Fancy Mac database
By
NEILL BIRSS
Apple has thrown its Macintosh users an exciting database with its Hyper Card. This is being supplied free with all new Macintoshes from this month.
Hyper Card enables graphics and music to be included in records with text. It even allows the animation of line graphics. A demonstration of HyerCard on a $20,000 Macintosh II at Computer Plus in Christchurch included full colour pictures, originally ported in from a video camera. Keeping to the Macintosh simple-learning philosophy, epitomised by the use of icons and the mouse, Hyper Card uses simple terms: the records of other databases are called cards; cards are organised in stacks rather than files.
Apple says Hyper Card is neither an applications package nor an operating system, though it shares the attributes of both. It is certainly a database, though with very sophisticated graphics and sound options, and extremely simple programming requirements (Apple would say programming is not needed). The software is linked with the concept. of hyperlearning. This is described by Gareth Powell, who writes for these pages, thus:
“Hyperleaming/writing/reading is trying to present information to your brain in the sort of associative, non-linear pattern that best suits the way_ your brain works.” He gives as an example of hyper-reading the way many, if not most, people read newspapers. Instead of reading this newspaper from page one to sport on the back page consecutively, many readers may flick from the front page to the cartoon strips and then back to the letters to the editor.
The cards in Hyper Card would allow the building up of text on, say restaurants, with a picture or drawing of each restaurant, and perhaps some music signals to convey a description of food types such as Chinese, French or Italian. The software allows searching for text key words. Computer Plus demonstrated a search through a stack of cards containing graphics for hands and the word
“hands.” Each card containing a human hand was selected. Hyper Card contains a calculator and calendar functions along the lines of Sidekick. But flexibility of storage is Hyper Card’s prime attraction. The non-specialist user will be able to easily structure a database. Linkage is possible to CD-ROM storage, opening many possibilities for publishing. The pre-release version of Hyper Card occupies 368 K of random-access memory. The software runs on the SE and Plus versions of the Mac, but some microcomputer pundits say a Macintosh II is needed to provide the speed and colour to achieve the potential of Hyper Card. Apple has announced another package for the Macintosh family: Multi Finder. This will allow not only switching among about 30 programs, but will allow a Macintosh II or SE with an 80286 processor card to work concurrently in MS-DOS and the Macintosh operating system. A user could cut and pass data from Lotus 1-2-3 running under MS-DOS in a Macintosh window into a Macintosh application, and if the machine had a modem and terminal emulation software, exchange data with a Unix application on a remote host A megabyte of RAM is needed. ,
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Bibliographic details
Press, 6 October 1987, Page 50
Word Count
513Fancy Mac database Press, 6 October 1987, Page 50
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