At last I have acquired a copy of SuperCard, an advanced, souped up version of HyperCard. I have not yet had much of a chance to play with it, but I have skimmed the manuals and talked to a few people who have mastered it already, and I can give you a preliminary report.

The good news is that SuperCard provides full window support, color, object oriented graphics, and a host of other nifty features. The bad news is that it's even slower than HyperCard.

When I heard that you could use SuperCard to develop stand-alone applications, I thought it was a compiler. BUT NOOOO! The stand-alone applications simply include a massive (300K!) run time module. Although it will convert HyperCard stacks automatically, there is some fiddling required, and I have already run into memory problems on my feeble one megabyte machine.

I intend to dive into SuperCard and by next issue I should be able to provide more details. Incidentally, I have also purchased something called "Compile It!" which is a partial compiler. That is, it converts selected bits of script into XCMDs. I am told, however, that in most cases the speed improvement is disappointing. Rumour has it that a true compiler for both HyperTalk and SuperTalk will (eventually) appear.