RE: Info Center

It seems to me that Boulder did have all its pages open to Google at one
time but recently closed them.  I find it very, very disappointing.

I am a self taught operator and Google was my number one tool for searching
IBM documentation.  You used to be able to simply put in the name of a
manual in Google, such as WORK MANAGEMENT V4R4, and get a link to the .PDF
version of the manual.  I then learned that you could call 1-800-879-2755
and order a hard copy of the manual for a nominal fee as long as you knew
the part number of the manual (I think the work management manual was a
whole five or six bucks).   It took me eight months to find this phone
number and I ordered quite a few of the classics that we did not have here,
such as WORK MANAGEMENT, SECURITY REFERENCE, CL REFERENCE, and LOCAL DEVICE
CONFIGURATION.

To this day, I have not found anything useful in Info Center.  I have poked
around it a bit when trying to research a topic now that the books are
closed to Google, but I cannot remember anything that struck me as really
useful.  It certainly is not the first thing that comes to my mind when I
need to look into a problem like Google was.

Maybe it's time to change my home page from Google to something else.

My $.02

BRYAN BURNS
SYSTEM OPERATOR
ECHO, INC.
847-540-8400 X493







-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Richter [mailto:srichter@AutoCoder.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2002 8:20 AM
To: midrange-l@midrange.com
Subject: Re: Info Center


just to add, a google search of "cwbRC_RunCmd" returns 3 meaningless hits.
adding "site:ibm.com" or "site:publib.boulder.ibm.com" returns nothing.

in contrast, a google search on the CreateProcess win32 api at site
microsoft.com returns many relevant hits.

So I dont think a google search is a good solution. Not until Boulder opens
its pages to google indexing.

Steve Richter

----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Richter" <srichter@AutoCoder.com>
To: <midrange-l@midrange.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2002 8:08 AM
Subject: Re: Info Center


> Here is a way to fix info center.
>
> The problem is the search results.
>
> First, the order of the search results seems to be completely random.  But
> once you find the best search result link, the presentation of information
> can be pretty good.  For an example, search on a CAE API "cwbRC_RunCmd".
> The top 2 results are useless. The next few, if you are looking for api
> reference info, will get you to a some well ordered and complete info on
> this api.
>
> Second, using the cwbRC_RunCmd api as an example again, the actual api
> reference page for cwbRC_RunCmd is not  in the search results list.
>
> Keep an internal table.
>     Search keyword
>     Search result page
>     Count of times this page linked to via this search keyword
>
> When showing the search results, order the results by link count
descending.
>
> When the search word is an API or command, always show its reference
manual
> page as the top search result. The reference manual page for the API
should
> then not only describe the API but also be the link point for more info on
> the API.
>
> Steve Richter
> AutoCoder, LLC
>
>
>
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