Re: How to Fade-In/Fade-Out a Sampled/Repeating/Mixed Sound--another Elephant through a keyhole!

Dan,

Wow.  This is unknown territory to me.  Can you point me towards some kind of example of initializing an FMSound in this way to start trying to figure out what you meant by all of that?  Once I have a place to start I can usually get somewhere (although my debugging skills are still sort of limited to adding a bunch of "Transcript show: ..." code to a method).

I still consider myself new to Squeak and have realized that it is not the language that is difficult, but the complexity of the problems (and therefore solutions) that are "documented" in the code that everyone advises you to read to learn from.  It's not that it's hard to find some code that does something, it's hard understanding what it does!  For me, it's an endless loop of struggling to figure out how to do something because I can't understand how something I DO know how to use does what it does, etc, etc...  I think this is what many people are referring to with the many posts about the "Elephant through the keyhole."  From my point of view, Squeak is being used by very smart people solving difficult, specialized problems--not by ordinary programmers using Squeak to do things that many other people do as well.

Thus, because Squeak is not "mainstream", it's not like you can just find a code snippet that does what you want with a few Internet searches to begin your exploration like you can with the endless varieties of VB or .NET, but I find myself increasingly drawn to Squeak nonetheless because it feels like anything is possible with an EQUAL amount of elegance.  The same things are possible in other languages, too (if the computer can do it!), but the solutions often feel like a hack.  I use a lot of VBA at work, and sure, you can do it, but...yuck.  Everything that you WANT to do is ALWAYS a work-around of some kind.

I spent many years trying to write my own language/OS in assembly language before I even knew that Smalltalk had been invented.  That's what I got for studying Physics instead of Computer Science, I guess!  Well, Squeak is very nearly what I had in mind all those years, so I think my new goal is to learn how to use it and find a way to make it practically useful to the mainstream, because it has all the potential, it just needs a bridge to the everyday programmer, if not to the everyday user (those are probably two separate issues).

Anyway, thanks for your help.  I hope one of the sound jocks is out there too!  Sorry for rambling, but there seems to be a lot of that going around lately!

Rob

>Doggone.  I see now that you had this figured out and were having problem with sampled >sounds.
>
>The one thought I have without getting into it deeply is that you might be able to initialize an >FMSound in such a way that its buffer comes from  'aWAVFile.wav, and its various >parameters cause it simply to be played through once with no FM (ie the degenerate case >is basically like a SampledSound.  Then I think the envelope logic should work.
>
>Hopefully you'll hear more from one of the real sound jocks.
>
>       - Dan

Hey Rob, just want to offer a suggestion, based on:
 
 > (although my debugging skills are still sort of limited to adding a bunch of "Transcript show: ..." code to a method).  
 and
 > It's not that it's hard to find some code that does something, it's hard understanding what it does!
 
 Let me offer one word, "debugger".  If you use the debugger, it will shed a LOT of light on the entire system, everything.
 
 Take your time when you have the debugger open, I've seen people feel like they need to "hurry" because the program is "waiting" or something.  Its all just objects, the debugger and processes included..  you can save and exit with the debugger open of course.
 

Chris Muller puso en su mail :

>  Let me offer one word, "debugger".  If you use the debugger, it will shed a
> LOT of light on the entire system, everything.
>  
>  Take your time when you have the debugger open, I've seen people feel like
> they need to "hurry" because the program is "waiting" or something.  Its all
> just objects, the debugger and processes included..  you can save and exit
> with the debugger open of course.
>  
1+

The first thing what I teach to students is raise and say five times "the
debugger is my friend" in loud voice.

(copyright of idea in old CodeWarrior manuals)

Edgar


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