Global Network Navigator - Issue #2 - January 1994
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At-Your-Service, Version 1.2
By Arsenio Santos
About At-Your-Service
When Apple first revealed HyperCard to the public, it was hailed as a major development in information processing. Its intuitive presentation, open-ended design, and ease of use held great promise for Macintosh users in almost every field. However, a strange thing happened over the decade since HyperCard's initial release -- people stopped using it. This is not due to any overwhelming flaw of the product; HyperCard truly is an amazing system of information organization, and it still holds great promise. Nor is it due to lack of support; there is a broad range of HyperCard applications available, with more on the way. The sad truth may be that people simply can't find enough uses for HyperCard.
This may change with Version 1.2 of At-Your-Service (AYS), a communications package designed around the HyperCard system. By adapting the necessities of a communications package to HyperCard's cards-in-a-stack model, Tim Barlow (AYS's author) has created a virtual Rolodex for remote services like public access or campus information systems. AYS seems to be the latest member in the expanding field of graphical user interfaces that remove the burden of terms like telnet, rlogin and ftp, and present an intuitive way to traverse the Internet. But does AYS stack up to predecessors such as gopher and Mosaic?
Performance Review
Since At-Your-Service is based on HyperCard, the application works through a combination of stacks and cards. A stack represents a virtual toolkit of different sites and services that users can access. Each stack is composed of any number of Service cards, and each card contains the parameters necessary to uniquely define a service and to connect to it. The Installer stack (AYS' main component) allows the user to add or delete Service cards onto itself, as well as copy any of its cards to other stacks. This flexibility lets users mix and match their favorite services together in bundles organized by their own particular logic.
Furthermore, all of the activities necessary for accessing services are rendered in the HyperCard fashion of flipping through cards and pressing a button. With AYS, the type of connection is hidden from general sight, as is the login name, password, or any of the countless parameters that someone searching around the Internet generally has to deal with. Instead, you simply select the card that contains the service you want to connect to and press the Connect button. Multiple connections are made possible simply by leaving one card up on your screen and selecting another from the stack. In fact, just about every feature in AYS comes across in a simple, logical manner.
Customization of AYS is just as easy. You can sort the cards in your stack. You can also mark certain cards for quick access, which is helpful when your stack gets filled with cards (which can happen surprisingly quickly). In addition, AYS takes advantage of HyperTalk, the scripting language embedded in HyperCard. AYS defines communications-oriented HyperTalk extensions, and doing so, allows the user a large degree of customization. In fact, the user's manual includes a few sample scripts that illustrate how easy it is to automate otherwise menial tasks with the click of your mouse. Together, these features make up an environment where users can work with stacks which are tailor-made for their own personal needs.
Installation
Most Macintosh users may feel that their copy of HyperCard has collected far more dust than information, and for them the installation of AYS could be daunting. Happily, the package comes with two separate installation documents. The smaller document explains the few steps that need to be taken in order to get AYS running at all. The larger document goes into detail, explaining the process of installing cards into the Installer stack, and subsequently installing services into other stacks. Unfortunately, HyperCard applications are almost always plagued by the seemingly inherent confusion of installation within the HyperCard system, and although these two documents are both as clear and helpful as possible, the bottom line is that installation may be a challenge. Be forewarned.
AYS is a shareware product, available to be downloaded from the following anonymous ftp sites:
mac.archive.umich.edu, in the mac/hypcard/mactools directory;
sumex-aim.stanford.edu, as info-mac/card/at-your-service-10.hqx
Notes and Bugs
At-Your-Service runs on Macintoshes with System 7.0 or better. In addition, AYS requires HyperCard version 2.0 or later. To take full advantage of the communications tool provided, MacTCP also needs to be installed. Finally, in order to print out the 50+ page manual that comes with AYS, Microsoft Word is required.
Note that At-Your-Service is shareware, and until the registration fee (currently $30 per copy or $300 for a site license) is submitted, the program will maintain service connections only for five minutes before automatically disconnecting.
Version 1.2 of AYS was officially released on December 11, 1993. While this new version has been tested extensively, if you see any strange behavior or bugs, feel free to mention them to the author: tim.barlow@lib.utas.edu.au.
Recommendation
At-Your-Service is built around the simple premise of making connections to services more hassle-free. While this premise is not original, the product is one of its finest examples, and possibly the best Macintosh-based communications package available in the public domain today. Once the initial headache of installing AYS is surmounted, it should prove to be a boon to almost anyone, as well as make Macintosh users take a second look at their dusty copies of HyperCard
Apple Library Users Group - ALUG Newsletter Winter 1994
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Zephyr: An Automated Current Awareness Program Using HyperCard
Thom Deardorff
Are you interested in creating customized reports for faculty or teachers
listing newly received materials in your collection? How about
automatically sending those results to the requester? It is now possible
to create such a program using HyperCard and At-Your-Service, a new
software program that provides communication extensions for HyperCard.
During the past summer, I became interested in developing a HyperCard
stack that would automatically search an online catalog and communicate
the results via email to a search requester. After a lengthy
investigation of ftp sites, HyperCard books and assorted gurus, it became
apparent that no such program was available. I posted a query to the
HyperCard listserv on the internet in an effort to get information on any
program that might provide the necessary communication functions for
HyperCard. I received a note from Tim Barlow of the University of
Tasmania stating that he was working on a program that would provide the
needed communication tools for HyperCard. The program, At-Your-Service,
was able to provide the extensions and scripts necessary to develop a
current awareness project.
At-Your-Service, (AYS), requires System 7 and HyperCard 2.x. To connect
to tcp/ip network (such as the internet), you will need MacTCP 1.1, and
an ethernet connection. The power of AYS lies in its ability to provide
connections to other computers and to analyze and respond to received
information. The program has extensions for HyperCard that allow for the
creation of “services” that connect to remote computers. The program
consists of an installer stack, an example stack, communication tools and
a manual. The installer stack allows for creation and testing of
services. Each service consists of fifteen service definitions including
name, type of connection, login script and the logout script. The example
stack, which was created from the installer stack, has a number of cards
for accessing online catalogs in Australia, North America and Europe.
All of the parameters and scripts for these services are readily
accessible in the stack and are good models for developing your own
services. In addition to the stacks, AYS comes with communication tools
needed for connecting with remote computers and providing terminal
emulation. The appropriate communication tools must be installed in the
system folder for services to operate properly. The manual, one of the
most thorough I have seen for a HyperCard application, provides extensive
information on how to define services and how to create scripts that use
AYS HyperCard extensions. The latest release of AYS is available on
the internet from the Macintosh ftp sites at mac.archive.umich.edu and
sumex-aim.stanford.edu. AYS is shareware and costs $30 for individuals;
the copies available at the ftp sites are fully-functioning except that
services will terminate after five minutes. All in all, At-Your-Service
is a very worthwhile program that greatly expands the capabilities of
HyperCard by providing the tools to communicate and control remote
computers; at $30 it is a bargain.
The program that I created with AYS and HyperCard, Zephyr, was designed
to provide faculty and students with customized electronic-mail reports
on new additions to the library collections. The stack consists of cards
which have information for conducting a search and mailing the results,
the scripts and resources installed from At-Your-Service, and the scripts
written to interact with our online catalog and email system. To create
a new search the new card command is selected from the HyperCard menu and
then six fields are filled out on the card: the name and email address of
the requester, the database to be searched, the next search month, the
search terms and the name of the search. Search terms or parameters are
developed after conversations with faculty members to determine their
areas of interest. Zephyr works best when it searches rather broad
subject fields since there will be a better chance that some new material
will be received every month. For this type of program to function, it
is necessary to have a field in your catalog that has a date that
material is received. We used the cataloging date to limit searches.
Alternatively for searching citation databases such as Medline or Eric,
one could limit a search by the date citations are added to the database.
Once the searches are entered into Zephyr, all that is needed to run the
searches and to mail the results is to open the stack and start the
program.
When searching is initiated, Zephyr first checks for any pending searches
for the previous month. If it finds a pending search, it logs into a
campus computer. That computer then logs into the campus information
system and opens the library catalog. The terms in the search parameter
field are then sent to the online catalog and the search is performed ––
in the example the terms "copyright.de." are sent for searching. After
the search is performed Zephyr sends a limit command to select material
that was cataloged during the month displayed in the next search field
"10" (October ) in the example. If no material was received during the
previous month, a message to that effect is put into the results field
for that search. If material was received during the previous month a
command is sent so that the data can be captured and placed in the
results field. Zephyr then continues searching until all searches are
completed. At that point, it exits the library catalog on the campus
system and returns to the computer it logged in on. The program then
goes through the stack and mails out the search results from each card
using the Unix mail command. After the last search result is mailed out
the program logs off the campus computer.
Although Zephyr is not yet in full production mode, the initial response
has been enthusiastic. Zephyr provides a customized service of value to
library users with minimal cost and little ongoing staff time. In the
near future we plan to link the program with document delivery and
develop connections to other databases on our campus network. Any
librarian interested in this type of service should investigate
At-Your-Service and try their hand at writing scripts to run searches on
their library catalog.
Author information:
Thom Deardorff is Coordinator for Access Services at the University of
Washington Libraries. He can be reached at the Allen Library, FM-25,
University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195. Phone (206) 685-1469
