were intolerable about Tiger that seem to have been fixed in Leotard (such as Spotlight and Mail)... plus I've already adopted TimeMachine as my backup solution. So nah-ah, it's easier at this point to get Apple to fix the bugs than it is for me to go through the whole clean OS install process again and re-set up my computer and load all the apps again.

I surfed Apple Delusions, and there seems to be an inordinate number of Leotard complaints from G5 owners. Almost enough to convince me that Apple deliberately hamstrung the software to force the PPC holdouts to switch sooner rather than later.