🚀 go-pugleaf

Clancy Malloy (freak@cbnewsc.ATT.COM) posts:
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    What follows is a reprint (without permission) of a letter that
    was printed in the April 1990 issue of "SOFTWARE magazine.  Any
    comments?

The letter he posted:
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    Open Letter to Microsoft:
    
    This letter is to inform you  of  my  experience  with  obtaining
    Microsoft's Operating System Software Development Kit 2.O.
    
    Immediately upon receiving the kit, I called  Microsoft  to  find
    out   where  the  manuals  were.   Microsoft's  customer  support
    informed me that there were no printed manuals -  they  were  all
    "online."

    ...[several paragraphs deleted]...

    Online manuals are a fantastic addition to  OS/2,  but  they  can
    never replace the need for printed manuals.
    
                                         Gary Hoff, VP of Engineering
                                        ABC Development Systems, Inc.
                                                   Minneapolis, Minn.
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Yes, I have comments...

There are a couple issues that exist here.  One, is the reason that
documentation is 'online', and the other, is the fact that Gary was
given an incomplete answer by our customer support.

For the initial release of the OS/2 SDK, we had full documentation
printed up and sent out.  With OS/2 still being in a formative stage,
quite a bit of this information was soon out-of-date, or inaccurate.

For subsequent updates and releases of the SDK, we chose to ship
'QuickHelp' (ie: online) documentation.  If we had taken the time to
send our updates to the printer, get it back, send it out, it would not
only be _several_ weeks later, but much of this 'new' information would
again be out of date.  By shipping our documentation in electronic form,
we were able to get the latest information to our customers,
_immediately_.  This we felt was very important.

For those customers who were with us from the beginning, this was just
fine.  They didn't need a dozen different versions of the printed
manuals.  They just needed one, and accurate update information.  Near
the end of the first SDK term, we sent out a new set of printed
documentation, the same as was now being offered through Microsoft Press
(and available in many bookstores).

For those of you just getting started with the OS/2-PM SDK, this of
course is a small problem.  Many (all?) of you would like at least *one*
printed copy of the documentation.  This is where Gary was given an
incomplete answer to his problem.  No, we are not shipping the printed
OS/2 Technical Reference manuals with the SDK.  OS/2 is still changing,
and trying to manage two different versions of the SDK releases (with
documentation for first time customers, without documentation for
upgrades) would just make it take longer for us to get our releases out.
Which nobody would like.  But that is not to say that printed
documentation isn't available.  Microsoft Press currently has available
all 4 volumes of the OS/2 Programmers Reference manuals (vol1&2: 29.95,
vol3&4: 19.95) These should be available at many bookstores, or you can
order them from any bookstore.

I have talked with Gary Hoff of ABC Development Systems, Inc.  and
explained these issues to him.  I was able to satisfy him, and he was
happy to learn that he could order documentation.

- Robert

 __________________________________________________________________________
     #####   ####### |	  Robert B. Hess, Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA
    ######  #######  |-----------------------------------------------------
   ####### #######   |	roberth@microsof.uu.net
  #### ##### ####    |	{decvax, uunet, uw-beaver}!microsof!roberth
 ####  ###  ####     |_____________________________________________________
   "...my opinions are strictly my own, and not those of my employer..."