[Sheflug] Re: Hypercard

[Matt Fairtlough <nospam [at] blueyonder.co.uk>]

Perhaps I should say what kind of  Web authoring tool I would like and
you
can tell me whether such a thing exists or is ever likely to exist.  I
am not
looking for something powerful enough to create a full-fledged Web
interface
for a company or whatever.  Not particularly bothered about databases.

1. one which generates pages readable from Windoze, Solaris
and Linux under IE, Netscape and other major browsers, not necessarily
Java enabled.  No excluded HTML constructs.  Adding HTML code to
generated pages should not be a problem.  [I was p***ed off to find that

a Web site prepared with FrontPage with nothing more than navigation
buttons, text and graphics caused Netscape to thrash under Linux...]

2. a simple scripting language, something like Hypertalk.  Objects such
as buttons tables fields links graphics layers etc have scripts and are
first-class entities at least from that point of view.  If it integrates
well
with Java, so much the better, but the more powerful the scripting
language
the more difficult that would be to do.  Java itself as a scripting
language:
too low-level for my needs.

3. a hierarchy of layers.  Actually a tree structure would be more
flexible
than a simple background layer and a two-level hierarchy (stack and
card)
but maybe that would be too complex.

4. some predefined backgrounds (style sheets/themes/ what have you)
and easy ways to create new ones and modify old ones

5. navigation structure tools as in FrontPage.  It would be good to have

a graphical representation of the navigation structure that can be
edited
with lightning speed and update all related links and buttons
automatically
as well as putting labels on buttons depending on the navigation
structure.
(FP only does some of that).   FP has a rather rigid navigation
structure
(a tree of pages rooted at the index page, with navigation bars that can
have one of  a small number of structures) but the idea is somewhat at
odds with the idea of a web anyway and I don't quite see how the two can
be smoothly integrated.

6. Decent publishing features (publish just what has changed etc) which
don't
require the user to manually track all the new, old, irrelevant or
changed files.  A way to indicate which files are to be published and
which not.

7. Good site reports and file management tools

I'm intrigued by the idea of 2-way links but I don't have any idea what
Xanadu
is or how it achieves them.  Hypercard has/d only 1-way links I think.

Matt.

--
 --------------------------------------------
| Matt Fairtlough       22 Harley Road       |
| Sheffield S11 9SE UK  tel. 0114 236 2067   |
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