Squeak: Open Personal Computing and Multimedia

Squeak: Open Personal Computing and Multimedia

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, and Linux. 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 of Squeak as a Multimedia Tool. Written by the leading experts in the worldwide Squeak community, this book assembles a compelling vision of what programming can be. Squeak: Open Personal Computing and Multimedia is the only book on Squeak that addresses the advanced features for the student, researcher, multimedia developer, open source developer, hobbyist, and the professional. Developed for Smalltalk, it is for anyone that wants a powerful, cross-platform, and open alternative to the traditional multimedia and exploratory languages. FEATURES AND BENEFITS CD-ROM included: Contains the complete Squeak environment, which consists of the version 2.9 virtual image and complete sources, and the virtual machine ports for a wide range of processors and operating systems. Also, numerous tutorials and Squeak applications. - Foreword by Alan Kay, Vice President of Research for Walt Disney Imagineering and the vision behind Squeak. - THE authoritative guide, to the use of Squeak as a multimedia tool: Provides details on 3-D computer graphics, advanced UI, streaming audio, computer music, and other multimedia topics. - Shows how Squeak supports the open source developer, from building and extending cross-platform software, to eXtreme Programming (XP). - Illustrates how to use Squeak to create and extend virtual machines for multimedia or embedded systems, such as cable set-top boxes and video game consoles. 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. 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 like eXtreme Programming ). - For students and others interested in virtual machines (e.g., for embedded systems), the chapters on Squeak's virtual machine (especially Back to the Future and 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