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1995-06-12
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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.