From: bill@appleoz.apple.oz.au (William Logan Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: Re: How to uncripple HyperCard?
Date: 22 Jul 92 05:19:35 GMT
Organization: Apple Computer Australia Pty Ltd

In article <keOgI2W00WBLE1wHNL@andrew.cmu.edu> bk1a+@andrew.cmu.edu (Bryan Michael Kearney) writes:
>I saw the post on this, and tried it on my copy of Hypercard. I have
>hypercard 2.1 and it says thatit does not understand magic. ANy ideas???

If you try to type "magic" on the wrong card in the "home" stack, nothing
will happen except an error message.  The simple way of ensuring that you
type into the correct card is shown below.

Also, from the posting of umcho000@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Connie Cho):
    "Does anyone know *why* Apple/Claris crippled Hypercard this way?"
Although I don't know of the real reason, I can guess.  If you look at the
user level preference card (after you use the magic command), you will find
the description of level 3 "Painting" as "Use the Paint tools to change the
appearance of cards and backgrounds."  I have seen many people find the
painting tools when the user level is set to three or above, and proceed
to try out all the painting tools on the current stack.  Once they are
tired of this, they then start looking for the "Revert to saved" menu item
(After all, this is a macintosh and we should be able to "undo" the changes
we have caused, right?)  Unfortunately, changes made to a Hypercard stack
occur immediately and except for the last command, are undoable.
I concluded that this is the reason why levels 3-5 are unavailable for the
average novice user - it is easy to unintentionally damage stacks (or at
least their appearance). Macintosh users are encouraged to try out all the
commands available; usually any changes can be discarded without saving
the results.  Hypercard is one exception, and it makes sense to protect
the novice user from this exceptional behaviour.

Put it another way; would you have preferred "Hypercard Lite" to be properly
crippled, with no way of setting the user level higher?


How to enable user scripting in Hypercard
=========================================

1) Install Hypercard 2.1
2) Double-click on the "Home" stack.  Hypercard should start up and
   show you the "Welcome to Hypercard" card.
3) Press Command-4.  This will take you to the last card in the stack.
4) Press Command-m.  This will display the message box.
5) Click once in the message box and type "magic". Without the quotes, though.
6) Press the <return> key.  The Preferences card should change to show all
   five user levels.
7) Click in the box of the user level that you want e.g. "5 scripting".  The
   preferences card should show the user level triangle point to the desired
   user level.  The boxes representing all levels up to and including this
   level should be highlighted i.e. with white writing on black background.
8) That's all there is to do.

OR

1) Install Hypercard 2.1
2) Double-click on the "Home" stack.  Hypercard should start up and
   show you the "Welcome to Hypercard" card.
3) Press Command-m
4) Type "set the userlevel to 5". (Don't type the quotes though)
5) Press the <return> key.  Scripting is now enabled.

Bill Lee
Standard Disclaimer.