SmartKey was the first

macro Macro (or MACRO) may refer to: Science and technology * Macroscopic, subjects visible to the eye * Macro photography, a type of close-up photography * Image macro, a picture with text superimposed * Monopole, Astrophysics and Cosmic Ray Observat ...

processing program of its type, and the first TSR or ''terminate and stay resident'' program for PCs and CP/M

microcomputer A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (P ...

s, their eight bit predecessors. Smartkey's "keyboard definitions" were first used with the early word processing program

WordStar WordStar is a word processor application for microcomputers. It was published by MicroPro International and originally written for the CP/M-80 operating system, and later written also for MS-DOS and other 16-bit computing, 16-bit PC OSes. Rob Ba ...

to change margins of screenplays. Thousands of other uses were made for the program. SmartKey was written by Nick Hammond, an admiral in the

Royal Australian Navy The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) is the principal naval force of the Australian Defence Force (ADF). The professional head of the RAN is Chief of Navy (CN) Vice Admiral Mark Hammond AM, RAN. CN is also jointly responsible to the Minister of ...

, and published by Software Research Technologies, founded by Stan Brin and

Reid H. Griffin Reid is a surname of Scottish origin. It means "red". People with the surname * Alan Reid (disambiguation) * Alex Reid (disambiguation), includes Alexander Reid * Amanda Reid, Australian Paralympic athlete * Amanda Reid (taxonomist), Australia ...

. SmartKey received two Editor's Choice awards from '' PC Magazine'' due to its tight code and powerful features, but was never able to counter the marketing muscle of its largest competitor,

SuperKey In the relational data model a superkey is a set of attributes that uniquely identifies each tuple of a relation. Because superkey values are unique, tuples with the same superkey value must also have the same non-key attribute values. That is ...

, a product of

Borland International Borland Software Corporation was a computer technology company founded in 1983 by Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad and Philippe Kahn. Its main business was the development and sale of software development and software deployment products ...

. The company folded in 1987 and the product disappeared from the market soon after.

References

DOS software CP/M software {{DOS-stub