Script Limit

[Dr. John R. Vokey]

Jeanne A. E. DeVoto wrote:

> I'd urge people to drop a line to Kevin if this change would impact 
> their
> products, describing how you use the capability. I can't speak for 
> Kevin
> but I know he listens carefully to concerns of current customers when
> changes are being considered.
>
Good advice *if one is producing ``products'', i.e., applications that 
just so happen to be written in metacard , but could have been done in 
c or BASIC)*  I, however, produce extensible ``stacks''---following the 
original hypercard model--- that I freely exchange with my students and 
colleagues.  Often, these stacks are boot-strapped in that they provide 
for a simple scripting language---a mixture of metatalk and procedures 
and functions I have added---to accomplish some goal, such as a stack 
that provides a resampling statistics language so that students and 
colleagues can program their own resampling solutions, or a language to 
program experiments that is itself extensible.  Thus, the user writes 
lines of code (the afore-mentioned mixture of metatalk and new 
commands) that are then executed (usually via `do', but sometimes by 
replacing the script of some object): the user is not knowingly 
programming metacard, but using the new language.  The proposed limits 
mean that the metacard (ok, RR) ``player'' is broken.  To make use of 
my ``stacks'', the user must now have a licensed version of metacard 
(RR).  It is (was?) this boot-strapping extensibility of xtalks (as 
with their threaded-interpretive-language, TILs, predecessors) that has 
been the core secret of their success, and the proposed loss of it in 
metacard/RR---the alleged successor to hypercard, is anathema.  RR just 
becomes yet another cluttered IDE with an odd programming language.  At 
a minimum, ``do'' should remain unlimited, but I would prefer to remove 
the limit on replacing scripts, as well.  After all, haven't licensed 
users agreed not to produce a new RR in RR/metacard?  And now that the 
free (but 10-line script limited) metacard is to be gone, to be 
replaced by a 30-day, web-checked (ugh!) demo, why are the limits 
needed at all?  The whole direction is ominous.

--
John R. Vokey, Ph.D.                       |\      _,,,---,,_
Professor                                  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience  |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'
University of Lethbridge                  '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)