Re: RTFM (was: CPYF behavior)

Right beside my desk are roughly 36 manuals actually printed on paper.

Well, actually 35, because one is sitting on my desk (System/36-Compatable
RPG II User's Guide/Referance, SC-09-1162) which I was using to
look up the finer points of the LOKUP command.

I have read A lot of these manuals cover to cover, such as DDS
reference, the 4 RPG manuals I have (2 for RPG II and 2 for
RPG III), System Operations, all the 6 CL references, etc...

When I have a problem, my first place to hit is usually the
manual.  There is no RPG IV, RPG ILE book here.  When we
first got the OS with RPG IV it came with a CD, softcopy.  I finally
got around to installing it on my PC, and it was horrible to use.  Slow,
tedious, not to mention the PC I was using was slow.  I have since
then installed it on the AS/400 and use it through the InfoSeeker,
and it takes me forever to find anything, because it's just not like a
book.  A book, I can browse through, I can flip pages, I can hold one
section open while looking at another, I can reread pages easily, and
so on.  These softcopy programs are horrible!  I have to know what
I'm looking for before I look for it (not always necessary with a book).

I also have to know just what book it's in, or do a search that takes
forever, then try to figure out from the snippets I can see on the screen
if this is actually what I'm looking for.  It can take me 30 minutes to an
hour to find the piece of information I'm looking for in Softcopy, where
I can find the same information in a manual in under 15, usually 10.

No, I have not read the RPG IV manual through.  When I find the time
I will, I hit it only when I have too because it's just such a pain, and
hard to read online, and takes up valuable resource, and they keep
changing the docs, etc...

Give me back my books!  I need them!

And if you want to tell me to RTFM, that's fine, tell me the URL to the
book itself (not as400.ibm.com), and preferably to the chapter in question.

I've tried finding books online, and half the time they ain't where they were
last week!  I've bookmarked books on line, to go back to a 404 error.

Regards,

Jim Langston


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