SMAP is an acronym for Segmented Matrix Analysis Package. It was developed in 1983 by three enthusiastic young persons, all on the lecturing staff of the Department of Structural Engineering at the University of New South Wales: Dr Ray Lawther, Dr Francis Tin Loi (now a Professor) and I, the author of this text. As the oldest of the "three musketeers" I assumed the role of the leader and the copyright holder. Actually, I doubt if this was really fair, as each of us worked independently, though in a close knit team. We often consulted with each other, and probably discretely competed with each other, but competed frankly and fairly. It was all a work of love - there was no reward other than the knowledge that SMAP was an achievement that not only deepened our knowledge of the subject, but also gave others a useful tool, particularly for learning about analysis of structures.
Our hardware was limited, to say the least. We had a computing laboratory, equipped with Apple II mini computers. If I remember it correctly, the mini computers had a "big" RAM - 32 kB each (not MB!). They were networked to a common hard disk of about 10 MB (or was it 1 MB?) capacity. That was wonderful, as the only other storage of programs was on cassettes of magnetic tape, which were costly, slow and unreliable. Of course that was at the time when a Pascal compiler and its basic interpreter did fit on a 360 kB floppy (and at the time we even did not yet have floppies with the Apple II). Nevertheless, we could take work home in a cassette and do a bit of weekend hacking on private Apples.
What we developed was not unlike today's tools like, say, scilab. As all of us were structural engineers, we adapted it to structural analysis. The program was very versatile, even by more modern standards. Because of the RAM limitations, a great deal of ingenuity was needed to minimise the memory requirements. Hence, the program was segmented, the fact reflected in the name of the package. The largest example that we solved was a rigid three bay frame for a 20 storey building - substantial problem for that time!. Even now, I found it advantageous to use some SMAP examples in this book, as they cover many facets of structural analysis..
To me SMAP was a wonderful experience: both my companions in this undertaking were exceptionally gifted people. Ray practically single handedly wrote programs for skyline solution of equations, using a vector storage in a very compact format. Being a real individualist, he wrote the way he liked: all programming in capital letters, regardless of the fact that Pascal language is not case sensitive. He liked global variables, which was not my preferred method of work. However, his methods and programming were faultless. Francis and I worked particularly closely. Not only our programming style was similar, but also in lunch break we often played chess. He invariably beat me at it! I am grateful to both Ray and Francis, for their cooperation which left an indelible stamp for the rest of my life.
It was one project that in my long and varied career I enjoyed more than any previous or subsequent project. It was a good example of cooperative effort. As we did not hide the code from each other, it was, in a limited sense, an Open Source project.
The experience of working with like-minded people remains deeply entrenched in my memory and reinforces my belief in the advantages Open Source Software. One of the reasons for undertaking this task of writing this text is to present to wider audience some of the ideas that germinated during the production of SMAP.