🚀 go-pugleaf

AGB <not@home.com> wrote:

> In article <1f6pt7k.1jfr7yt1v4sxtsN%michael@bcect.com>,
>  michael@bcect.com (Michael Sullivan) wrote:
> 
> > Having purely electronic manuals and tutorials will make sense to me on
> > the day that electronic browsing is as fast and easy as flipping through
> > a book, and when the average user has a 29" screen with 4 megapixel
> > video.  Ain't happenin' yet.  

> Printing out a manual will make sense to me when I can invoke a Find 
> command and the manual opens to the right page with the word highlighted.

For software that I know well and whose manual I've already read much of
and only need occasionally as a reference, that works very well, and
much faster than using a printed manual.  Sometimes a new program will
work that way too, generally if it's tackling the same problem and
industry as another that I know very well.  Like learning InDesign
having used Xpress for years.

At the other end of the learning spectrum, when I don't yet understand
the vocabulary of the program and the manual writers, finding relevant
information with text searches is like searching for a needle in a
haystack in a dark barn while wearing a blindfold and heavy gloves. 

What was that about using the appropriate tool for the job?  

This is not even to discuss those online only manuals in proprietary
formats that have limited, lousy or no search and index functions.


Michael

-- 
Michael Sullivan
Business Card Express of CT             Thermographers to the Trade
Cheshire, CT                                      michael@bcect.com