SuperCard may have gone extinct.

[FourthWorld]

The domain name renewal lapsed last summer, and SC's current owner, Mark Lucas, was unable to get the credentials from the estate of the former co-owner in time. He went to great lengths to try to reacquire the domain, but it was snagged by a foreign domain squatter who apparently didn't have much of an orderly process for handling bids.

I just spoke with ML this morning. He's in good spirits, and is working to establish a new domain for SuperCard.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

I just spoke with ML this morning. He's in good spirits, and is working to establish a new domain for SuperCard.

Oh, that's good to hear there's still a spark of hope for SuperCard.

Please let us all know when he gets s new domain / website / URL together.

[FourthWorld]

Back up at a new domain:
https://supercard.software/

[richmond62]

I'll be on it just as soon as I'm home: and hope for a 64-bit version in due course.

It will be good to explore things again.

[richmond62]

Unfortunately that website is still promulgating something I feel is wrong:

Unfortunately, producing a 64-bit version of SuperCard requires a complete rewrite of the software as Apple has gone back on their promise to deliver 64-bit Carbon frameworks.

emphasis is mine.

https://supercard.software/faq.html

Whether Apple made a promise or not, most people round these parts should have learnt, on the basis of 'promises' and 'stretch goals' (presumably 'stretch' as in 'stretching the truth') not to rely on a very large number of pronouncements that software companies come up with:

and Apple, having spent a long time running down 'Trumpy-poos' is sucking up to him like there's no tomorrow now: so, frankly, I would not trust anything they say: or, as my Granny used to say, "Let me see it!"

I do wonder, however, if it is worth the MONEY for the SuperCard chap to try and get a 64-bit thing off the ground, and whether it would be worth the effort if he were to make the source code Open Source and give it away, for anyone to try to run up a 64-bit version.

[richmond62]

What is also unfortunate it that there is a page of downloads:

https://supercard.software/downloads/

Where below every download it states:

Requires a valid serial number to run.

But nowhere to beg/borrow.steal/ or buy a valid serial number.

This does give the impression that this is JUST a place for people who have paid in the past to download installers they may have mislaid, rather than anything else serious.

[FourthWorld]

I do wonder, however, if it is worth the MONEY for the SuperCard chap to try and get a 64-bit thing off the ground, and whether it would be worth the effort if he were to make the source code Open Source and give it away, for anyone to try to run up a 64-bit version.

If open source was a panacea we'd be so happily coding away on ARM Macs we'd have no time to think about other xTalks.

[FourthWorld]

What is also unfortunate it that there is a page of downloads:

https://supercard.software/downloads/

Where below every download it states:

Requires a valid serial number to run.

But nowhere to beg/borrow.steal/ or buy a valid serial number.

This does give the impression that this is JUST a place for people who have paid in the past to download installers they may have mislaid, rather than anything else serious.

But there is a link to the forums where you can ask the owner.

He's there often. He doesn't even know about forum. Odds are low your request can be satisfied here, but very high he can find a way to update your reg code there.

[tperry2x]

This does give the impression that this is JUST a place for people who have paid in the past to download installers they may have mislaid, rather than anything else serious.

Yes, this is just a re-upload of the bare minimum to provide a download link by the look of it. Who knows if it'll go any further than this. I really hope it does, the more xTalks the merrier, and the more competition out there in commercial-circles, the better.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

I came back to this thread to post this info from the SuperCard google group, but you guys already know:

From Uli Kusterer:
Feb 4, 2025, 11:06:14 PM (10 days ago)
to SuperCard Discussion
Hi folks,

since there was some useful info up on the old SuperCard site, I've trawled the Web Archive's Wayback machine and my own backups to create a web site with the most relevant bits of the old SuperCard web site (with Mark'spermission).

It's all very basic right now, but I plan to add to it as time permits and the situation evolves. Here it is:

https://supercard.software

I for one, having as far as I know a still valid license for SC 4.7.3 (I believe, haven't 'dusted it off' in a long time), and having gone to Wayback Machine to try to scrape the old sites, very much appreciate this diligence (maintaining his own back up) and work from Uli. Should pop over to HyperCard Discord to thank him.

As I noted earlier in this thread, Uli also put the syntax dictionary/docs for SuperTalk online.

All I can say about Apple not keeping with its promised 64-bit Carbon API is...yeah, that sucks but when was that? That was like a decade or more ago... Now that I think about it, that is about when I think Apple really started to suck IMO. Anyway that was long ago now. I'm on the if-it-didn't-get-done-why-don't-you-do-it mindset, which can't happen with Private frameworks, which leads to the world of open-source Linuxes and other Unix-like OSes. I'd be done with Apple completely if not for the creativity apps I use working so well and having very intuitive UIs (IMO), Linux has gotten closer over the years though. Still haven't found a great Linux version of a 'GarageBand', a simplified DAW (digital audio workstation) replacement, but I can work on that.

[uliwitness]

I read a post on the SC group recently from one of the SC Devs ( Mark Lucas probably) that said they didn't have all of the source code for SuperEdit and they were relying on executing code in binary blobs.

That's very outdated information. That was the case when IncWell bought SuperCard (or maybe even Allegiant), but when Solutions Etc. took over development work, Mark put in a lot of work years ago to port that code from assembler back to C. Remember, that would have been 68000 assembly, and in the meantime SuperCard has switched to PowerPC and to Intel.

[uliwitness]

Unfortunately that website is still promulgating something I feel is wrong:

Unfortunately, producing a 64-bit version of SuperCard requires a complete rewrite of the software as Apple has gone back on their promise to deliver 64-bit Carbon frameworks.

(...)

Whether Apple made a promise or not, most people round these parts should have learnt, on the basis of 'promises' and 'stretch goals' not to rely on a very large number of pronouncements that software companies come up with:

Apple announced a 64-bit Carbon. They told Mac developers at WWDC which parts would be available. Developers got started on porting their software. Then the year after, Apple retracted their statement and told everyone to drop Carbon and use Cocoa.

I'm not the one who wrote this part of the FAQ (I just edited it with updated information elsewhere, like the Apple Silicon emulation option — Scott or Mark probably wrote this), but to me an announcement of software and then retracting that announcement is a broken promise. Heck, people inside Apple were blindsided by that decision.

I'm not sure if you're aware of the make-up of Solutions Etcetera: Mark is the only programmer. Scott was the business/marketing/web/support guy. It's a lot of work for a single developer to port an entire application the size of SuperCard to Cocoa. In 1989 (when SuperCard was originally written), your app was in full control of the computer. Cocoa expects you to wait for it to call you back. You basically have to turn a classic MacOS app inside-out. (Back when I was at Elgato, we had 3 programmers, a UI designer and a graphic designer to port EyeTV to Cocoa, and it still took Geniatech years to finish that app when they took over the product)

[uliwitness]

Under those circumstances I would have expected BOTH owners to have had backup copies of the source code.

Mark still has the source code, he's confirmed that. But since he didn't do the sales/serial number database and web site, I'm not sure how much of that still exists.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

That's very outdated information.

OK thanks for the clarification. The post I was referring to was sort of a run-down of the history SuperCard, information from my memory (which is not as good as it used to be).
I was never really a user of SuperCard, although I do own a license key for 4.7.3, it's on a backup disk somewhere, so I'm not super-familiar with its 35 year history.

There is a lot of information from yesteryears on this site, and there's probably some more outdated information lurking about.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

an announcement of software and then retracting that announcement is a broken promise

Yeah, I'd be done with Apple but I need it for some proprietary software for the day job.
I'd love to see some usable mac-like open-source OS project like HelloSystem https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/ come to fruition, I'm looking for my retirement OS (in case I'm ever able to retire ) That dude has something against 'darkMode' though

But that's why I'm all about the idea of an xTalk that is as hardware / platform agnostic as possible, and would love some way of scripting in a sand-boxed environments like mobile device tablet/iPad.

[uliwitness]

But that's why I'm all about the idea of an xTalk that is as hardware / platform agnostic as possible, and would love some way of scripting in a sand-boxed environments like mobile device tablet/iPad.

Of course, the lack of a HyperCard-like for iPad is not that nobody wrote it (LiveCode can build for it AFAIR), but that Apple's app store agreement prohibits things like it. But maybe there's other good tablets or the current happenings in US and EU courts will have removed that obstacle.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

Of course, the lack of a HyperCard-like for iPad is not that nobody wrote it (LiveCode can build for it AFAIR), but that Apple's app store agreement prohibits things like it. But maybe there's other good tablets or the current happenings in US and EU courts will have removed that obstacle.

There has been some movement in that regard, at least so far as Apple, perhaps as a result of EU court rulings, now allows Emulators on the Appstore, although as I understand it Apple does not allow apps to use Just-In-Time compiling which is not good for emulators or scripting engines. It seems an app needs to be running on Jail-broken device to run with JIT enabled. I have run classic xTalk stuff on iOS using mac emultors Mini-vMac II, Basilisk II, and Sheepshaver (PPC emulation) on a (Jailbroken) iPad 7th gen but the iOS builds of each of those emulators has their own quirks related to on-screen keyboards and touch-input events to mouse events. I did have a lot of fun trying out 'Oracle Media Objects' (aka 'Plus') using 'iPencil' but emulators are only useful for retro-xTalk(s). I want xTalk to keep moving forward.

Yes LiveCode / OXT Community can 'build' iOS apps (on macOS). The 'build' consists of merging stack file(s) with a pre-built binary, packing the result and any other selected files into the app bundle and then signing it. It's not quite the same as having an xTalk IDE that runs on iOS, although the standalone engine(s) do allow for scripting most of the things the IDE can do, create objects, change properties, scripting etc., it doesn't have all of the other libraries that are part of the IDE.

Court rulings against Apple aside, currently as far as I can tell the best way to do it is to build xTalk 'engine' that compiles to WebAssembly module, or a Javasscript translator so as to piggy-back the language on top of JS in order to run in sand-boxed browser (specifically Safari/WebKit since that's long been another Apple restriction). It seems entirely doable with HTML5 / CSS3 / WASM / JS ES6 (ECMAScript 2015).

There's a demo stack I made to use for testing capabilities of 'Emscripten" asm.js build (not webASM, which would be much smaller than the current minified 28MB .js ) of the OXT community engine:
https://openxtalk-org.github.io/OpenXTalk-Playground/
It's really a bunch of tests, but started adding IDE tools to that 'web-stack' to real-world try out the sandboxed-IDE theory.

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