Tilting at Pixelated Windmills: HyperCard IIGS Extras released

HyperCard IIGS Extras

Update 11/2/2022

An update to the HCGS Extras disk has been released to correct a bug in the Stack.Templates To Do List template, and to add the Apple utility stack Stack.Checker.

Apple included many stacks for the Macintosh version of HyperCard that were never released for HyperCard IIGS. Many of the stacks from HyperCard 1.2.5 and earlier were packaged into a single stack named "Stack Templates" that was released with later versions of HyperCard. Among other stacks provided by Apple with Macintosh HyperCard there was "Phone Dialer" - a utility stack that allowed intelligent phone dialing from within any stack, and two stacks specifically for developers named "Readymade Buttons" and "Readymade Fields" which included buttons and fields that could be copied into stacks to add functionality.

Now, after 30 years, these stacks have been converted to HyperCard IIGS and where possible enhanced to take advantage of HyperCard IIGS specific capabilities. The four converted stacks have been bundled together onto a single 800K disk image, just as they might have been when HCGS was released in the 90's.

While the HyperMover tool was used to facilitate conversion, these stacks have to a large degree been rewritten in order to address not only the differences between the Macintosh and IIGS versions of HyperCard, but also to implement in HyperTalk features of HyperCard that were added to Macintosh HyperCard in versions later than version 1.2.5 that HyperCard IIGS was based upon. Changes have also been made to address Y2K issues, and enhancements made to take advantage of what the IIGS and HCGS has to offer.

Stack.Templates

Stack.Templates includes 15 templates that can be used to create stand alone HyperCard IIGS stacks. All of the original 15 Macintosh templates are included. Several of the stack templates are integrated with one another and the Phone.Dialer stack, including Addresses, To.Do.List, Calls.Received, Appointments, and Invoice. The Macintosh "Day Appointments" template has been significantly enhanced so that the new HCGS Appointments template has a feature set similar to the stand-alone Macintosh Appointments stack and is integrated with the stand-alone Addresses HCGS stack.

Phone.Dialer

Phone.Dialer is a conversion of the Macintosh "Phone Dialer" stack. Phone.Dialer allows telephone prefixes and other related information to be stored separately from the Addresses stack but utilized when placing calls. This would have been important functionality to have in an office setting. The converted stack provides this same functionality and is integrated with both Stack.Templates and the dial button included with the Readymade.Btns stack. The stack is designed to look like a HyperCard IIGS home stack page, since it would have been considered core functionality of HCGS had it been released.

Readymade.Flds

Readymade.Flds is a conversion of the "Readymade Fields" stack. The Macintosh version included 17 fields that could be pasted into a stack in order to add significant functionality.

All but two of the original Macintosh fields were converted. The "Peek at grouped text" and "Search and replace styles" fields depended on Macintosh only functionality and so were replaced with the more useful "Pop-up menu" and "Quick unlock and relock" fields.

Readymade.Btns

Readymade.Btns is a conversion of the "Readymade Buttons" stack. The Macintosh version included a variety of buttons organized into 16 categories. All 16 categories are included in Readymade.Btns.

Not all buttons in the stack were relevant to HCGS and in some cases additional buttons have been added. In many cases icons have been redrawn or replaced with HCGS specific versions.