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Oracle MediaTalk Reference

Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2019 1:56 am
by capellan
Today, looking for another info, I found the Oracle MediaTalk Reference:
https://hypercard.org/mediatalkreferenc ... rence.html

and surprisingly, in 1995 Oracle Media Objects already had a command
for showing the stack in fullscreen:
https://hypercard.org/mediatalkreferenc ... e-144.html

Al

Re: Oracle MediaTalk Reference

Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2019 5:41 am
by FourthWorld
OMO was cross platform, and fullscreen was a popular mode on Windows even then.

Re: Oracle MediaTalk Reference

Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2019 10:17 am
by richmond62
That's odd, I get a 404 with those two URLs.

Re: Oracle MediaTalk Reference

Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2019 10:19 am
by richmond62
But:

My favourite Wayback Machine came up trumps (that's 'trumps' not 'Trump').

https://web.archive.org/web/20191206191 ... rcard.org/

Re: Oracle MediaTalk Reference

Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2019 10:24 am
by richmond62
In fact you can download the Macintosh version of OMO from here,
and then 'ALL' you have to do is find a machine capable of running the software.

https://archive.org/details/Oracle_Medi ... osh_Oracle

It does not work properly with MacOS 10.4.11 and Classic:
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Re: Oracle MediaTalk Reference

Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2019 5:47 pm
by Klaus
I really miss OMOs "Spreadsheet" object!

Re: Oracle MediaTalk Reference

Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2019 6:46 pm
by richmond62
I wonder why Oracle stopped developing it?

Re: Oracle MediaTalk Reference

Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2019 9:32 pm
by FourthWorld
richmond62 wrote:
Wed Dec 11, 2019 6:46 pm
I wonder why Oracle stopped developing it?
I was invited on the advisory panel for the product back in the day. Great product, good product manager, but ultimately they just couldn't find a place for it among Oracle's enterprise-centric offerings.

They're used to the very high margins that characterize that segment, and with OMO's appeal being mostly with indy devs and hobbyists, coupled with the higher-than-average support costs xTalks require compared to end-user products, it just wasn't a good fit.

Similar story with Gain Momentum from Sybase. Wonderful xTalk, best printed documentation ever, but not a strong fit for enterprise vendors, esp at a time when Java was emerging as the de facto standard for enterprise work.

I was part of an advisory team for the small firm that acquired Gain from Sybase. Good people, successful port from Unix to Windows, but by the time they finished it open source languages were talking hold.