Homework 7 - Examining Sound
Due: See Schedule

Creative Reading of The Architect's Vision for The Lulu Center.

In this assignment you are asked to create a one-screen director application similar to the ones typically used in kids' CD-ROMs, where the computer reads aloud a sentence to the user, highlighting (or animating) the appropriate words. (This part might remind you of karaoke displays.) When the reading is over, the user has the option of clicking on a word and hearing again the word's pronounciation.

In your work, however, you will have to read aloud one of the Design Strategy Statements made by the Architects of the Lulu Wang Campus Center. You are free to choose any one you want from the list. Name your file name-visionX.dir where X is the number of your sentence, and save it, along with the published html and dcr files inside a directory named hw7 in your home CS215 directory. An example of such an application is the reading of "7. The building is a beacon" statement.

One way to implement this homework (there are several other ways, of course, use whatever seems more intuitive to you) is to have two "sections": One that plays the whole sequence with the right timing over a number of frames; the other that loops within a single frame and, when a word is clicked, it hilites the word and plays the sound portion.

To hilite the word you can use a command that would make a hilited image of the word visible and then invisible. To play a sound piece you could use the sound().play() command. For example, the PianoCue.aiff file used in the sound synchronization example has 2 cues. You can tell Director to play the portion between the two cues by executing

sound(1).play([
#member:member("PianoCue"),
#startTime:member("PianoCue").cuePointTimes[1],
#endTime:member("PianoCue").cuePointTimes[2]
])

Even though we have not gove extensively over font selection, you should think a bit about what is the appropriate font to use in this assignment. But do not worry if you do not get it right. In a later assignment you will update this application and choose fonts that match your sentence's sentiment.