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FAQ

I had hardware problems on my old Mac a couple of weeks ago, and thought for a while that this source code had been lost. When we were able to get the machine operational again, I wanted to be sure that the work I put into this software years ago would have a chance to do some good.

Why is it open source?

Why not? I had been searching for a politically neutral open source license and found one. It works. Have fun.

What role do you want to play in the evolution of MacBird?

Sorry, but I already am over-committed with 1500 websites on EditThisPage.Com, and more work to do with web development systems, I can't add MacBird to what I'm already committed to.

You have all the source code, that should reveal anything I might know, or might have forgotten about the code. If something interesting happens, I might be lured into participating. Let's see how it goes.

What if nothing happens?

It's possible that nothing will happen with MacBird now, maybe it'll happen in a couple of years, or maybe never. Nothing ventured nothing gained. It's possible, on the other hand, that MacBird might be a seed that grows into something interesting. As far as I know there's nothing in the open source world that does what it does.

Where is the app?

It's in the IOWA folder in the download. It's called MacBird. There are sample cards in the Sample Cards folder, some of them even work!

Why was it called IOWA?

Iowa was the codename for what eventually became MacBird. We were running thru all the four-character geographic names we could think of. IOWA was cute because it also sounds like IOA, which is an acronym for Interactive Object Architecture, which is the interface between MacBird and the objects it runs, things like popup menus, edittext boxes, etc.

What is this Applet Toolkit thing? Is this Java?

It's not Java, it's C.

Back when MacBird was learning to fly, Java was called Oak, and was gestating inside Sun. We called our toolkit the Applet Toolkit because it was designed to assist in the creation of small scriptable apps, like MacBird. We thought the Applet idea was cool. Apparently Sun did too.

On the other hand, it might make sense to port the Applet Toolkit to Java, or steal ideas from it to help build easy scripting connections between code written in Java and the rest of the galaxy.

How does MacBird relate to Frontier?

All of its scripting features come from an external scripting system.

Frontier is completely wired up to MacBird, but any scripting system could be wired in. The interfaces are fairly clean, I think.

MacBird does not have a script compiler, interpreter or object database.

How does MacBird relate to XML?

Not at all. It predates XML by quite a few years.

However, it would make sense to define a file format that was XML-compatible tagged text. It would be a straightforward thing to do.

I'm confused, isn't Frontier commercial?

It sure is!

MacBird is an app we stopped working on a few years ago. We are still actively working on Frontier, doing lots of cool web things like Manila.

MacBird is open source, Frontier is commercial.