"Semi-Automated" Java->Swift conversion of WyldCard for editing/creation?

[Jimw338]

I've looked at the WyldCard repo (https://github.com/defano/wyldcard) and am impressed - except it's in Java. That kind of puts the kibosh on making it into a "native-speed" osx or iOS app (thought how much "native speed" matters these days with multi-GHz processors. I remember processors when Hypercard 1.0 was new). And maybe not be able to distribute anything on the App Store if I ever develop it to that level - depending on whether Apple will allow a Java interpreter/JIT to be included in an App Store app (my guess: no - or at least "Apple might change its mind at any time")

I looked at the WyldCard source and thought for a second I could just convert things one-by-one to Swift (it's only 491 files) - until I saw classes like extending BaseErrorListener which I'm guessing swift doesn't have anything resembling.

Any ideas? Or how to adapt WyldCard to run as a "separated JIT (or even AOT?) layer" that a Swift based interface could then send messages and queries to? One difficulty would be that all the stack data would be contained in

I suppose there's no chance of convincing Apple to actually release the original source? (Thought it might just be a near-unreadable mess of Pascal and assembly.)

[PierreLorenzi]

Hello Jim, thank you for your proposition,

You want HyperCardPreview to support HyperTalk?

I think of it, from time to time, but it would be complex because I'd have to code a new UI, and I'm not ready to do it yet. @uliwitness has a HyperTalk interpreter in C++ by the way, I'm interested by that one. But I'll see.

Apple has stated that they wouldn't release the source code.

[uliwitness]

Bill Atkinson actually said a couple years ago that HyperCard's source code was supposed to be released back when they donated MacPaint and Quickdraw source code to a museum. I don't know what happened, but my guess is some lawyer found something that was either licensed and therefore couldn't be released, or was still making Apple money as a trade secret and therefore couldn't be released.

I'd be happy to see someone use my HyperTalk interpreter for something else. The "Forge" subproject of Stacksmith would likely be a good starting point. It is a command line tool that shows how to compile and run a script, without all the native Mac stuff around it. I'd happily answer any questions you might have.

Note that I've taken a few small liberties in Stacksmith (like Rects and points are actually arrays/dictionaries, not item lists) but it would be fairly easy to replace the Rect/String and Point/String conversion routines to fix that if you wanted 100% HyperTalk compatibility.

[Jimw338]

licensed and therefore couldn't be released, or was still making Apple money as a trade secret and therefore couldn't be released.

Yeah, probably. But isn't that what redaction is for? True, it would mean that it wouldn't compile - but it already uses the 68K API's, probably has a good bit of 68K/PPC assembly. I suppose you could fire up MPW and compile it for SheepShaver (I should try that with the MacPaint code, come to speak of it.)