[squeak-dev] Some questions about MIDI

Stéphane Rollandin lecteur at zogotounga.net
Thu Sep 1 14:01:18 UTC 2022


> I think it's worth fixing the stuff in the image so it is not broken and 
> bitrotten.
> Like for example the MidiInputMorph.

Oh yes, it is definitely worth it - and getting back the MIDIFileWriter too.
> I have looked at your music projects, game projects and L-System also :-)
> It is very impressive. muO is intimidating. It is so extensive and 
> complex I don't know where to start.

I tried to make things easy to start with in the tutorials section of 
the help browser. I should of course make many more of them.

Now it's no wonder that many things in muO may seem unintuitive to a 
non-musician. Musical representations is in itself very specific as a 
technical domain, and there are several original takes on different 
issues in muO, and lots of different entry points.

I tried to outline them in the help pages, again.


> I really like your L-System with the ability to zoom in on the canvas.

Yes, this is something I did not emphasize when introducing my work here 
on the list, because it is an orthogonal (sub)project: all graphical 
editors, both in muO and in my game engine, are instances of the same 
kind of morph, the zoomable field. This makes them very capable in 
handling both tiny details and large structures, with a simple gesture 
for interactive zooming and in-place "floating" submorphs.

I should at some point modularize muO to make the zoomablefields 
available by themselves.

Actually, that's also a reason why I would like people to somewhat 
investigate muO (and Roguerrants): there are several classes of tools 
there that are interesting by themselves and could be used in different 
contexts, for example notebooks, zoomable fields, reactive tables, menu 
destructuring, modular agencies, lambda message sends.

I would be much more motivated to undertake the tedious work of making 
some or all of them separately available, if there was a manifest 
interest for that - but at the moment most people are not even aware of 
their existence.


> I agree with you here, muO is almost unbelievable. In a good way :-)

Thanks! In fact it is equivalent in scope to other serious frameworks 
for computer-assisted musical composition, and in my (no so humble, in 
that case) opinion, even superior to some of them.

In a sense, muO is the work I would have done if I had followed an 
(ideal) academic career (I studied physics for research, but did not 
pursue) - it is a long-term research endeavor.

Now that, after twenty years or so, I got most of the results I was 
trying to achieve, and that I am somewhat moving towards another domain 
with Roguerrants, I would very much like to share what I did.

To me it would also be a way to illustrate the amazing power for 
experimentation and liveness we get from Smalltalk and Morphic, and show 
the world what a marvelous tool we have with Squeak.


Best,

Stef



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