Anyone may sell or give away copies of Workshop, as long as they do not alter the stack in a way unauthorized by me, or misrepresent the stack or parent FLUX magazine to others. Those who choose to sell Workshop for a nominal fee as shareware may keep any and all proceeds, without payment or obligation to J.R. Mooneyham & Associates (with the exceptions given above about modification and misrepresentation). This makes Workshop an ideal product for computer savvy charity organizations and budding entrepreneurs.
Please note that end users remain responsible for payment of any shareware fees listed in the software.
ATTENTION END-USERS: If you like and use Workshop longer than two weeks, send the shareware fee of $ 20.00 via check or money order payable to J.R. Mooneyham, to:
J.R. Mooneyham
135 Lincoln Ave
Newport, TN 37821
Sorry, no credit cards accepted at this time.
Payment will:
1. Provide you with a code to turn off the shareware reminder dialog that pops up at random when you open Workshop.
2. Payment will register you as the legitimate user of this copy of Workshop, officially permitting you to make as many copies of this stack as you require to use its services, without further cost to yourself or obligation to J.R. Mooneyham & Associates, except for prominent mention of our software's contribution to your future projects (if there are any) and information within your projects by which your own end–users may contact us directly to obtain our software for themselves.
3. Payment of the shareware fee brings you an automatic upgrade to the next version of Devil's Workshop, when it becomes available.
4. Payment of the shareware fee immediately brings you a free bonus mystery gift— IF you send in the fee BEFORE December 31, 1995.
NOTE: Please be sure to provide me with the correct name and version of my software you're currently using (I have quite a few different programs in circulation). In this case, that info would be "Devil's Workshop v1.0". This information will help insure that you get the proper upgrade, for the proper program, as soon as it's released.
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**********FLUX Fast Forward Info Dump************
The Devil's Workshop may be the most powerful HyperCard hacking tool ever released to the public at the time of its debut (in the Summer of 1995). As of that date probably less than one out of a thousand HyperCard stacks in public circulation could successfully resist its technology.
Most HyperCard hackers could probably do just fine with a lesser hacking tool; Workshop's technology is really only required for especially clever scripting tricks a few authors now use in place of, or in conjunction with, HyperCard's standard protection measures. These custom defensive techniques will regularly and easily defeat those hacker tools which do nothing more than strip a password and reset the userLevel of a stack.
However, Workshop's far from being merely one of the best HyperCard hacker tools around; it also offers substantial practical (and less controversial) benefits for average HyperCard developers, as described elsewhere in this text.
To make the best use of Workshop's power, you should already possess roughly an intermediate or moderate level of HyperCard authoring and scripting experience and knowledge. HyperCard beginners are urged NOT to use Workshop until they have gained more expertise in general with HyperCard.
NOTE FROM J.R.: To learn more about HyperCard, you could read HyperCard Headstart parts one and two in the Summer and Fall 94 issues of FLUX (novice level instruction); after those you could use HyperSavvy v1.0 (instruction and working examples of intermediate to advanced level authoring and scripting techniques). After perusing these stacks (and creating a few stacks of your own for hands-on experience), you could also read HyperHacker in the Spring 95 issue of FLUX. HyperHacker is the precursor to a full-fledged book on HyperCard hacking, which will eventually be published as a supplement to the Devil’s Workshop.
In no event will J.R.Mooneyham & Associates or related entities and persons be liable to any individual, group, or organization for any form or amount of damages resulting from the use or inability to use this software.
If you use HyperCard, there's many, many reasons you might wish to use Workshop too. First of all, it can help you regain access to your own stacks in cases where you've forgotten your password, inadvertantly set your userLevel too low, deleted your own back door, or written an anti–hacking script in your stack that's so tough you yourself can't get back in to complete your work.
Workshop might also help in recovering portions of a corrupted stack, in some cases.
And thirdly, Workshop can be great for aiding in the documentation and understanding of more complex or lengthy HC stacks, both your own and those of others, protected or not.
I personally have seen almost all the above circumstances come to pass in my own experience— so these are no idle arguments.
However, I also intend for Workshop to add further flexibility to the FLUX scripting and authoring environment for HyperCard Player users, helping them not only learn more about HyperCard programming, but actually accomplish more of it for themselves, easier, faster, and cheaper than ever before possible. Before Workshop, Player users could author and script their own material within a FLUX Super Stack, then use the FLUX LaunchPad to export it to a separate stack form if desired. However, if they discovered some small thing that needed fixing in a script after launch, they had no choice but to return to the Super Stack version to fix it, then re–launch the stack again. With the release of Workshop, HC Player users can now modify any object script desired in a launched stack, then re–install these scripts and test the results, WITHOUT returning to the Super Stack and relaunching.
Finally, I partly created Workshop simply as a personal aid. I routinely 'break' heavily protected stacks to learn more about hacking and anti–hacking in HyperCard, in general— as well as other scripting matters— because it's fun! But breaking through the same old defensive techniques over and over again just to get to the new and better ones, isn't fun— it's boring. Plus, when you only come across one really challenging stack out of every several dozen likely candidates you find, you get lazy; which means when the real thing shows up it can bite you on the butt before you realize what you've gotten hold of. So I created Workshop to automate the drudge work involved, AND to protect myself against the risks associated with lax vigilance that comes from too much boredom (some particularly hairy stack defenses can trigger self–destructs of the stack involved or even damage other files on your hard disk, in retaliation!)
So I myself will breathe easier— and have more fun than ever— with Workshop around.
I personally think its potential for use in piracy is nearly zip. Why? Because practically no one who's smart enough to be on a Mac in the first place is going to do wholesale copying of other folk's scripts in stacks they plan to distribute to the public. They know that they'd be caught (probably sooner rather than later), and they know there's a pretty strong copyright law in the United States, which could cost them plenty in fines— maybe even prison time.
The same Mac users who actively write and distribute virus programs might be dumb enough to do this— so what's that? Three guys? Out of twelve or fifteen million users? Let'em do it, get arrested, imprisoned, and then we won't be getting quite as many viruses out of them for a few years afterwards— or they might even migrate to the Windows platform, where there's a whole lot more virus writers than you'd expect from a simple extrapolation based on user populations— and where they'd enjoy a lot more company of their own kind. In whatever case, we'd either be rid of them entirely, or see their output greatly diminished so far as Mac viruses are concerned. Case closed.
Besides, I have as many or more stacks in circulation than most scripters out there, and my stuff is just as open to the Workshop's nefarious impact as anyone's else's— maybe even more so, since my stacks are usually a lot richer in advanced scripting techniques than the average stacks around (I'm not being immodest— just factual, ma'am).
Am I worried? No.
Heck, one of the main things I'm trying to do here is teach scripting, and thereby help enhance the attractiveness of the Mac platform itself for everyone, in all sorts of ways. But it takes an enormous amount of time just to learn scripting yourself, let alone turn around and try to document it for everyone else too. I did write HyperSavvy for this purpose, but there's a lot more that could be done in this area...
And I honestly believe stacks like Workshop could help accelerate the process. By making it easier and faster for other HC authors to document their scripting techniques, and present them to others.
First of all, I can only speak here of Power Tools as it accompanied HC v2.1; I've not seen later versions as of this writing.
Power Tools is great in many ways, and actually does a lot more in general for stack development purposes than Workshop. So if you're using Workshop instead of Power Tools, you're really missing out!
Essentially Workshop takes the Export Stack Scripts capability of Power Tools and transforms it into an on–the–fly, fully editable and reversible process, providing much improved object identification/location information, specifically highlighting all invisible objects in a stack, and adding stack protection scanning and breaking functionality as well.
So the best way for owners of the HC Development Kit to use Workshop is in addition to the Power Tools stack, rather than as a replacement for it.
Before I get to the more involved aspects of Workshop behavior, here's the specs on the very birthplace of Workshop-- those of our computers and HyperCard apps most often used to develop, test, and use Workshop. You can use this info to check against your own environment, perhaps solving many problems immediately.
The main Mac is an old 16 MHz IIcx, running system 7.1, with 8 MB of real RAM, and usually set to monochrome video mode. The main HyperCard app is version 2.1, and in its "Get Info" window the setting for Minimum size is 1000 K, and Preferred size 1500 K. This old Mac also has a Iomega 100 MB ZIP drive attached to it, with KeyStroke Recorder/Personal Backup software that has been set NOT to be active during HyperCard operation (KeyStroke seems to conflict with some programs like HyperCard 2.1, Word 4.0, and America Online 2.5.1.)
The secondary Mac is a 33 MHz Performa 460 with 20 MB of real RAM, running system 7.5, and usually set to 8-bit color mode. This Mac’s version of HyperCard is HyperCard Player 2.2, with "Get Info" settings of 800 K Minimum size, 1050 K Preferred size.
I only mention the typical video modes above in case some quirk of your own HyperCard application or Mac makes HyperCard require a bit more memory to run Workshop on your own Mac, compared to the conditions outlined here. In that case, simply click once on your HyperCard application to select it in the Finder, then choose “Get Info” in the File menu. In the window that next appears, adjust the Preferred size up by 100 K or 200 K, and try running Workshop again.
Workshop requires only two things to run: a modern Macintosh computer (one equipped with a hard drive), and HyperCard Player 2.1 or better.
If Workshop fails to correct a problem on its own, and further fails to provide you with adequate information on how to solve the problem yourself, please contact me with as comprehensive a description of the problem as you care to give, and I will upgrade the software online as soon as possible. My U.S. Mail address is:
J.R. Mooneyham
135 Lincoln Ave
Newport, TN 37821
Below is my phone number and e-mail addresses. Sorry, but I can’t take phone-in or e-mail orders for software, or provide technical assistance on this line. Call me and you’ll likely get my answering machine. Please leave your mailing address and phone number, along with any request for information you might have, or a message about a bug in any of our software, and I’ll get back to you or seek out and correct the problem in software, as appropriate. Thanks!
Voice phone: 615-623-0854
AOL e-mail address: JRSpacer
Internet email: JRSpacer@aol.com
Oh yes-- your messages don't have to be only reports of problems with the stack. We also appreciate suggestions for improvements, or just plain old feedback to our efforts, as well! Thanks!
There's really not many; and most users may never encounter or suffer from a one of them. But here they are, for the record...
First of all, there seems to be a bug in HyperCard's cantDelete property so that setting it via script (as Workshop does) sometimes doesn't work reliably. Of course, you can always set this property manually in HyperCard's Protect Stack... dialog, once Workshop has gotten you past the other protection measures, right? Right.
A so-called "standalone" HyperCard stack, created from HyperCard v2.2 or later, might withstand Workshop's onslaught until someone uses ResEdit to change the standalone's creator and document types back to the original stack codes. I've not yet tested this myself, but it seems logical. One reason I think it's possible is that something similar could be done with earlier versions of SuperCard standalones (and maybe present day ones as well). Danny Goodman however (the author of the HyperCard Handbooks), says it's impossible with HC v2.2 or later derived stacks. As he is well connected with the team that developed HyperCard, and should know about such things, maybe this is true. Or maybe his statement is aimed at the average HC author, and NOT hackers like us. I'll let you know what happened when I get the chance to check it out (I don't own HC 2.2/2.3 as of this writing (late May 1995), and have yet to encounter a single standalone HC stack, period— much less found one that was interesting enough to be worth hacking).
Those portions of a stack compiled by something like CompileIt! from Heizer software are protected from the devices of Workshop v1.0, but may (as I understand it) be addressed by lower level disassembler software, available elsewhere. I believe the name of one such program is or was something like MacSnoop(?). In any case, probably very few stacks have more than a small part of their scripts compiled; in my own experience I can't remember a single time the scripts I wanted to see were in compiled code form.
In other words, the reason I can't give you more solid info on where to find these lower level language disassemblers is that I myself haven't had any need or desire for them up to now, and so not really took much notice of them. Sorry.
Of course, most HC hackers won't resort to a lower level disassembler this way to access compiled scripts anyway; it's far too much work for too little reward in most cases. So, considering the fact that Workshop renders all past, present, and maybe even future script-based stack protections obsolete, any HC author hellbent on protecting their script techniques from hackers might want to immediately order CompileIt! from Heizer Software...(heck, from the extra business Workshop may generate for Heizer, those guys should give me a commission, don’t you think? ha, ha)
Though Workshop works just fine with HyperCard Player 2.1 and up (as far as I can tell from testing), it’ll only format scripts during editing for owners of the full–blown HyperCard application. Sorry, Player owners (Luckily this is more an inconvenience for heavy editing than anything else; and a hacker typically isn’t performing heavy editing of a target stack-- just a tad here and a tad there).
Another limitation of Workshop related to its use with HC Player is in the scan reports it’ll give; namely, I’ve seen a Workshop scan report say a stack’s userlevel was 4 when it was really 5, when running with HC Player. The reason? Higher userLevels aren’t normally supported with Player remember, so any open stack atop Player may not ever be able to report back a userLevel higher than 4. Is this particular limitation important for hacking purposes? Nah.
If you're a HyperCard novice, your own inexperience will probably present the biggest limitation on Workshop's usefulness to you— because you simply won't know what to look for or do when you get inside a protected stack. With Workshop a novice might be able to look directly at a powerful protection script from a stack, but not recognize it. And so the novice might have Workshop re–install the script in its original form, back into the stack it came from. This will mean, of course, that the target stack will still enjoy the full strength of its original scripted defenses, once it's back in possession of the scripts again. Help on understanding what to look for in a script, and what to do about it by way of modification, is available in the article HyperHacker, which was published in FLUX Spring 95. An expanded, updated version of HyperHacker will probably be published as a future FLUX EXTRA.
Speaking of the future, Workshop faces the same potential problems of obsolescence as any other stack. Sooner or later it may encounter compatibility problems with a new version of HyperCard, or a Power Mac; whatever. For this limitation there's several alternative fixes: One, send in the Workshop shareware fee so that you get the very next upgrade as soon as it’s available. Or two, always keep a current subcription to FLUX so you'll always get every upgrade to Workshop as soon as it becomes available. Or three, tweak your own copy of Workshop as need be to overcome such problems when they arise. I've left Workshop NON-password protected, and set to userLevel 5, with all HC menus showing, to make such tweaking as easy as possible for you (Of course, you'll have to gain the HC expertise to perform such tweaking on your own, and perform yourself all the rigorous testing and debugging I’d otherwise be doing for you). However you cope with long term obsolescence matters, please remember that I retain the copyright to Workshop, and DON'T want anyone releasing to the public a privately tweaked version of Workshop. Why not? Because I don't want my name, graphics, or scripts used with Workshop–based software I personally haven't tested for myself, period. I'm sure you'd feel the same way about your own stacks too, right? Plus, there’s the risky nature of hacker stacks like Workshop, too. Randomly tweaked copies of the stack would probably be far more prone to damaging the stacks they’re used on, than one as carefully put together as the original. On the flip side, I WOULD like to hear about such tweaks, as these solutions (and the problems they are meant to address) could help me improve and refine future upgrades of Workshop for everyone.
DEPROTECT CAUTION! Lastly, it may be that some stacks will prove resistant to the old Deprotect XCMD that Workshop uses, originally written by Ned Horvath and Allan Foster. For example, stacks set to Private Access can only be rendered inaccessible by DeProtect, as the XCMD strips the password out alright, but the stack still asks for it, and nothing you do (even inputting the original password!), will get you past the password query after using DeProtect (Please note that HyperCard’s Private Access password is a completely different animal than HyperCard’s standard protection password). In that case and others, you'll want to use Unprotect 2.0 or later by John Durocher (or something similar) as a companion stack to Workshop. UnProtect is a much more recent and robust alternative to DeProtect, and can surmount the difficulty just described. Of course, it's pretty unlikely that you'll run across a stack set to Private Access among publically distributed software. About the only ways you might encounter this is if you or a friend accidentally set your own stacks to Private Access and forget the password, or you're trying to break into a roommate's or office co–worker's stack (please don't do these latter things— it's grossly indecent, and just asking for trouble. Take it from me: there's plenty of secrets in this world you just DON'T want to know!).
If you change the filename of the disassembled stack between the time Workshop takes it apart, and the time you ask Workshop to put it back together again, reassembly will probably fail (if you can get it to start up at all).
Another fine way to mess things up is to delete or change the name of an object (fields, buttons, cards) in the disassembled stack, before asking Workshop to re–install the scripts for you. Yes, as little a thing as changing a button name in the original stack might prevent Workshop from re–installing the scripts correctly, or completely.
Feeding Workshop erroneous information when it asks you for guidance will also cause problems.
Incidently, Workshop v1.0 does NOT check the amount of free disk space before a dissassembly; so if you give it a big stack to take apart and you have zero or near zero disk space available, something bad will probably happen. A rule of thumb on disk space? Try to make sure you have seven times as much free space on disk as the size of the stack you want to disassemble. If the target stack is 100 K, you want at least 700 K of available disk space for Workshop to digest it.
Since savvy users ALWAYS keep at least 3 or 4 MB free on disk just for safety purposes if nothing else, this requirement shouldn't be too hard to swallow unless you start dealing with really large stacks.
If you want to cut Workshop's disk space requirements by as much as half, all you have to do is comment out the statement in Workshop's scripts that initiates compaction after a dissassembly. Experienced scripters should be able to track down and modify this statement on their own; and novice scripters shouldn't even be reading this (didn't I tell you novices to leave earlier?).
Though Workshop unlocks stacks, disables all their defenses, and throws the door wide open to anyone wanting to get inside them, still you need to know what you're doing, once inside. Otherwise getting in does you little good.
Workshop alone is designed for use by those already reasonably proficient and familiar with HyperCard authoring and scripting.
This Read Me text offers up much of what you’ll need or want to know about Workshop, but a valuable supplement to this text— a comprehensive reference to HyperCard Hacking in general— will be released as a FLUX EXTRA in an upcoming issue. So if you're at a loss about what to do once Workshop has given you the keys to the store, don't worry; help is on the way.
(If you can't wait for the full reference, refer to its predecessor: the article HyperHacker in FLUX Spring 95)
The Devil's Workshop is just one of many FLUX "EXTRAs"— bonus software utilities and other items that ship bundled with certain new issues of FLUX magazine to FLUX DIRECT subscribers. Not every issue of FLUX is accompanied by EXTRAs, but a lot of them are (And some issues have oodles of them!). Workshop is an EXTRA of FLUX Summer 95. FLUX Winter 95 offered EXTRAs like Vaporware 2.0, FLUX LaunchPad, FLUX ScanPad 512x342, and the first FLUX Index of back issues. The Fall 94 issue before that presented Pathfinder HC v1.0 to subscribers; and with Summer 94 came HyperSavvy v1.0.
You already know what Workshop does. So what are these other EXTRAs all about? Vaporware is a profusely illustrated book–on–disk, detailing a wealth of new product proposals received by Apple Computer in 1990. Some of these ideas seem to have seen realization as of 1995, while others are still waiting in the wings. Also included is an empty template of the book stack, for other aspiring authors to use for their own works. LaunchPad is a FLUX utility which allows HyperCard Player users to create entirely new stacks all their own, through FLUX devices— something not possible by any means before the appearance of recent FLUX issues and LaunchPad. ScanPad is a utility for aiding in the transfer of handsketched artwork into your Mac, via scanner. Pathfinder is a program that answers user questions about the present and future, using the combined intelligence and wisdom of three classics of ancient Chinese philosophy: the I Ching, Tao of Power, and Art of War. HyperSavvy is a book-on-disk providing detailed instruction in intermediate to advanced HyperCard scripting and authoring techniques.
But these are just some FLUX EXTRAs from the past; even more exciting projects are on the way!
Then there's FLUX magazine itself— the "Mothership" of all these far out programs and books.
FLUX is a vehicle which takes users on the wildest ride of imagination they've ever experienced, even effecting changes in a user's own Reality in some cases.
Your world is just never the same again, after a trip on FLUX.
FLUX often exploits the weirder aspects of the latest scientific findings, as well as the most wonderful fantasies and darkest nightmares of computer users and sci fi fans, to create its own unique and mind-bending blend of science fiction/science fact.
Want examples?
The Second Coming explored the possible consequences for humanity when the logical successor to the birth control pill (a death control pill) becomes widely available to the populace.
Project Fledgling outlined the concept for construction of an ultralight, vertical-takeoff-or-landing commutor aircraft in a user’s own garage or backyard.
Champion of Destiny speculated about how one might purposely shift oneself across parallel dimensions to get to the Reality they’d most prefer.
To Whom It May Concern offered up radical ideas for how humanity might deal with invasion by technologically superior aliens, if our standard measures (diplomacy, nuclear weapons, etc.) failed us.
But FLUX isn't only about the future; it's also about today, with how-to books and articles on high level programming/scripting, like HyperSavvy, HyperCard Headstart, and HyperHacker. And money-saving, performance enhancing techno-pieces like the LOLA Blues and Hair Club for Macs.
And yet, the magazine's editorial content isn’t the only place FLUX makes the line between where-you-are and where-you-want-to-be disappear; this zine also offers a full fledged personal software development system and social activist tool kit-- providing users with actual mechanisms for changing their own Reality at will.
In one major warping of What Is, a FLUX Super Stack actually makes HyperCard authoring and scripting free for all Mac users again (it’s been years since this was so), by enabling these functions for HyperCard Player v2.1 and above (Player is bundled free with all Macs sold).
To transform a user’s social or computing environment, the embedded ACT stack offers up a wealth of contact info for Congress, governors, major TV networks, newspapers, and news magazines, as well as the same info for Apple and its developers, Mac magazines and newsletters, user groups, and more.
To change their personal financial status, the FLUX development system makes it easy for users to create Personal Editions of the zine, customized with a user’s own material, that they may then sell or give away as they wish; the fastest and easiest way any computer user anywhere can create their own custom line of state-of-the-art software products with a minimum of effort, time, and trouble (and with no programming required!).
As you can see, FLUX is a personal “Warp Engine” for getting to exotic spots in spacetime, that no one should be without!
Write the script for your own fantasy life with FLUX-- and then live it!
FLUX requires HyperCard Player v2.1 or higher, and may usually be downloaded FREE from America OnLine, as well as found on newer shareware CD-ROMs from EDUCORP and AMUG’s BBS-in-a-Box.
Sadly, our research has shown that many shareware distributors may take an average of seven months(!) to make individual issues of FLUX magazine available to their users! And even then users may often NOT get the FLUX EXTRAs that subscribers received along with a particular issue of the mag.
So not only are non–subscribers often forced to wait more than half a year to get this exciting software, but they often don't get the entire package either, when they finally do locate a particular issue!
But you don't have to wait, or miss out. You can become a FLUX DIRECT subscriber, and enjoy being on the cutting edge of Mac media today and tomorrow!
A four issue subscription (FLUX is published quarterly), including all EXTRAs that might accompany any issue, as well as FREE unclassified ads in each issue, and more, is just $49.50, until December 31, 1995.
Please make checks or money orders (sorry, no credit cards accepted at this time) payable to J.R. Mooneyham, and send to J.R. Mooneyham, 135 Lincoln Ave, Newport, TN 37821.
I'd like to thank Ned Horvath and Allan Foster for creation back in 1988(?) of the deprotect XCMD, and Jim Parshall of Dome Software Corporation for his Progress Window XCMD, which he made available for free non-commercial use, and is used in Workshop.- JRM•
