[Newbies] audio query

[Kenneth Sherwood]

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?

Many thanks...
Ken


__________________________________
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
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