Play consecutive sounds without blocking

I want to play one .wav file, then play another when it's finished (a
spelling word and a sentence). But I want the user to be able to type while
hearing the word and sentence.

Here's my attempt:

[(Sound fromFile: 'word'.wav') woofAndWait.
(Sound fromFile: 'sentence'.wav') woof] fork

The fork doesn't seem to be happening, or at least the woofAndWait is making
the whole program wait.

Can anyone suggest a way to accomplish this?

Mark,
"Mark Wilden" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...
> I want to play one .wav file, then play another when it's finished (a
> spelling word and a sentence). But I want the user to be able to type
while
> hearing the word and sentence.
>
> Here's my attempt:
>
> [(Sound fromFile: 'word'.wav') woofAndWait.
> (Sound fromFile: 'sentence'.wav') woof] fork
>
> The fork doesn't seem to be happening, or at least the woofAndWait is
making
> the whole program wait.
To get it to run in the background, try #forkAt:, with a priority integer as
the argument.  I usually use something like:

 [myObject whatever] forkAt: Processor userBackgroundPriority

Note that this is from memory, as opposed to being copied from a workspace,
but it should be very close.

HTH,

Don

>
> Can anyone suggest a way to accomplish this?
>
>

Mark Wilden wrote:

> [(Sound fromFile: 'word'.wav') woofAndWait.
> (Sound fromFile: 'sentence'.wav') woof] fork
>
> The fork doesn't seem to be happening, or at least the woofAndWait is
> making the whole program wait.

I haven't tried this, but #woofAndWait ends up in
WinMMLibrary>>playSound:hmod:fwdSound: and that method is not "overlapped"
(hence blocks execution of other Smalltalk Processes whilst it's running, even
if it's run in a background Process).

Try temporarily changing the definition to:

playSound: aString hmod: anExternalHandle fdwSound: anInteger
    <overlap stdcall: bool PlaySoundA lpvoid handle dword>
    ^self invalidCall

(the word "overlap" before "stdcall" is the only difference) and see if that
makes it work how you'd expect.

    -- chris

"Chris Uppal" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...
>
> > [(Sound fromFile: 'word'.wav') woofAndWait.
> > (Sound fromFile: 'sentence'.wav') woof] fork
> >
> > The fork doesn't seem to be happening, or at least the woofAndWait is
> > making the whole program wait.
>
> WinMMLibrary>>playSound: aString hmod: anExternalHandle fdwSound:
anInteger
>     <overlap stdcall: bool PlaySoundA lpvoid handle dword>
>     ^self invalidCall
>
> (the word "overlap" before "stdcall" is the only difference)

This worked great, Chris - many thanks. I don't think I would have been able
to figure this out without your help.

Mark,

> > WinMMLibrary>>playSound: aString hmod: anExternalHandle fdwSound:
> anInteger
> >     <overlap stdcall: bool PlaySoundA lpvoid handle dword>
> >     ^self invalidCall
> >
> > (the word "overlap" before "stdcall" is the only difference)
>
> This worked great, Chris - many thanks. I don't think I would have
> been able to figure this out without your help.

Just for your reference, this is discussed in the Education Centre at:

http://www.object-arts.com/Lib/EducationCentre4/htm/externalinterfacing.
htm

and overlapped calls in particular at:

http://www.object-arts.com/Lib/EducationCentre4/htm/overlappedcalls.htm

Another, more flexible alternative, would be to use DirectSound. Some
time ago I resurrected the old Dolphin DirectX packages from Dolphin
2.1 and converted them to D5. There's not a whole lot there, but
DirectSound works okay as far as I can remember. Take a look at:

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=dolphin+directsound&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8
&oe=UTF-8&selm=3ec0ca8e%40news.totallyobjects.com&rnum=1

Best regards,

Andy Bower
Dolphin Support
www.object-arts.com

Andy,

> Another, more flexible alternative, would be to use DirectSound. Some
> time ago I resurrected the old Dolphin DirectX packages from Dolphin
> 2.1 and converted them to D5. There's not a whole lot there, but
> DirectSound works okay as far as I can remember. Take a look at:
>
> http://groups.google.com/groups?q=dolphin+directsound&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8
> &oe=UTF-8&selm=3ec0ca8e%40news.totallyobjects.com&rnum=1

Followed that up, thanks.  The implementation seems to assume the existence of
'WAVE.DLL', which I don't have -- is that something that was part of the
original package ?

    -- chris

I wrote:

> The implementation seems to assume the
> existence of 'WAVE.DLL', which I don't have -- is that something that was
> part of the original package ?

Never mind.  I found a copy on an old NT(!) machine.  A bit of tweaking and
direct sound seems to be working fine.

Ta.

    -- chris

[Once *again* apologies if you see this twice -- I am getting really sick of
<Nildram>'s pathetic news service]

I wrote:

> The implementation seems to assume the
> existence of 'WAVE.DLL', which I don't have -- is that something that was
> part of the original package ?

Never mind.  I found a copy on an old NT(!) machine.  A bit of tweaking and
direct sound seems to be working fine.

Ta.

    -- chris