FAQ: Graphics and Sound Abilities

=== Top of the Swiki === Attachments ===

FAQ: Graphics and Sound Abilities

What kind of Graphics and Sound Capabilities does Squeak have?

Graphics:

Squeak's standard graphic model is based on BitBlt (copying rectangular areas of the screen and off-screen pixmaps using boolean functions) which is extended by operations for line drawing, text display, and affine transformations: scaling, rotating, etc. This works for 1,2,4,8,16 and 32 bit depth. Classes are in the image to read GIF and JPEG images, though JPEG is a tad slow.

Andreas Raab has implemented and entirely new, vector-based rendering engine (Balloon) which can for example display Flash 3 files. He's currently working on adding 3D support to Balloon.

Sound:

Squeak does sampled and synthesized sounds with stereo positioning and reverb. All sound classes are written in Smalltalk and compiled to C, so you could (in principle) add your own sound classes (for example speech synthesis: Squeak Speaks) with appropriate primitives which would fit well into the framework.
- Hans-Martin Mosner