NOTE:   The patcher will only work for the full release version of HyperCard 2.4.1.
Anything else will not be accepted.

Everything on this page is free - to my knowledge, anyway.

A lot, if not most, of the scripting, ideas, and software not created by Apple, Claris, or Fredric Renaldi was pretty much developed all by myself -- creator and Copyright information is still left in the externals for everybody to read with a resource editor.

The resource fork of the “HC Compatibility” stack is now incorporated into the “DResources” stack to increase performance and decrease disk space when using the compatibility stack.

Any suggestions, or really anything at all,contact me.

Problems/Bugs

1.  The Icon editor seems to be broken.   Use ResEdit (lock the resource fork while editing and paste back in afterward), or some other resource utility instead.  Using the Icon Editor may corrupt the resource fork.

2.  The initial Allocated memory for HyperCard is too small, for even the Aboutdialog.  Set the preferred size to at least 3MB.

3.  The Color XCMD (formerly ColorizeHC) right now cannot handle more than one window at a time, so colorization will fail when switching between stacks.

4.  Older stacks aren’t supported (backward compatibility should start once 1.7 is finished).

5.  The “HC Compatibility” stack is required for backward compatibility with HyperCard stacks.
The menus are a little different than in HyperCard, so calling ‘domenu’ with “About HyperCard...”, “Field Info”, “Background Info” or “New Background” will give an error message if the “HC Compatibility” stack is not installed.  Audio Help for 2.4.1 will not work with HyperXDB without the “HC Compatibility” stack.
 

Workings and environment

HyperXDB uses a stand-alone shell, so the “Home” stack is self-contained (and any stack in the root probably won’t be loaded as the “Home” stack).

All stacks, and files that are used initially are in a folder named “Support”

HyperXDB can barely run stacks without the “DResources” stack, which can only reside in the support folder -- the Tasks and StackToApp files go in the support folder, but their paths can be modified (independently) via the ‘STR#’ 128 resource.

At startup, HyperXDB loads all files ending in ‘.EXT’ within the “DExtensions” folder.  The D-Extensions folder enables the user to add additions or patches to HyperXDB.  Before version 1.5, there was no DExtensions folder.

HyperXDB uses a preferences file in the Preferences folder, so you can use the calls “SetUtilityNamePrefs <name>,<text>” and “UtilityNamePrefs(<name>)”.  In the full version of 1.7, resources can be edited directly from the Preferences file, to get around HyperXDB rewriting the entire data fork for some small entry.

The user can use the “EditGoMenu” stack to add a quick reference of the stacks they use (or want to use) in the “Go” menu.

The “Edit” menu has options to show the ‘Variable Watcher’ and ‘Message Watcher’ windows (if they’re available).

There are several XCMDs and XFCNs built into the app.  The “Ants” XFCN - used for making rectangles by hand - is highly optimized.  And to get the version of HyperXDB, use “variant()”.

Virus Protection is built into the application’s stack script, and covers all the known HyperCard viruses.  Modifications of the internal stack script by a script requires permission by the user.  68K users might experience a small reduction in performance because of this.