Newsgroups: alt.hypertext
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 07:54:21 -0400 
From: Ken Zuroski <kz08+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: please help

Hi:

Okay, I suddenly found myself needing a hypertext application for the Macintosh
that would allow me to link together a diverse variety of ideas and topics
that I can't even begin to anticipate what they are until they are ready
to be integrated with the others. Great, I said, I'll look for a shareware
hypercard stack. I'd be willing to get something commercial, but time is
of the essence and it would be very easy for me simply to download something
from one of the archives; I looked about briefly in a few software stores,
didn't see what I needed, and so would have to order a commercial application
. Okay. Well, the stack that seemed to fit the bill best of all the
hypertext applications I was able to find via anonymous ftp was a stack
called TellingTools, which probably most people working with macs and who
are reading this newsgroup are familiar with. Great, I said. I started
inserting the information that I needed into it. However, I find that I
am having trouble in using the stack. The main problem seems to be that
the anchors I create within the text I am entering suddenly at one point
lose their links, and I can't seem to reestablish them after they go away.
This is very frustrating. The scripting seems to be rather straightforward,
but unfortunately I don't know the programming language and, more
importantly for me, I don't have the time to learn it to figure out what
is going wrong. I need something right away that works and that I don't
have to tweak to make work.

Okay, right now I am trying to find the most expedient way to solve my
problem. If there is some minor tweak I can apply to Telling Tools, I'll
do it. If there are going to be more problems later with this stack, I'd
just as soon buy something that will work without headaches. So:

1. Do any of you have any idea why the anchors are losing their links? Is
it because I try (and fail) to create as anchors words surrounded by quotation marks?
Is it because I delete a card--maybe that screws up the link order and it
can't recover. How come I can't get rid of anchors even though I can delete
the text that they are associated with? And I never have been able to
remove a link as outlined in the documentation. Working with a Mac SE and
system 7, Hypercard 2.0.x (x=something).

Okay, there sure are a lot of problems here. Which brings me to my second
question:

2. If this is a lost cause, what do you recommend I purchase? I have read
through this newsgroup, what few messages there are, and a couple of names
popped out--NoteCard, I think, and HyperPad (?). Are there any others that
are standardly used for the mac platform? Will these run faster on my SE
, assuming they are not stacks but stand-alone applications (which it seems
NoteCard would not be, on second thought), than Hypercard stacks (probably
so). Where is a good mail order place to purchase the commercial products
(I am going to call MacConnection to see if they sell these)? How much
do they run?

Thanks very much for your advice. Essentially I need a hypertext application
that will allow me to link together a great amount of information in an
organized way, will allow me to quickly leap from one topic/item to the next.
The more organizational functions (e.g., "maps" that show how my cards are
linked together, the ability to classify cards into groups, ala Telling Tools),
the better.

Email, please; or posting is okay too.

Ken

---
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ken Zuroski
Department of English
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA
kz08@cmu.edu
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Newsgroups: alt.hypertext