AGREE at CarltonFields.com wrote:
>Squeak is an ultimately extensible mature development environment,
>providing pixel-for-pixel machine independence with full multi-media
>capability across ALL modern platforms.

Almost :)

Comparing Squeak to such multimedia authoring tools such as iShell, GLPro
and Director (and, yes, Hypercard :),  Squeak has some amazing abilities,
but also lacks some features which the other tools seem to take for granted.

IMHO Squeak is very close to being a viable alternative to some very
expensive multimedia software (yay!).  A few key additions plus an overall
increase in speed would make it.

What do the multimedia people on this list think are those key additions?
My opinion is "full multi-media capability" needs at least:

* Better control of the screen - ability to determine host os colour depth,
and to change underlying display to different height/width/depth

* Fast reading of jpeg files.

* ability to read audio by streaming (rather then reading the whole file
into the image)

* a faster and smoother TransitionMorph

Other abilities which popup are things such as:

* multiple fonts in text windows, and faster display of text windows

* ability to read and display mpeg video and mp3 audio

* ability to create the main host OS window in various shapes and colours

* a nice drag and drop creation environment (something like iShell's?)

* ability to read dbf files into an internal object store

* palette control in 256 colour mode

* MCI control under windows (and mac equivalent)

* real-time anti-aliasing of fonts

Please don't take this as a winge!  I know a lot of these are already in
the pipeline and that I can write the others myself.  I just wanted to get
other people's views on what they think is necessary to be able to deliver
multimedia apps in Squeak.

Cheers,

Russell


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Russell Allen

russell.allen at firebirdmedia.com

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