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HyperTalk

Language type:

C - Command or Scripting

Description:

HyperTalk is the scripting language for Apple's information presentation system HyperCard. It has a simple and English-like syntax, a modest set of general and application-specific data types, and the usual procedural control structures. HyperTalk was designed to allow HyperCard information collections, which are called "stacks", to be more dynamic and interactive. Because Apple envisioned the users of HyperTalk to be multimedia developers and not traditional programmers, they HyperTalk interpreter was designed to be very forgiving: it allows various syntactic sugar, type conversion is automatic, and everything is case-insensitive.
Most of a HyperTalk program will often consist of handers, subroutines to be called when the end-user performs some action or when a certain condition obtains. HyperTalk supports the notion of add-on 'external' functions and commands; these are roughly analogous to library modules in a language like C.
HyperCard 2 compiles individual HyperTalk functions into intermediate codes the first time the function is called. This is done to reduce start-up time for HyperCard applications.
There are several versions of HyperTalk. The two main versions from Apple correspond to HyperCard releases 1 and 2. Aldus SuperCard supports a superset of HyperTalk called SuperTalk. Commercial implementations of both are available for the Macintosh. At one time, SuperCard was also available for MS-Windows, but that may not be true anymore.

Origin:

Atkinson and Winkler, Apple Computer, 1986?

See Also:

Lingo    AppleScript   

Remarks:

HyperTalk continues to evolve along with the HyperCard product (version 3 due soon), but it is unclear whether it is still going to be a viable language. Apple is touting AppleScript as THE scripting language for all Macintosh applications, so HyperTalk may be superseded.
HyperTalk was very influential on the niche area of multimedia scripting languages. For example, the scripting language used by the current (c. 1997) market leader in multimedia authorware resembles HyperTalk in many respects.

Links:

Hypercard FAQ Page

Hypercard Heaven

Date:

Last updated 12/7/97

Descriptions in this dictionary are ©1997-99 Neal Ziring. Some examples copyright of their respective authors. Some technologies and languages are trademarked. Permission to copy descriptions is granted as long as authorship credit is preserved.

Comments on this dictionary, corrections and suggestions, are all welcome. Please use email, the address is ziring@home.com