My name is Bob Cyr and I live with my wife in the small town of Springville, New York, USA. For those who do not know, Springville is at the western end of the state, hundreds of miles from New York City.
I am nearing retirement age and had to give up working as an electrical engineer over eleven years ago. My activities now include, when up to it, gardening, reading, pitching horseshoes, pottery, computer, and more recently, writing this Smile help files. I have worked as a volunteer in a hospital emergency room, tutored physics and algebra at the local high school, and continue to volunteer my time transcribing of philosophical discussions. Writing the Smile help continues in the same spirit as these other volunteer activities.
I spend a lot of time using the computer at home, especially during our cold and snowy winters. I became interested in AppleScripting for reasons I am not sure of. I am an experimenter by nature, and my interest in AppleScripting led naturally to trying different script editors. It did not take long before I came across Smile, and I began learning about it and scripting at the same time. In these early days of learning, the feeling of being overwhelmed was my constant companion. Now this feeling comes and goes.
Like everyone trying to learn new software and techniques, I relied heavily on whatever documentation I could find. My lack of experience with both AppleScript and Smile made the learning particularly difficult. Perhaps age and health problems also contributed. However, the learning did come and with it the urge to write down and organize what was learned. I used the Smile documentation as best I could, bought two books on AppleScripting, joined two discussion lists, experimented on my own, and sent e-mail message after message to Satimage.
At first, my writings were intended for my own use. I was learning AppleScripting and Smile as best I could and then documenting what I learned. I planned to use what I wrote as my personal reference ; however, after getting to the point of completing ten pages or so, I was struck with the idea that perhaps others could also make use of what I had written. I found learning AppleScript and Smile to be a great struggle, and thought that maybe I could write a document that would ease the way for others. It would perhaps make their journey a little less arduous, give them a little encouragement or a helping hand that might add to their motivation and interest. It might even add some excitement and fun to their use of the Smile scripting environment.
With these thoughts in mind, I approached Satimage and told them of my efforts. I asked if we could join together in a common enterprise. They said yes, and the journey began. Simply stated, I would send them questions about issues I did not understand, do a lot of experimenting and investigation on my own, and write these help files. They would respond by e-mail and review my drafts.
The Smile help is a truly collaborative effort. It is very clear to me that it could not be any other way. It is a combination of ideas, of working together, of work done on both sides of the Atlantic, through e-mail correspondence by people living in different countries, with different native languages, living in different cultures, six time zones apart.
I would be remiss if I did not mention my wife’s contribution to this effort. She is not a computer person, and sometimes this is a real asset. She comes with a fresh mind, not cluttered with preconceptions on how things should be, and has been able to spot difficulties that I completely overlooked. At times, just her presence offers a change of attitude to get past some troublesome roadblock. Without her support, this help system would not be.
Whatever the author has learned about Smile and AppleScript has been learned the hard way, through struggle and experience, as a part of the ongoing process of writing the Smile help. The Smile help has evolved through a process of learning, writing, learning more, revising the writing and so on.
The Smile help has been written for the user of Smile in the sincere hope that you will find it useful and informative.
As you will read in other parts of the help, the staff of Satimage encourages you to contact them and inform them of your use of Smile. The same can be said of the author. Your comments and suggestions are invited. If you know of subjects that could be added, or areas where increased clarity is possible, please contribute your suggestions. This is the only way for this to be a truly wide ranging, collaborative effort.
I list my e-mail address as <rcyr@localnet.com> in the hope I will be able to conduct the correspondence I have invited above. To be truly realistic, and not to mislead you, I must also state that my health situation is such that correspondence may not be possible. Unfortunately, it is something that is not certain. If you do have comments and suggestions, I suggest that you try to contact me. I will do my best to reply, but if I do not, I hope you will understand.
The author wholeheartedly thanks all those who have offered their help, and special thanks are given to Emmanuel Levy of Satimage and to my wife Terry.
