RE: RTFM (was: CPYF behavior) -- MIDRANGE-L

I like paper too, but one thing that improves the performance of the CD
manuals tremendously is copying the whole damned thing to a network (or
local hard drive.)  Ours are in an IFS directory.  I wouldn't call the
performance breathtaking, but it's faster than InfoSeeker or trying to read
from the CD.  'Course there's still Book Manager, fine Win3.1 technology
that it is.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Langston [mailto:jlangston@conexfreight.com]
> Sent: Monday, January 17, 2000 8:43 AM
> To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
> Subject: 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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