by DonHopkins | 2026-02-20 18:41:57+00:00
That sounds like a good way to structure it, so you have the best of both worlds.

There are actually practical and commercial reasons to disable stack editing (authoring), to make turnkey products whose user interfaces are not editable, but still incorporate graphics editors and other features.

Apple shipped a non-editable HyperCard stack player, that didn't allow you to open the script editor, modify card or background objects, change stack structure, etc. It was intended for distributing finished applications without requiring the full authoring environment.

HyperLook Product Announcement:

https://donhopkins.com/home/catalog/hyperlook/HyperLook.READ...

FREE HYPERLOOK RUNTIME
======================

The HyperLook runtime system lets you run uneditable HyperLook
applications. It includes many interesting demos, presentations and
useful stacks, including a fully functional drawing tool.

HyperLook is like HyperCard in PostScript for NeWS, which I was describing to Alan Kay in that thread. It actually did have a non-editable runtime system. The way that worked was that I factored the user interface editor out into a separate component you could plug into a stack, so I could remove it to make the stack non-editable. In fact you could even plug in different stack editors with different UI styles. Also all the dialogs and property sheets were editable stacks (unlike HyperCard which used the non-editable Mac UI for its dialogs and property sheets). You can make a non-editable runtime version of an app simply by stripping out the editor components from each stack.

The full HyperLook system with the editor was a commercial product, and we made a free runtime demo of it with many stacks including a PostScript drawing editor that anyone could use for free. The drawing editor was actually a component you could plug into your own stacks, customize, and use in your own applications.

The free non-editable demo demonstrated HyperLook's practical features, in the hopes of persuading people to buy the full featured authoring system to develop their own personal and commercial applications.

At the same time we were developing HyperLook, I was also eating my own dog food by developing SimCity for HyperLook, which incorporated the drawing editor so you could take image snapshots of your city, and PostScript snapshots of the graph stacks and user interface, edit and annotate them, print them out, etc.

SimCity for HyperLook Product Announcement:

https://donhopkins.com/home/catalog/hyperlook/SimCity.README

This version of SimCity was built using the HyperLook user
interface design system, and is shipped with a HyperLook run
time system. It includes an demonstration of HyperLook,
featuring a fully functional PostScript graphics editor, that
was used to draw parts of the SimCity user interface.

The "HyperLook Runtime" section of this article shows a screen snapshot of SimCity suffering from "user interface vandalism":

SimCity, Cellular Automata, and Happy Tool for HyperLook (nee HyperNeWS (nee GoodNeWS)):
HyperLook was like HyperCard for NeWS, with PostScript graphics and scripting plus networking. Here are three unique and wacky examples that plug together to show what HyperNeWS was all about, and where we could go in the future!

https://donhopkins.medium.com/hyperlook-nee-hypernews-nee-go...

>HyperLook Runtime

>HyperLook supported a “runtime” version that was slimmed down and compressed, source code stripped and obfuscated as binary, with the stack editor removed (it was also just a component you plug into the stack, which could be replaced with a different editor).

>[illustration: Why We Need a Runtime System -- "This is what happens when hooligan users vandalize the interface in edit mode."]

>But with the HyperLook editor installed, you could even edit and deconstruct SimCity while it was running!

>You could edit the menus, script your own buttons and pie menus that sent messages to the simulation to help you play or cheat, and copy and paste live SimCity views into your own stacks!

>That sure made development fun and easy, but I sure didn’t want to support casual users doing that! That’s why we needed a runtime system.

>I shipped SimCity for NeWS as a free demo that you could FTP over the internet, buy over the phone with a credit card, and unlock the full featured game. It included the HyperLook runtime, so users couldn’t actually edit its user interface unless they had the full HyperLook editor.

>The stripped-down obfuscated runtime made it possible to develop full commercial products like SimCity with HyperLook. And SimCity served as a promotion and practical example of the capabilities of HyperLook, and the other way around, too.