Queenbee

I would suggest to both of the previous posts tryint this information out first. I know it worked for me, all you have to do is read the info that has already been figured out

Hi,

 

I don't think that this is very well documented for the Mac and may be a source of a number of peoples file opening problems.

 

On first use by any user Express Scribe creates a directory in your apple Shared area of the filesystem (/Users/Shared/Scribe). This directory contains three additional directories Done, Status and Current and will contain a number of other files associated with preferences and configuration of the application. If you're the administrator of your mac or there's only one user on your system then you probably won't run into some of the issues that have been discussed in these forums. But if you're a user of the Mac and the administrator has installed the application for you then it's possible that you won't have the correct file permissions to read or write to the Shared directory. For example, my partner, who I'd installed the application for, couldn't open files in Express Scribe at all.

 

There's two possible solutions to this. First and simplest, if you're the only user that will be using Express Scribe on your machine then make sure that before you use the application that the /Users/Shared/Scribe directory is removed (you may need admin permissions to do this, if the directory was created by that user already!). Just drag the directory to the trash and a dialog will appear asking for authentification if you're not the owner. Be warned that this will remove any work previously in the directory and any preferences. Once deleted you can start Express Scribe, and this shared directory will be automatically re-created. Since you're now the creator of the directory you shouldn't run into any permissions issues. If the directory isn't re-created then you probably don't have write or create permissions on the Shared directory or perhaps it has been removed from your system for some reason.

 

An alternate approach, which means nothing gets deleted and preferences are preserved, is to get whoever first created the /Users/Shared/Scribe directory to grant read and write permisions on this directory and all sub directories in it. You can do this in the Finder by doing a "Get Info" from the Finder menu having first selected the directory. Then go to Ownership -> Details and extend the permissions to Read & Write for both group and others. You could also take ownership of the directory if you're the only user ever likely to need access. On my system (10.3.9) the shared directory is created by group "wheel" which is a bit strange. I don't know if this is a fault of the application of my system permissions and may actually be part of the problem.

 

Personally I don't see why Express Scribe uses /Users/Shared/Scribe at all for temporary and what are essentially user specific files. It should probably create this in the users own Documents directory, or since the contained information really doesn't need to be seen or accessed by the user directly the local users Library/Application Support directory. These approaches would allow multiple users on a machine to use Express Scribe independently.

 

cheers,

 

Tony.

I have downloaded Express Scribe 4.05 for my MAC computer. The program will open, however when I try to load a file it just has them grayed out like it is a unsupported file. I know that the Mac version only supports .dct, .wav, .mp3, and .aif. I have tired to load both .wav and .mp3 and it will not load either. Is there a setup move that I am missing?? I have tried to reload the program twice, and I have successfully loaded the program on another Mac computer here with no special issues or setup, but having this issue with two others.