Squeak Open Personal Computing and Multimedia

by Guzdial, Mark J.; Rose, Kimberly M.

• ISBN13: 9780130280916
• ISBN10: 0130280917
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2019-11-21
• Publisher: Pearson

Summary

The only advanced book on Squeak, an important up-and-coming programming language, and includes an introductory chapter to help those who know programming but not Squeak. Squeak is the only tool that allows users to explore computer music, digital sound, advanced user interfaces, 3-D computer graphics, Flash animation, and virtual machine creation (such as for embedded systems) across Windows, Macintosh,andLinux. This book is the best documentation of Squeak for those purposes.Provides details on 3-D Computer Graphics, Advanced UI, Streaming Audio, and other multimedia topics. Provides detailed tours of the architecture of a virtual machine (including tradeoffs), porting it to multiple platforms and extensions mechanisms. Includes description of the efforts of an Open Source Community.Appropriate for all professionals in Advanced Object-Oriented Programming, Multimedia Systems and Developments, and Software Engineering Special-Topics: Open-Source, and Embedded Systems fields as an authoritative guide to the use ofSqueakas a Multimedia Tool.

Author Biography

Mark Guzdial is an Associate Professor with the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research focuses on learning sciences and technology, specifically, "collaborative Dynabooks," which are tools that support learning through collaborative multimedia construction.

Kim Rose is a member of the senior technical staff at Walt Disney Imagineering and part of Alan Kay's Media Research Croup. Kim is a media developer, media critic, and a cognitive scientist. Kim has been part of the "Squeak Central" development team from the time of Squeak's inception in 1996.

Table of Contents

Part One: Squeak for the Programmer and Media Developer	1	(148)
Squeak for Nonnative Speakers	3	(36)
An Introduction to Morphic: The Squeak User Interface Framework	39	(30)
Alice in a Squeak Wonderland	69	(28)
Networking Squeak	97	(52)
Part Two: Squeak for the Systems Programmer	149	(144)
Back to the Future	151	(20)
Back to the Future Once More	171	(14)
A Tour of the Squeak Object Engine	185	(30)
Porting Squeak	215	(48)
Extending the Squeak Virtual Machine	263	(30)
Part Three: Squeak for the Toolkit Programmer	293	(158)
MathMorphs: An Environment for Learning and Doing Math	295	(46)
Extending MathMorphs with Function Plotting	341	(36)
Music and Sound Processing in Squeak Using Siren	377	(46)
Streaming Audio	423	(10)
Embracing Change with Squeak: Extreme Programming (XP)	433	(18)
Part Four: Squeak for the Future	451	(52)
Computers and Squeak as Environments for Learning	453	(30)
The Future of Squeak	483	(20)
Subject Index	503

Excerpts

Squeak is an open programming language designed especially for personal computing and multimedia. It's certainly the most cross-platform multimedia platform in existence. What's especially interesting is that Squeak is written almost entirely in terms of itself--for example, it is possible to extend Squeak with the speed of native processor primitives without ever writing a line of C code. This book provides a guide to some of the exciting potential of Squeak. It's not a tutorial (though there are some tutorial chapters), but instead, the book offers a path into some of Squeak's unique features: For programmers and others interested in Squeak, this book provides in-depth presentations of some of the most exciting aspects of Squeak, such as Morphic and the internals of Squeak. The final chapters point toward the future of Squeak and where it might be used. For multimedia developers, there are chapters here on a range of the multimedia capabilities available in Squeak, from advanced graphics and networking, through specific applications like computer music and streaming audio. For application developers who want to build on Squeak, the chapters on how to port and extend Squeak explain the process, and several of the chapters point to examples of development on top of Squeak (including examples of applying new development methodologies likeeXtreme Programming). For students and others interested in virtual machines (e.g., for embedded systems), the chapters on Squeak's virtual machine (especiallyBack to the Futureand the tour of the object engine), how to port it, and how to extend it provide some of the best writing available yet on an increasingly important technology.We (the editors and authors of this book) have been living Squeak for some five years now, but for many of you, this book will be your introduction to the wonderful world of Squeak. In another sense, though, if you have used a personal computer in the last twenty years, youhavealready been introduced to Squeak. Squeak is quite literally the direct descendant of the originalSmalltalkwork through which the desktop personal computer was invented. The legendary demonstration of Smalltalk to Steve Jobs of Apple Computer by Adele Goldberg and her team at Xerox Pare in 1979 (based on which Apple developed the Lisa and then the Macintosh) was running much of the exact same code that you're running when you run Squeak.Of course, Squeak has been advanced considerably from that base system, but mostly just in the last five years. The technical story of how Squeak came to be and how it was developed from that original Smalltalk is told in the reprinted chapterBack to the Futurein this volume. The challenge posed by that story, though, is made throughout this book.What if those who developed the desktop personal computer from the original Smalltalk workmissedsomething? The developers of the Apple Macintosh operating system, the Microsoft Windows operating system, and all the other desktop systems didn't start from the actual work at Xerox PARC, but from impressions and demonstrations. What if the fifteen years of the development of the desktop personal computer between 1980 and the start of Squeakwent down the wrong path(or at least, didn't go down therightpath)?That's the question that Squeak allows us to ask. Squeak offers us the opportunity to start at the same place as Steve Jobs and others did some twenty years ago, but to explore a different future for personal computers. The researchers at Xerox PARC are hailed for inventing and integrating the windows, icons, menus, and mouse pointer into the "WIMP" desktop user interface that we all know today, but their visionalsoincluded: the computer as ameta-medium that's completely personalizable with software that's portable anywhere (from embedded and ha