FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE A Christmas Present from Thoughtful Software -- Free HyperSense Licenses Information contact: Mishelle Baun Thoughtful Software 616 E. Locust St. Ft. Collins, CO 80524 303/221-4596 Internet: mishelle@thoughtful.com A Christmas Present from Thoughtful Software -- Free HyperSense Licenses Fort Collins, Colorado- December 22, 1994- Thoughtful Software has just released a new triple-architecture version of its acclaimed multi-purpose HyperSense authoring environment, and is making a special holiday offer to the entire NEXTSTEP community. "HyperSense is such a versatile tool that we believe every NEXTSTEP user can find a place for it on their dock," stated Thoughtful Software's Director of Development, Doug Simons. "Whether you use NEXTSTEP at work or at home, in an academic environment or a corporate office, HyperSense has something to offer." HyperSense lets anyone create and use interactive documents such as medical and business tutorials, multimedia databases, hypertext documents, personal applications and much more. A drag and drop interface makes document creation easy. Understandable SenseTalk scripts provide the power and versatility to master complex tasks, and support the use of HyperCard stacks which can be converted for use in HyperSense. ---- Free Licenses ---- To give everyone a chance to try HyperSense for themselves, with no restrictions, Thoughtful Software is giving away free licenses good until February 28, 1995. "What's more," Simons added, "we will subtract a dollar a day from the already incredibly-low introductory price of $299 for anyone who takes us up on this offer and then decides to buy HyperSense before the end of February." The offer represents more than a 20% savings for purchasers who act promptly. The price on Dec. 22 1994 is $231, and will increase by one dollar each day until it reaches $299 at the end of February. To take advantage of the special offer, NEXTSTEP users should obtain a copy of the software (details below) and then contact Thoughtful Software to request a free license key. The key enables HyperSense to be used without the usual restrictions imposed when running the program in demo mode. Credit card orders placed by phone, fax, or email will be priced on the date of the order. Checks sent by mail will be priced as of the postmark date on the envelope. The latest release of HyperSense is available by FTP in the /pub/next/HyperSense directory at the Oregon State archive site (ftp.cs.orst.edu), and also on the Stepwise information server and the Purdue archives. The three files: HyperSenseREADME.rtfd.compressed HyperSenseApp.pkg.1.00B11b.tar HyperSenseDocs.pkg.1.00B11b.tar have been submitted to these FTP sites: ftp://ftp.cs.orst.edu/pub/next/HyperSense/ ftp://ftp.stepwise.com/pub/Vendors/Thoughtful_Software/ ftp://sonata.cc.purdue.edu/pub/next/submissions/ The Oregon State site also contains a growing repository of freely available HyperSense documents contributed by users of the program, ranging from a loan calculator which generates nicely formatted amortization schedules, to an extensive tutorial on 16th-century music theory. For those who are unable to obtain HyperSense by FTP Thoughtful Software will ship the software on floppy disks for a small media and shipping charge of $10. ---- The Current Release ---- In addition to support for HP PA-RISC workstations, the new release includes significantly enhanced printing capabilities and other improvements which make the program even more useful for a wide variety of users. HyperSense has been enthusiastically received in the educational, medical and business communities. Users have found HyperSense to be an effective tool for presenting and interacting with text, images and sound. "HyperSense provided me all the tools I needed to create my hypertext dissertation on prostate cancer," said first-time authoring system user Greg Gliemi. "Without it I would have been lost." Highlights of the New Release include: - Support for NEXTSTEP/HP on Hewlett Packard PA-RISC workstations. - New options on the Print panel allow printing of an entire stack of pages, a single page, a window, or the contents of a field. - Many new SenseTalk printing commands and properties give detailed control over any print job, including page size and orientation, margins, number of copies, and multi-up printing (up to 256 pages may be printed on a single sheet). In addition, a single printing session may print selected pages, entire stacks, field contents, window contents, or arbitrary text in any combination. Print orientation (landscape or portrait) may be changed for individual segments within a print session. - An enhanced multi-line Message Box allows multiple commands to be executed interactively at once, including complete "repeat" loops and conditional (if...then) statements. This makes it easy to perform more complex operations on a one-time basis (such as clearing a field on every page of a stack) without the need to create a temporary button for the purpose. - A new "repeat with each ..." form of the repeat command simplifies writing scripts which perform some operation with each child element of some object, or with each word or line of text within a field or container. - Several new or improved documents are included with this release, including an updated Home document and a new DataCopier utility which makes it easy to copy data between documents or to import or export data in plain text files. Standard HyperSense Features include: - A rich document-based architecture, with multiple Stacks of Pages and multiple WindowFrames (window and panel definitions) within any Document. - Multiple Layers of elements on any Page or WindowFrame. Layers can be shared by various Pages in any combination, and can be hidden, redisplayed, and reordered either manually or under script control. - Object oriented drawing, on multiple layers. Each graphic is an independent object that can be resized, repositioned, or hidden. Graphic shapes include rectangles, ovals, lines, polygons, freehand shapes and curve lines. - User interface objects (controls) including fields, push buttons, switches, radio buttons, browsers, sliders, and more. - Drag and drop TIFF and EPS images onto a page (or into text) to create scriptable image elements. - SenseTalk scripts can be assigned to any HyperSense object: Documents, WindowFrames, Stacks, Pages, Layers, and all types of Elements (both graphics and control objects) including Elements embedded within text. - Custom palettes of drag-and-drop elements are easily created. Palettized objects may include fully scripted functionality. - "Point and click" creation of active hypertext links from any Element to any Page of any Document. - Rich text fields with full support for multiple fonts, margins, rulers, spell checking, text-based services (Digital Webster, etc.), and embedded elements within the text. - Scripts can be assigned to any graphics and buttons embedded within text. - Shared and Unique Layers allow for forms-type database functionality plus the flexibility of adding unique fields and elements on individual pages. - Custom Help: Users can easily add context-sensitive help to any document. - Ability to search for text in all fields of a stack, or within a selected field on every page. - An Object Inspector provides convenient access to all object properties. Multiple elements can be selected and modified at once. - HyperSense Browser gives a complete overview of all objects within a document, and permits reordering of pages, layers and elements by simply dragging them to a new position within the browser. - A DocumentTools palette facilitates creating and modifying documents. This panel (which is itself a HyperSense document) provides buttons for creating new documents in several formats, plus tools to make it easy to resize the pages of any stack, to change page colors, and to extend any windowFrame with the automatic addition of navigation buttons. - Digital audio recording, editing and playback capabilities are built in (on machines which support sound). - Exceptionally easy-to-understand SenseTalk scripting language is very English-like, and is compatible with HyperTalk. - Literally hundreds of built-in commands, functions, and object properties provide complete control of all aspects of the HyperSense environment, as well as a full range of capabilities for text manipulation, time and date conversion, mathematical and financial calculations, file import and export, and much more. - Script editing windows provide auto-indenting of scripts. A SenseTalk Browser panel lists all commands and features of the language in a convenient format, with brief descriptions and a fill-in-the-blanks template of each one which can be inserted directly into a script. - Complete serial port access is built into SenseTalk, giving control of laser disc players or any other device which can be controlled through a serial port. - Custom commands and functions can be added to the SenseTalk language through dynamically loaded external modules (XModules). - Optional capability to convert HyperCard stacks into HyperSense documents, with full access to all objects and scripts. - Fully indexed on-line manual, created in HyperSense. - Many sample HyperSense documents are included with the package, and more are freely available at major FTP sites. - A HyperSense-User e-mail list provides users with an open forum for exchanging ideas and receiving ongoing technical support. HyperSense is a registered trademark and SenseTalk and Thoughtful are trademarks of Thoughtful Software. HyperCard and HyperTalk are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. NEXTSTEP is a trademark of Next Computer, Inc.