Jeff -
Great post. I think that the goal of "making a cartoon like Homestar Runner" is a great goal for Squeak's media capabilities; I hope you succeed!
On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 13:11:53 -0500, Jeffrey T. Read bitwize@snet.net wrote:
Fellow Squeakers,
I have read the messages of others concerning Squeak's multimedia "promise" vs. what it is actually being used for. I think they raise some good points and Squeak isn't nearly what it could be. I'm one of those people who saw the multimedia aspects of Squeak and came to it for that purpose, when I opened it up I thought "Wow! There's so much good stuff in here! When will someone put it all together into something REALLY cool?" So Squeak to me is at the same time much more and much less than other multimedia programs.
Consider that animation is a very hot thing on the Web, yet Squeak has virtually no presence in this arena. It is nearly dominated instead by an awful little program called Macromedia Flash. In addition to hacking, I also draw comics and sometimes make the occasional animation. But it hasn't been since Autodesk Animator that I have found an animation program I actually liked. Squeak, as a complete programming environment with a fast graphical subsystem, has the potential to be far more powerful and capable than Flash ever was yet no one is doing anything with it in this regard.
Mind you, my purpose is not to turn Squeak into Flash, but rather to make things like "Homestar Runner" (a very popular and funny Web cartoon) possible in Squeak, in a manner that they really haven't been.