RE: APIs: Where are the @#$% manuals? -- MIDRANGE-L

It's the pets... If you didn't have pets, you'd be able to find them right
away.
John Brandt

-----Original Message-----
From: G Armour [mailto:garmour400m@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2003 2:26 PM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: APIs: Where are the @#$% manuals?


What category should I file this under?  "InfoCenter Rant" or "Please,
PLEASE, someone show me how to find the information I'm looking for"?

Ok, <Rant>
Why is this so @#$%ing hard?  I just about need to keep my wrists in
restraints to keep my hair in my head when I use InfoCenter.  Why do I
find myself coming to the midrange-l's list and archives and
iSeriesNetwork's DocFinder trying to figure out how to find information? 
I can't be that dense, can I?  I've been in the IBM midrange for 20 years
now, I own a home, two cars, I have a wife, kids, and pets.  I exercise,
sleep well, eat well, & drink beer.  Ok, so I've basically written off
Bookmanager, now that I'm deep into v5r1+ new stuff.  InfoCenter's Search
Results - don't get me started!  Couldn't I just enter a search argument
and get a LIST OF RELEVANT BOOKS/MANUALS that I could just either open
right there or download the PDFs?  If it's in there, it is well-hidden. 
This is not meant as a personal attack on any InfoCenter developers if
they're lurking, but it just seems like utility and intuitiveness flew
right out the window in favor of fancy web pages.  I do a LOT of web
surfing and I have used InfoCenter quite a bit AND I JUST DON'T GET IT!  I
can't be spending hours looking for this stuff, wondering if I got the
right search terms, flipping between the Search Results and the content
page (hey, would it be possible to have the Search Results window go into
the background when you click on a link?  I usually have to maximize the
Search Results window cuz it uses the largest fonts I've ever seen on the
internet and usually the normal window it brings up shows no more than two
links before having to scroll down.  So I click on a link when this window
is maximized, but NOTHING happens!  Oh, Alt-Tab back to the other browser
window to see the content.  Not intuitive.)  All of this is exacerbated
(big word) by the less than stellar response time on the InfoCenter site. 
Bleahhhh!  BLEAAHHHHH!
</Rant>

I am trying to find the API manuals in PDF format so that I can download
them.  Please, I respectfully ask that no one give me direct links to them
but, rather, HOW you find the links to them.  I'm looking for all the API
manuals (I think), like message handling APIs, user space/index APIs,
file/data APIs, etc.  I would expect to be able to search for "API" and
get a list of manuals that I can download.  Like the results from a
bookshelf search in the good ol' BookManager.

<sigh>
GA

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