As a writer and non-programmer (high school Fortran in 1986) who has used out-of-the-box tools such as flash and dreamweaver, I've just begun teaching myself Squeak--which was recommended by a hypertext writer/aquaintence Jim Rosenberg. My interest is in building interactive text / audio projects and live-art-performance tools in a user-defined workspace apart from the constraints/habits associated with Flash and Director, and without the platform dependence and proprietary concerns. I've gathered what seem to be the "classic" beginner texts: Squeak: Learn Programming with Robots, Squeak: A Quick Trip to ObjectLand, and Squeak: Object-Oriented Design with Multimedia Application (Guzdial).

Can anyone speak to the multimedia potential of Squeak and/or its likely development trajectory, especially with regard to audio? The midi tools and synthesis look promising, but as I've mostly worked with recorded voices, I was worried to see no apparent support for compressed audio. Most of my searching in the news-groups has turned up dead-ends, like the tool called "Siren" that is now written for a different smalltalk dialect. I see the Guzdial now seems to be publishing books on Python and Java as "multimedia" languages, and I sense much development work must be going into Croquet.

So in short, can someone with experience using squeak in a multi-media presentational format, especially audio, reassure me that what will be the somewhat steeper learning curve (for a self-taught, non-programmer) will pay off?

__________________________________
Kenneth Sherwood, PhD
Associate Professor of English
Graduate Program in Literature and Criticism
110 Leonard Hall
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Indiana, PA 15705

www.sherwoodweb.org