If you are already familiar with computers, and preferably with AppleScript, the following facts should be enough to make you comfortable with Smile as soon as you launch it.

• Each text window is an interpreter for AppleScript ("AppleScript terminal"), where you can run a line or a block of lines by selecting a script (or, select nothing to run the current line) and pressing the Enter (⌅) key. The interpreter's context is persistent: variables' values and handlers persist.
• Basically you use terms, either from a dictionary, or from a library. There is a menu to open dictionaries. To open libraries, use the Install libs browser command, then use the new menus to browse, use them with the option (⌥) key to open a library. To open the dictionary or the library to which a term belongs, select the term and press cmd-shift-F (⇧⌘F).
  This is the fast way to open a dictionary, for instance to open the dictionary of the Satimage osax you type change, you select the word and you press ⇧⌘F.
• To have Smile help with the parameters of a command, type the full name of the command (for instance, change), select the word and press ⇧⌘E.
• To make scripts, copy from existing scripts. The commands in the User Scripts menu () are scripts, or dialogs (or, scripts which open dialogs). If you select one which is a script with the ⌥ key pressed, you open its script. For a dialog (including Find and Preferences), toggle it into edit mode with ⌘Y, then ⌥⌘-click it to view its script. More on the hacker side, open the application's package and view the Class scripts.
• Custom interfaces are called Smile's dialogs. Use New dialog to make a new one, or duplicate an existing one in Finder (in the application's package, More stuff contains dialogs). Toggle the edit mode on and off to switch between editing the dialog and running it. Save it on disk (~/Application support/Smile contains your personal User scripts folder, a favorable location), then to open the dialog open the file by any means (script, double-click).
• Some commands that you may want to use are not provided as commands, they are properties of the application. Double-check the application class in Smile's dictionary.
• The full documentation is available as html, both on Satimage-software's site, and in your computer. Use the Help menu.
• When a term is selected (not necessarily a command, possibly a generic term such as xml), the contextual menu lists all the help sources available for that particular term: web pages, fast text summary, etc.
  This is the fast way to open the reference html page about a given command.
• When a handler's name is selected and the handler's definition is in some open window, use the contextual menu to view the handler's definition. You can use this feature to check that you are correctly spelling a handler's call.