Are Printed Manuals Dead? 376
Bantik asks: "I work for a software publisher, and there's a raging debate going on upstairs about whether or not we should continue providing printed manuals. I think that between a program's Help menu, documentation in PDF form on the program CD, and the online documentation on our Web site (HTML and PDF), we're fine. What do /.'ers think? Are printed manuals a thing of the past? And what major software vendors are going down the Paperless Path?" While some of my peers would just love to declare paper dead and a thing of the past, I feel that physical manuals are still very necessary. There's nothing like having a reference you can flip to and computers aren't common enough that there's one at every place you might find the time (or desire) to read. Thoughts?
not dead (Score:1)
Keyboard not found. Press F1 to continue! (Score:1)
working at a sylvan testing center (Score:1)
Re:Real geeks... (Score:2)
* What is the magic SysRQ key?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It is a 'magical' key combo you can hit which kernel will respond to
regardless of whatever else it is doing, unless it is completely locked up.
* How do I enable the magic SysRQ key?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You need to say "yes" to 'Magic SysRq key (CONFIG_MAGIC_SYSRQ)' when
configuring the kernel. This option is only available in 2.1.x or later
kernels.
* How do I use the magic SysRQ key?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On x86 - You press the key combo 'ALT-SysRQ-'. Note - Some
(older?) may not have a key labeled 'SysRQ'. The 'SysRQ' key is
also known as the 'Print Screen' key.
On SPARC - You press 'ALT-STOP-', I believe.
On PowerPC - You press 'ALT-Print Screen-'.
On other - If you know of the key combos for other architectures, please
let me know so I can add them to this section.
* What are the 'command' keys?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
'r' - Turns off keyboard raw mode and sets it to XLATE.
'k' - Kills all programs on the current virtual console.
'b' - Will immediately reboot the system without syncing or unmounting
your disks.
'o' - Will shut your system off via APM (if configured and supported).
's' - Will attempt to sync all mounted filesystems.
'u' - Will attempt to remount all mounted filesystems read-only.
'p' - Will dump the current registers and flags to your console.
't' - Will dump a list of current tasks and their information to your
console.
'm' - Will dump current memory info to your console.
'0'-'9' - Sets the console log level, controlling which kernel messages
will be printed to your console. ('0', for example would make
it so that only emergency messages like PANICs or OOPSes would
make it to your console.)
'e' - Send a SIGTERM to all processes, except for init.
'i' - Send a SIGKILL to all processes, except for init.
'l' - Send a SIGKILL to all processes, INCLUDING init. (Your system
will be non-functional after this.)
* Okay, so what can I use them for?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well, un'R'aw is very handy when your X server or a svgalib program crashes.
sa'K' (system attention key) is useful when you want to exit a program
that will not let you switch consoles. (For example, X or a svgalib program.)
re'B'oot is good when you're unable to shut down. But you should also 'S'ync
and 'U'mount first.
'S'ync is great when your system is locked up, it allows you to sync your
disks and will certainly lessen the chance of data loss and fscking. Note
that the sync hasn't taken place until you see the "OK" and "Done" appear
on the screen. (If the kernel is really in strife, you may not ever get the
OK or Done message...)
'U'mount is basically useful in the same ways as 'S'ync. I generally 'S'ync,
'U'mount, then re'B'oot when my system locks. It's saved me many a fsck.
Again, the unmount (remount read-only) hasn't taken place until you see the
"OK" and "Done" message appear on the screen.
The loglevel'0'-'9' is useful when your console is being flooded with
kernel messages you do not want to see. Setting '0' will prevent all but
the most urgent kernel messages from reaching your console. (They will
still be logged if syslogd/klogd are alive, though.)
t'E'rm and k'I'll are useful if you have some sort of runaway process you
are unable to kill any other way, especially if it's spawning other
processes.
* Sometimes SysRQ seems to get 'stuck' after using it, what can I do?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That happens to me, also. I've found that tapping shift, alt, and control
on both sides of the keyboard, and hitting an invalid sysrq sequence again
will fix the problem. (ie, something like alt-sysrq-z). Switching to another
virtual console (ALT+Fn) and then back again should also help.
* I hit SysRQ, but nothing seems to happen, what's wrong?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are some keyboards which do not support 'SysRQ', you can try running
'showkey -s' and pressing SysRQ or alt-SysRQ to see if it generates any
0x54 codes. If it doesn't, you may define the magic sysrq sequence to a
different key. Find the keycode with showkey, and change the define of
'#define SYSRQ_KEY 0x54' in [/usr/src/linux/]include/asm/keyboard.h to
the keycode of the key you wish to use, then recompile. Oh, and by the way,
you exit 'showkey' by not typing anything for ten seconds.
Not dead - just no longer free (Score:1)
Then I remember when the new PCs came out. Documentation was an "introductory" booklet. Real Documentation was available for additional money, in nice three ring notebooks and a hard cardboard box.
Suddenly, stuff came out with "installation pamphlets" and online help only.
These days, the online "help" is usually weak, and you have to buy a book to get any real idea of what the hell the software/hardware/OS even does, never mind any advanced functionality.
THEN, to add insult to injury, the books are so badly indexed that you are lucky if you can find anything. As an ex technical writer, this really pisses me off. Indexing is critical...
All I want is proper documentation in a portable format, in which it is easy to locate the help I need.
Mark Edwards [mailto]
Proof of Sanity Forged Upon Request
Why printed manuals are good. (Score:1)
Some people (such as myself) have a short attention span when it comes to reading stuff off of a computer screen.
Some people don't have the current technology to be able to bring it in the john if they wish (and hey, if it's really that horrible of a program they can always wipe their ass with the manual).
Printed manuals? Of coruse (Score:1)
Put help where it belongs (Score:2)
The flip-side of the coin to is make sure the user has enough documentation to get started. It can be hard to find the appropriate pdf or help system if you are new to a program. Another instance of this are all the READMEs that tell you how to ungzip the distribution. Of course, the README is already _inside_ the gzip, so....
"Hello, tech support"
"Hi, I forgot my password. My username is bjk4"
"Ok, I just emailed you your password. It should get to you in a minute."
"Thanks."
-B
Give me paper, you bastards! (Score:1)
When I pay good money for software I want a manual. Why?
1: Online help is meaningless if the computer or program does not work.
2: You ever try to write in corrections or notes in the margings of a help file?
3: "Avery Flags", get them, use them, love them.
The proper place to get rid of paper in the office is all those dimwits printing twenty slightly dufferent copies of the same damn thing trying to get it "just right", or this pinheads who print something and then FAX it!
Paper and HTML please; "Just Say NO" to PDF (Score:1)
Really well-indexed HTML is great, too.
PDF is obnoxious: its pretend-paper output and its enforcement of author-misunderstanding of what my eyes need, on an intrinsically-electronic medium do me a great disservice. The only way I am willing to deal with PDF is after I've already printed it out on dead trees -- and then I'll hate you for forcing me to go through that extra step.
are you gus nuts? (Score:2)
Digital displays won't make serious inroads into printed products until DPI reaches *at least* 300, and there will be a serious demand for paper just on visual quality alone until at least 600dpi. ANd even then, there will be a market for paper.
hawk, who will give up printed manuals when you pry them from his cold dead fingers
Free software - charge for docs (Score:1)
Printed manuals are still good (Score:1)
a. Bathroom reading material until I put a hacked i-opener in there
b. Firestarters... I mean, come on lighter fluid isn't always the best...
-MoOsEb0y
Printed manuals are worth $43 (Score:1)
I arrive at that figure because around here "Official" RedHat sells for U$52. People who know all about cheap bytes still walk in and buy it. Note that this is NOT north america and the telephone support available to Us residents is less than useless at U$1 per minute phone rates.
That means they are either contributing to the "RedHat Charity" or they pay the extra money for those dead trees.
PS : The unacounted dollars are shiping on the CD.
Web access (Score:2)
--
Scott Miga
suprax@linux.com
Re:Printed Manuals? BOTH! (Score:1)
Re:Paperless is the way to go. (Score:1)
#define X(x,y) x##y
How many people use paper docs w/ Linux? (Score:1)
If we expect so much printed documentation from big software houses, why don't we get good manuals with our distributions?
I'm not really complaining since I do mostly net installs of most linux boxen, I have just noticed that I very rarely have any paper books in front of me for any of my software packages, primarily because I use open source packages. The books I do use are third party books, like Advanced Perl programming etc.
Re:I want both (Score:1)
Some of the O'Reilly books have nice bindings that allow them to lie flat, which is handy, but I'd even give that up if I didn't have to worry about the pages falling out, and being held in only by a frickin' alligator clip.
It's not _that_ hard to take a properly typeset document (e.g. LaTeX) and output ascii, html, pdf and paper. I'll take 'em all, please.
Re:Paperless is the way to go. (Score:1)
God, just imagine how well a cheap, waterproof xterm would sell for bathroom computer geeks. But barring that, I keep books in there too.
Re:I want both (Score:1)
But I don't like any of them for output, at least when I'm printing something out that's rather like a book. When I want a book, I'll take something that was printed on an offset press, cut and bound.
And what I meant by double-sided was that relatively few people have printers capable of outputting double-sided pages without going through a lot more work yourself. Duplex printing is usually reserved for multi-thousand-dollar office printers.
So just realize that what I'm complaining about is that home printing technology is nowhere near as good as it needs to be for me to seriously consider printing up documentation from electronic files. I still want electronic files, sure, but I also want a manual that was printed professionally.
(besides, I do layout for a living, so it helps out my profession
Yes and no. (Score:1)
Printed manuals? Hell NO! (Score:1)
I spend FAR more time trying to keeps my working ICDs up to date with new changes than I should.
Give me PDF! If I want a hard copy I can print just what I want. (or the whole thing, or NOTHING.)
Between PDF and HTML you are covered.
dv
Printed + electronic docs are complementary (Score:1)
I would say that the reference material should be printed in a high-durable version (see to O'Reilly again) along with both HTML and PDF versions on the media.
--
I am the forests worst nightmare... (Score:1)
If I am trying to learn a new program, and I do not have printed docs all ready, I will normally go buy a book or two, and print out all the docs I can find for it. Many times have I pissed off all my co-workers because I printed out a 800+ page doc.
I love to read. I waste tons of paper. I wish there was a better way, but if I want to read the man pages for Postfix while I take a dump, what other choice do I have but to print them out? When I was setting up a new VPN system, I was overjoyed to find that there was a book with all the IPSec RFCs printed out and indexed. The world would be a better place with more books like that.
The world would be a better place with more books.
Depends on the level of expertise (Score:2)
So, if your company makes mice, by all means, distribute a readme.txt file and be done with it. However, if they make Inverted Confustication Delivery Systems with added Defrillication Modules, then please continue to distribute hardcopy documentation.
--
Re:Make the manuals searchable! (Score:1)
Yes, but this is part of an IDE, so you get a list of recent queries and search locations, the output goes to a pane, and you can double-click an output line to load the file into the editor and put the cursor on that line.
Emacs/XEmacs can do the same thing, though without the recent lists (something that would really be quite useful).
HTML preferred over paper (Score:1)
Find yourself a relatively cheap notebook that has a 14" active matrix 1024x768 screen (or better), a decent enough HD, and can be inexpensively upgraded to 128megs RAM. I sit my Toshiba Satellite 2545XCDT on my kitchen table and do the bulk of my reading there, then move to my desktop machine when I need heavy firepower. The combo works well. Makes a nice front-end for my Linux server, too. (Not that I wouldn't mind a properly equipped Dell Inspiron 7500 with its 15.4" 1280x1024 res screen, but they are a tad expensive...)
Give me a reference! (Score:1)
-- Michael
One word - Eyestrain!!!! (Score:1)
"Here's your software, hardware, source code, whatever, you need expensive display hardware if you want to be able to read about it for more than a few minutes at a time, sorry about that, chief."
If hardware (including stuff like VCR's) came with a service manual with every unit shipped, they could print them more cheaply per unit because of volume, making it possible to include it in the price of the unit without increasing the price of the unit too horribly, which would increase your chances of fixing that hardware or finding someone who could take your service manual and do it for you.
Of course nowadays they just want to sell you something that you'll have to buy a new one of in a couple of years.
It's the same with commercial software.
Earlier versions of DOS and Windows came with bigger books and smaller price tags, then the software got bigger and more complicated, the manuals skimpier and more comic book like, the price higher, and the expense of aftermarket documentation necessary to get full value out of the software increased.
The less you sell to a knowledgeable minority and the more to the general public, the easier it is to screw the customer.
I'm going to go lie down and take slow, deep breaths now.
Whatever happened to 4PRINT? (Score:1)
4PRINT was a pretty nifty utility that I used to use back in my BBS days. It was quite similar to enscript/a2ps in that it took a text file and printed several pages worth of text onto a single peice of paper.
The really neat thing about 4PRINT, however, was its usefulness for printing documentation. You would print a stack of paper and then go to your printer and flip/rotate the sheets and then go back to 4PRINT and tell it to continue. When you were done, you had this neat little booklet that you could staple together. 4PRINT would generate these cool cover pages that had the title of the book (specified by the user) done up in ANSI graphics lettering (ala BBS style).
I was searching through my old room at my parent's house the other day and found a drawer filled with stacks of 4PRINT'ed documentation for everything from the RemoteAccess BBS to GoldED (still around!!!) and BinkleyTerm.
ahhhh the memories
Re:Yeah! And a service manual for new car! Extra?! (Score:1)
ToiletDuk (58% Slashdot Pure)
Re:Paperless is the way to go. (Score:1)
All things equal, I will purchase the product with the printed manual over a product with only electronic manuals
Trees?
Who cares. They are a renewable resource, like corn, which is planted every years according to our needs.
eco-hysteria --->
JLK
Why not ship both? (Score:1)
I've used O'Reilly books for years (especially their Perl and Java books) and have always been able to find what I was looking for using the paper book with the index at the back *MUCH* faster than I was able to find something using online documentation and a "search" function.
At the same time, there are occasions when I'm simply too lazy to get out of my desk chair, walk across the office or over to the bookshelf in the living room and get the book. For quickies, online documentation is perfect (see also man pages).
I wonder what would be so difficult about producing documentation both in PDF and in printed form? Several times now, we've ended up putting the PDF docs for a product we use on a fileserver for people to look at, and also printed a copy (on a duplexing printer =) ) and had it bound at Kinko's so that we'd have both options available. Why can't publishers print it for us? We'd gladly pay the premium.
And yes, I know my homepage is broken.
Retail. (Score:1)
It seems as if this is the way that everyone is going, and it has the support of retail and consumers, so it will be the future.
Re:Retail. (Score:1)
You can print out an electronic version of a manual.
You can lose that, spill coffee all over it, and not have to go through the manufacturer to get a new one. You can just reprint it.
.mincus
... (Score:2)
'nuff said. :)
debate, shembate (Score:4)
PDF documentation is nice to have, especially if it's searchable, indexed, and linked. It's good to be able to print a book yourself if the prnted copy has walked away. But a stack of 8.5"x11" or A4 printouts in a binder or held together with a big paperclip is a horrible substitute for a bound book. And reading docs onscreen is nice unless you're trrying to get work done and read the docs at the same time. Clicking back and forth gets tedious quickly.
HTML docs and context-sensitive help are nice for some things. But again, they are used differently from a nice book. Sometimes you just need a book. This will change when large-format high-resolution (>200 dpi) e-book readers become available, but until then the rule should be: if you have enough documentation to make a 200-page book, you must offer it as a 200-page book.
Marketing folks will argue that since you've made the sale, it doesn't matter what format the docs are in, because you've already won the customer. But that's not true. Software with awkward, inaccessible documentation makes for unhappy, frustrated users, and when the product comes up for re-evaluation 18 months later, that frustration gets expressed in a desire to work with something "less awkward".
You can have the best product on the market, but if your documentation is frustrating to work with, then your product is frustrating to work with.
Ask your company's inside-sales people, who deal with current customers. Customers tell them what they think of CD-only documnentation. And it's not nice.
Don't you fucking dare (Score:3)
I'm sure everyone will agree that a real book is far easier to read than a monitor. The insignificant cost of providing a manual to you customers makes up for far more than it's cost in time and effort
Has anyone asked the Trees? (Score:1)
But then again, Trees might be a bit biased on the topic.
Retain Printed Docs (Score:1)
Re:Don't you fucking dare (Score:1)
Try Open eBook (Score:1)
PDF is great if you don't think a book/document should be much more then a electronic duplication of a paper book. Sure you can search it and annotate it but hand held devices would have to have too big of a screen to really use a PDF well. Even then what if you want a bit bigger (or smaller) font? That can't be done with a PDF without panning the resulting image. And making it smaller would just waist screen space and not actually give you more content on a page.
Basically I think we need to rescue documents and Books from PDF. It is basically like a long term print buffer you can keep going back to until you give up in frustration and print the damn thing out. I have a very nice 19 inch monitor with a high refresh rate yet I would rather read something on my little 3.5 ich by 4 inch 106 dpi B&W wide viewing angle, back lit LCD of my Rocket eBook. It is just that much more comfortable. It is hard to hold a 19 inch monitor in one hand and move it around, towards, and away from you etc...
Re:Not until HandHeld Ebook exist (Score:1)
Actually we should ditch PDF. It is great if you want to deliver a printed document to a user without actually bothering to print it but as a standard way of storing a document, it sucks. It is basically saying that the most logical format is in pages. Gee that was great when the only way to view a document was on paper. Now we are starting to get devices, every thing from a palm to a PC that might want to view, search, reference a document and PDF is just not up to the job.
PDF is a Preprinted Document File. Their really isn't much that is portable about it. The page is an artifact of printing not of a document. And if you are going to make the 'well how do we reference material' argument then remember that court documents and the bible are not referenced by page number. That is because pages are an artifact of printing and formatting and are not consistent from one formatting to another.
Go have a look at: www.openebook.org
The SCIENCE of documentation (Score:1)
The other thing that really upsets me is this idiotic belief that electronic manuals need to take the form of a "virtual" paper book. Isn't it kinda the reason that "virtual" is so nice???? That you can do things OUTSIDE of reality in the virtual world? I can't even begin to count how many times I have gotten PDF (or HTML) manuals that aren't hyperlinked. WHAT THE HELL USE IS THAT? In paper manuals, I can understand how bulky it would be to EXHAUSTIVELY counter-reference everything... but electronically this isn't an issue. Also, last I checked, I can't PRINT an animation on a piece of paper (outside of the Cracker Jack box illusions). How many electronic docs have you seen where they SHOW you what needs to be done? I mourn the passing of Apple's Guide help software... simply the BEST e-help yet invented. It could actually WALK YOU THROUGH steps. That is what ONLINE docs need to do... unfortunately they don't. Also, it is so aggravating to get a PDF file that has 1" margins on the top and sides and is formatted like a PAGE! Give me one file for printing and one for online viewing -- the sad thing is Adobe allows for this in PDF, just nobody uses it. Until the software companies "re-invent", or actually INVENT, a very good way to get detailed information to the user in an effective format, paper manuals aren't going anywhere. Can anyone say "multimedia"? And let me tell you, the dancing paper clip just isn't "a very good way". I have seen users SCREAM at the damn little thing; it is so "cute" as it sits there SMUGLY, not imparting to the users the info they desparately need.
Finally, a final nail in the paper book coffin WOULD be the fact that electronic docs are updated and expanded... yet I have NOT found a single online help repository where I actually said "Wow, that was even better than the manual". (Okay, so this is really still part of GIGO --Garbage In, Garbage Out). And more times than not, the companies are just so HAPPY to get the damn warez out that they don't even spend the time updating and expanding said help resources -- usually because they are too busy deciding how they are going to get your next $100. I mean, if you look at the proliferation of the "help" sites for computers, it is OBVIOUS that the computer industry is doing a TERRIBLE job of documenting their problems themselves. How many times have you seen something posted on a website about a bug a month before the manufacturer gets around to posting a Library article or update? Even the BSD and Linux info repositories are incomplete; I understand that much of the work is done by volunteers, but the software is only as good as its documentation.
Before companies should get off the hook of providing good manuals, users should agree that:
1. The company is capable of THOROUGHLY documenting product features and provides good troubleshooting information.
2. The company is ABLE to transform such information into adequate paper form. They don't have to, but the idea is that I can get a paper manual if I want one.
3. The company has spent the time and money to transform such information into an active and accurate website that is easy to navigate and is well organized.
4. The company has implemented an online help facility that interacts with the product and user in a context-sensitive way, answering questions as well as expanding knowledge. The expansion of knowledge is important... when I read a book, I am often able to expand what I know because I come across a chapter detailing features I was unaware of. If the help system merely "responds" to my queries, I may never know the right question to ask. Much like the Catch 22 of how a dictionary can't really help you to spell a word -- if you can't spell it, you probably won't find it in a dictionary that is organized by spelling.
5. The company then REDUCES the price of the product accordingly, passing the savings of both the reduction in packaging and lack of printing costs to the consumer. At one time, the argument went that software costs SOOO much because of packaging and documentation. In this day and age, a $1 CD and jewelcase hardly justifies the cost of Microsoft Office 2000.
6. The electronic documentation is accurate, cross-platform (TOTALLY!!!), well cross-referenced, informative, and formatted to COMPLEMENT the virtual experience.
But none of this will happen... as user's, we'll simply be fed what corporate wants to feed us.
Printed all the way.... (Score:1)
Management just doesn't get it. (Score:2)
One of these managers later demanded a printed copy of our documentation to hand to a new employee... Why? "Oh, well, it's hard to read on screen." They wouldn't give us the resources to do a print-freindly version, nor the engineering resources to make the product produce better printed output, and on top of all that, they expect us to waste time printing out the document so it's handy for new engineers.
And people wonder why documentation is so crummy...
They Just Don't Get It.
Make the manuals searchable! (Score:3)
HTML is only easily searchable if your doc is stored in one big HTML document! AFAIK none of the popular browsers can search multiple HTML documents in any reasonable fashion.
PDF, for all its faults, is at least searchable, and handles large documents much better than HTML does.
I want both (Score:3)
And please give me online docs in html format (at minimum!) - no PDF or postscript please, unless this is also accomanied by html.
By far the most important version is the online, hypertext, searchable version. Whenever there's a tradeoff to be made for cost reasons, favor the online docs.
On the other hand, when I pay big money for a software product I *expect* printed docs and if I don't get them I probably won't be back a second time.
--
Vendor Rationalizations (Score:3)
The reality is that they want to save money. It costs serious money to write, edit, design and print high quality manuals.
I recently bought a retail copy of Microsoft Office 2000 and it had no manuals. This is not a cheap software package. I felt I had been ripped off (again) by Microsoft.
Help files and PDF files are not a substitute for printed documentation. You can't do high quality graphics and book design when the output device is a CRT. A two-dimensional display is not an adequate substitute for a book.
Re:Not until HandHeld Ebook exist (Score:1)
manuals are useful (Score:2)
Electronic docs for backup drives?!?! (Score:1)
1. I buy the latest greatest backup system,
2. go through the backup precedures,
3. have an hard disk failure, and
4. find a little card that says, "please refer to the documentation included in the help menu."
Can we say, "blarrrrr" ?
There are some areas such as system recovery and hardware devices that I still need in hard-copy form. Granted, however, that I usually have more than one computer at hand.
Just my $0.02 worth.
---
paper documentation is important--if done right (Score:2)
Good examples of what I find useful are the O'Reilly "In A Nutshell" books, the O'Reilly main series, the "For Dummies", and the Waite Group's "How-To" books. Those generally present a lot of information, but in a logical, useful way. They do leave out less important detail. The on-line documentation should then document every last bit.
Re:Paperless is the way to go. (Score:2)
That, plus sometimes, if i'm really interested, i'll read the manual at places besides the computer... like on the train, on the couch, etc... Hauling around a laptop is way too cludgy if all you want to do is read a book. You can't really dog ear pages in online references, nor can you apply yellow highlighter to your screen (unless you are able to scroll the window so what you wanted highlighted lines up perfectly with where it was when you actually drew across the screen with the marker at some previous point... but even then, you'll end up with yellow streaks across the screen
Lastly, with PDF documentation, 95% of the work is already done, in the writing and typesetting of the manual. All that needs to be done is the actual printing. Even for a large manual, that's still really only $2 or $3 extra for the documentation in printed form. That makes it cheaper for them to distibute the manual than it is for you to print a whole 200 page manual to an inkjet or laser printer.
As a last point, notice that software prices stay the same despite the lack of manuals these days... No matter what the justifications that programmers, QA, or engineers point out, it's all probably spurred by CFO's somewhere going "how can we earn just a few more dollars per box shipped? That manual can go!"
Re:Electronic Yes PROPRIETORY PDF No (Score:2)
Printed manuals (Score:2)
Online books. (Score:2)
I am always on the go, I program from a half dozen different terminals in the course of a month. Any reference books I have access to, generally sit on a shelf at home, or a shelf at work, and I don't tend to carry a library on my back. But every computer I access has access to the internet, so the only way to have a book be conveniently accessible is to have it online.
Some people talk about cost of printing, and environmental issues, and cheaper distribution in digital form, but while these are important, they are not my primary concern. Internet based references have recently become more accessible than physical references, especially for highly mobile people such as myself.
Games require printed manuals. (Score:2)
And even if you can ALT-TAB out, do you really want to try that in 'doze and risk crashing your game, or at least slowing it down when you alt-tab back? I couldn't begin to count the number of times I paused Baldur's Gate to refer to the manual for some statistical or other data, for example. Having to alt-tab to a web browser would have made playing the game suck, and caused me to have to reboot at least twice as often as I otherwise would have had to.
Paperless is the way to go. (Score:3)
I am responsible for software production and distribution at General Motors, and we are moving our release notes from paper to paperless. That is the general direction for GM anyway.
I don't think paper manuals are really a necessity. I personally don't use them, instead I always look on the CD for documentation in *preferrably* HTML format, but PDF is ok, too.
I like HTML because it fast, easily searchable, and viewable by standard Web browsing software, which virtually every computer already has installed nowadays.
Re:Paperless is the way to go. (Score:3)
Although, I have to say that its probably much different if you are learning your FIRST language as opposed to your SECOND or THIRD language. In retrospect, I think if my first language had been Turbo Pascal, it would have taken me much longer to learn.
Of course we aren't talking about programming languages here. I learned to use Lotus 1-2-3 (and later, Microsoft Excel) primarily through online documentation and just generally poking around at things. Most application software I learn this way. I learned Perl by basically inhaling the Camel Book, however, so I guess there can be made a case either way.
Missing the obvious (Score:4)
YOU CAN SCRIBBLE ON IT.
You can highlight, you can underline, you can make notes in the margins, you can note where the tech pubs dudes fscked up... you can put those little flourescent sticky tabs on the critical sections and scribble what they are on the tabs, thus producing over time a crude but bloody effective search engine...
As long as you can still print the HTML/PDF/Word doc/whatever, geeks will continue to do so, for this very reason... and, of course, the fact that it's portable and not power-dependent, and just plain easier to read. But the scribble factor is quite large... and often overlooked.
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Nuts on modding up the AC's. Make them login.
no paper manual (Score:2)
Basically there are two ways you can use a manual:
- as a tutorial.
- as a reference.
A tutorial should cover all major ways of using a package. Typically you don't proceed through a tutorial linearly but you pick topics that interest you in the order that is convenient for you.
A reference should be complete and easy accessible. Those requirements cannot be fullfilled by a paper manual (at least not without increasing the price of the software package significantly: thick manuals are expensive).
Both ways of using a manual can be done using online manuals. For tutorials I prefer online because it is easier to use (examples you can play with, animations, search). Also it is possible to provide references to other relevant portions of the tutorial. Take the java tutorial as an example. It is far too large to print in one book (the swing tutorial alone is hundreds of pages) yet it is very desirable to keep it complete (not to mention up to date). I don't think many people can claim to have read it completely. Given the choice I would alway prefer the online version since the best feature of the tutorial is being able to find documentation on all related issues real quick.
The same goes for references. Lets take the java API as an example. I wouldn't care for a 1000 page dump on paper of the Java API documentation. I know there are many expensive books that provide exactly that (I don't own any) so apparently there are people who think differently about this. However I wouldn't want a software company charge me for a thick (expensive) manual I won't use anyway.
An online version is so much better (links to related classes, links to relevant portions of the tutorial and vice versa, search facility).
Most software packages these days only ship with some very basic paper documentation (installation, how to get started, how to browse the online documentation). Having the installation instructions on paper can be handy but a readme file is ok for me too. Since I know how to insert a cdrom and find the readme, the dead trees are wasted on me. But I suppose it looks nice to ship some paper along with the cd.
I no longer judge a software package on the paper documentation but on the quality and accessibility of the online documentation. PDFs and postscript files are bad in my opinion (limited or no interactivity). Winhelp or HTML is much better. I mention Winhelp because that has search built into it while with HTML the searchpages have to be generated statically (limiting their usefullness).
But even the use of offline documentation is limited. In the case of Java I usually refer to the documentation at javasoft since that is the most up to date version.
Assuming you want what's best for your customers.. (Score:2)
Do a printed manual. They are invaluable. As has been mentioned they are easier to read, more portable, and work even when your computer isn't. They are what I want to work with when I am just learning a program. On the other hand,
Do a soft-copy manual and put it on a CD attached to the inside cover of the printed manual (ala those stupid books with "examples" CDs). I often find that AFTER I am familiar with a product, usually from reading the hardcopy docs, that when I want a quick answer I prefer soft-copy, searchable docs.
Skippy
Printed Manuals? YES! (Score:3)
We've got some software that comes with software-only manuals in the company. Inevitably what happens is that people just print it out anyways. It would make the customer a LOT happier to heft a real manual in the box.
I see 2 main issues to software docs:
- No screen is as good as a printed piece of paper to read. Yet. And I've got some darn fine LCD's at my disposal. (including a 13.7" baby that will handle 1280x1024)
- It is WAY more convenient to flip through pages by hand than using any search function.
Print is not dead. Bad analogy-warning (Score:2)
the digital/analog watch discussion.
Sometimes we geeks are rather quick at
dismissing older technology.
We've all heard it:
- newspapers are dead
- printed books are dead
- analog watches are dead
Etc..
The truth I feel, is always somewhere in the middle.
Searchable computer-manuals are great.
But having to open up a browser to read instructions or references is not the same
as just having it on paper.
Not everyone has dual-head display, and I'd like
to let my work have total focus on the desktop.
Virtual desktops are OK, but I really like a
printed manual.
Besides, some things will always need separate
manuals.
How much good does a PDF-manual do you, when
need help trying to get your OS to run properly?
That's great, I need the the PDF-manuals to
get the OS working properly, but if I could read
the PDF-manuals, I wouldn't need them.
Talk about the chicken and the egg...
Printed manuals is much, much better for newbies.
Some application could probably make it with
just browsable manuals on disk, but not all of them.
For now, a good printed manual is actually a reason why someone buys an application instead of
just pirating it, or downloading it legally (when we're talking about OSS).
Is it my impression... (Score:2)
This is semi-OT, but, is it just my impression or has the amounted of paper printed indeed increased exponentially with, in the last decade or so, computers having made printed material supposedly “obsolete”?
(Yeah, that sentence was rather a mouthful. Let me try to say that more clearly.) I get the feeling that, in the computer age, the use of paper has increased tremendously. I'm not just talking about twirps who feel the need to print thousand-pages long listings with just one column of digits on each page. I mean that not only have screens not replaced paper but computers seem to have made the need for the latter even higher. Probably because, before computers, the producer of some data used to print the data on paper; now it's the users who print the data (“data” in the broad sense—this includes manuals), even when they might not use it. (All right, this analysis is really simplistic; please fill in the missing details.)
The Xerox, ahem, photocopy machine, was the first step in the massive-paper-consumption trend. The computer was the second. Clay tablets, anyone?
Re:Missing the obvious (Score:2)
In addition to scribble-ability, there's just the plain information bandwidth point-of-vie, as I've pointed out here on
(Figuring the relative bandwidths of the average computer desktop versus the average physical desktop and surrounding workspace is left as an excercise for the reader. Let's just say it's staggering.)
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software
CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
Self-made Searching (Score:2)
Having said all that... O'Reilly includes their own java-based search engine with their CD Bookshelf series. And their offerings are a series of individual HTML files.
So yea... you don't need to have one fat file to search if you're willing to put a bit of extra effort in to it (or provide the tools as part of the documentation).
Re:Not until HandHeld Ebook exist (Score:2)
http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbni
Or, you could get a Palm or WinCE device. My understanding is that the WinCE's larger color screen would be ideal for this sort of thing. (And I think you can get a PDF reader for WinCE.)
Print On Demand Services could solve both problems (Score:3)
However, FatBrain (www.fatbrain.com) offers what they call "Print On Demand" services which permit authors of software (amongst others) to provide electronic manuals, and give them an option to buy the printed manual from FatBrain. What makes this system interesting is that there is no risk to you: they literally print the book on demand just before shipping. That way, there isn't excess inventory, and you could even set the print costs to just above the cost to print the manual--that way, your company saves on printing costs and inventory costs, and for those (like myself) who want printed manuals, they have a low-cost alternative to printing the whole thing out.
My understanding is that print-on-demand services is also provided by Barnes and Nobel, though I couldn't find any information on their web site.
For more information about FatBrain's print on demand services, visit http://www1.fatbrain.com/inf oexchange/program.asp?vm=c [fatbrain.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Paperless is the way to go. (Score:2)
A waste of whose money? I don't recall a single software vendor reducing their price when they stopped shipping printed docs. (I've been around long enough to remember when they all shipped the hard manuals.) Not having the books seems to be a waste of my money, since I am being charged the same anyway.
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Re:For the love of God, YES!!! (Score:2)
Indeed. I also don't consider .pdf files to be any more useful than other forms of documentation. The only reason to use something like pdf is that they want to give you something that looks like a book without actually giving you a book. Kind of like taking the bus is just like driving a car without actually driving a car. There are probably other formats that would be more useful electronically if you can just break out of the "it must look like a book" mindset.
Wandering slightly off topic, but this reminds me of the mournful transition in the Windows world from simple, human-readable/editable INI files to that hideous monstrosity that is the System Registry. With INI files, I could at least look at them and maybe figure out what went wrong with the software in question, even if that software was Windows.
In really desperate situations, I could resort to COPY CON WHATEVER.INI, which I did once out of necessity. Try editing the Registry like that when you can't get the GUI to boot. Heck, try to edit the Registry even with the GUI tools -- now there's a black art on par with, say, configuring the X Window System by hand.
Well, maybe configuring X is easier. :)
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non-debate (Score:2)
I would also like to personally throttle cheapskate game developers who only include documentation in an electronic form - I'm not going to friggin flip back and forth between a damn PDF file in the middle of a game.
Re:Make the manuals searchable! (Score:2)
You can search PDF's, but:
1) it's slow
2) you can't use regexps or your own homecooked perl script on them
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Printed manuals don't cause carpal tunnel! (Score:2)
But even if I'm just clicking my way through a PDF or HTML file, indoors, in a chair, it's the exact same clicky-clicky motions I make all day. It still causes stress on the wrists.
Give me a hand-held PDF reader with a decent battery life that won't cost me my left testicle, and I'll throw out the paper and sit outside with that instead. But until then...
Paper isn't obsolete yet. (Score:2)
* Use it when the machine is down.
* Use it when something is fouled up, hung, or just busy with the thing the manual describes. (In particular, your first times through a complicated process you don't want to make it still more complicated by flipping to help screens - which may not be fully available at every micro-step of interaction.)
* Stick a finger or a bookmark in one passage while reading another, and flip between them (or among several).
* Highlight important passages.
* Take notes in the margins.
* Study it in bed.
I could go on.
Further: display technology is still orders of magnitude away from being able to display as much, as conveniently, as a couple hundred pages of paper. Imagine trying to read in bed with a megapixel monitor sitting on your belly. Then think about staking up a couple hundred of them, to simultaneously display the whole writeup.
Which is not to say that online help isn't good, too. For starters, it can do things that are difficult on printed paper, such as generalized searches. (An index is a pain to generate. And even when present it only covers what the writer thought was significant, which is usually not everything the reader wants to look up.)
Also: (Score:2)
Cloning a paper-style manual to a screen doen't really help: The screen's limitations make reading a long flow more difficult. (Try reading the same document in Adobe Pageview and on bound paper.)
Please, convince them! (Score:2)
But, seriously, anyone who has ever had a complete set of encyclopedia knows deep down that books are incredibly useful. Now, if your help system was fully indexed and quickly searchable, then I would prefer the help system, but it's got to be on my local machine. I'm not willing to set up a net connection on every bloody computer I work on just to get at some slightly obscure command-line switch.
Dave
Re:Paperless is the way to go. (Score:5)
2) You much has a really nice novel, and a really nice seat. When I've got to learn a programming language from on-line/on-screen docs, it takes me about three times as long as if I had a printed book. Mostly because it's harder on the eyes, I can't bring it with me when I go to pick somebody up at the airport(that's a good 2 hours of wasted time), etc., etc..
Printed manuals and books, I feel, will become a precious commodity. I have no problem with that - so long as I can get them.
Dave
Internationalization (Score:2)
In thanks for some open source translations [linux-mandrake.com] I did, MandrakeSoft [linux-mandrake.com] sent me a copy of Mandrake 7.0 (thanks, especially to Pablo). Somehow I got on the list for a copy with Spanish documentation. My conversational Spanish is rusty and my technical Spanish is non-existant. And it doesn't matter. The full English documentation is on the CD ROM. Besides, I translated the quick install instructions, so I ought to be able to find them again.
The point I am driving at is that no Linux distribution is going to make money selling a distribution with printed documentation in Esperanto. The potential market is rather small, and is spread throughout the world. Yet because of the nature of Esperanto as an interlanguage, Esperantists have a need for an internationalized computing platform that can handle their own native language and Esperanto. Given the open source model, and volunteers, it is possible to have support for many languages, each for the tiny cost of the space it's documentation occupies on a CD ROM. If there is a market for the printed documentation, the printing and distribution of that can be handled separately.
Include the Manual, tightwad (Score:2)
It doesn't have to be a 600-page "everything the developers ever envisioned for this piece of software, and how to use it, in excruciating detail", but it should at least allow someone to learn the program without refering to online help, and enough to tell them how to use the most common features.
If people didn't want printed manuals, how would SCC stay in business? (Are they still in business? maybe bad example.) People buy printouts of stuff they can get online for free. Clearly, they like paper.
--Kevin
Some manuals must be on paper (Score:5)
Basically, there are three advantages for paper documentation:
Advantages of online documentation include:
Giant reference manuals, which are seldomly used, are a good example of documentation that can be placed online only.
One thing you should always do is provide all of your documentation electronically. A user should be able to view all the documentation online if he chooses. Never provide any documentation in paper format only. You may also want to sell two versions of the application: one with and the other without paper manuals. The version without paper manuals should be cheaper.
This is about cost (scalability) (Score:3)
Customers liked them so much that we started releasing updates to them. We went from releasing them every 2 yeas to every year, then every 6 months, then every 3 months.
When the work sterted to get overwhelming (and our customer base grew) I went in to ask for another engineer to help the project keep on schedule. In the meeting, my boss informed me that we spent over $75,000 in the previous year just on printing and distribution and asked that I look for new ways to lower that cost. Then, and only then, would he consider bringing on additions to the staff.
The lesson here is that a printed solution doesn't scale well. It's fine for a small user base, but as that base grows, a printed solution adds up to real money.
In the end, we went back to giving one manual with the purchase of the product and gave away newer versions of the docs on-line to keep customers satisfied. We increased our update schedule to every month, and hired the extra engineer.
___
I never read docs that come with the program (Score:3)
Oddly enough, I generally find the man pages that come with the assorted free software that I much prefer to be comprehensive and useful. Go figure.
What manuals are (and why they are good) (Score:2)
I dislike even the ebook devices (whatever they are called.) A book is a book and nothing else will ever be a book. It is something that can't be compared, you can scribble on it (as said in other posts), you can put your own markers in it to "search to," and the feeling of holding and reading a book is something special unlike anything else.
Excuse me if I babbled too much.
Printed manuals... HELL YES!!! (Score:2)
When I'm trying to get up to speed on a particular system, I'll often read/skim the manuals from front to back. You simply can't do that with on-line docs, for two reasons:
1) Reading off a monitor sucks for long periods of time.
2) The organization of on-line docs sucks. You get the added benefit of hyperlinking, but you get the negative aspect that usually people don't put the time into organizing the docs into a linear way that can be read cover to cover.
Other than that, it's also way easier to use a manual that I can keep open to relevent pages while I'm programming on the system. I guess a two-monitor set-up might work, but... it's just not the same.
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Re:Is it my impression... (Score:2)
Some reasons for this increase in the use of paper are:
1. More people are surfing the web everyday and not many of them like to read on a monitor, so they print EVERYTHING.
2. Some of these printing companies offer services to print information from cellphones, PDAs. More paper
3. So now you can buy digital cameras but you're still going to want a printout to put in the family album. Yet more paper used.
So, I think that it's improbable that people'll ever get used to reading everything on a monitor, maybe when a new generation of kids grow up using CRTs and LCDs panels instead of sheets of paper. So I think that the right thing to do right now is to start promoting the use of recycled paper or paper made from alternative fibers.
"Who Needs A Printed Manual?" --Tim O'Reilly (Score:2)
I much prefer printed docs to electronic ones, and I run two monitors. I think what most of the places turning to "e-manuals" really want to do is screw producing a serious manual altogether, and leace it to O'Reilly et. al., who will do better jobs anyway.
I still remember buying Autocad R10, it came with a hardcover manual the size of an encyclopedia and was about as info-packed. Now you spend $800 for Office 2kPro and all you get is a CD with a damn talking paperclip...
-cwk.
For the love of God, YES!!! (Score:2)
First off, if I have some in-depth question I need answered, I need to do some in-depth reading. I can't do that on the computer screen! My eyes would go blind if I studied an on-line manual to try and figure out what to do!
Second off, search modes for PDF files don't do crap when you need to figure out exactly what's wrong. Say I'm installing something like, oh, say a DVD Decoder card for a DVD drive I bought, but it's not decoding the movies. I need to figure out why. Well, open up good ol' AcroRead, type in the search field "Specs," and I'll have to wade through countless hits of the word "Specs," often not finding what I need. Well, I need to get more specific, but if I get too specific, I won't find what I'm looking for. Often times the only way I can find something is to do the same thing I do in any other printed manual: go to the index or table of contents.
And most importantly, and I STRESS this above the rest, If the computer doesn't work, I ***NEED*** printed documentation!!! I hate trying to install something new on someone's computer only to find that it hoses the computer, and there's no frickin' way to find out what's wrong because I have to get the computer on to find out what's wrong! What if I'm installing a new CD-ROM Drive? If it doesn't work, how am I supposed to get to a
I tell ya, some of those
If someone is buying a boxed product, there NEEDS to be a printed manual with at least semi-detailed instructions. You don't have to enclose a 300 page manual, but look at the TI-8x or TI-9x series of calculators. Not only do you buy the calculator, but you also get a nice 200 page paperback explaining how it works. Imagine if you bought the calculator and it came with "If you wish to get instructions, please go to www.ti.com/support/ti/8x and print the 200 page manual."
Re:Printed manuals... HELL NO!!! (Score:3)
The advantages of online documentation are:
- Searchable.
- Copy and paste examples straight into the application.
- Follow the trail of purple links to see where you've been before (one could do this with books, but I don't like mutilating/marking them)
- Link out to relevant web sites.
- Download the latest changes and updates.
- Always available, your co-workers haven't 'borrowed' it.
- Results in cheaper software since I'm not paying for a dead tree.
Offtopic: The one thing that really annoys me about most documentation (printed or online), is that there is frequently no introductory text telling you what this product is for. It is irritating to find a piece of software called "GrokMaster 2000" and look at docs, and find the functionality of everything spelled out in minute detail, yet be totally mystified as to what the program is actually for.Re:debate, shembate (Score:2)
Marketing folks will argue that since you've made the sale, it doesn't matter what format the docs are in, because you've already won the customer. But that's not true. Software with awkward, inaccessible documentation makes for unhappy, frustrated users, and when the product comes up for re-evaluation 18 months later, that frustration gets expressed in a desire to work with something "less awkward".
Also, your current customers probably know other people (unless you're marketing HERMITCAVE-2.4.2) who haven't bought your product. Those people are called potential customers. If they hear nothing but griping about your product, those people are called non-customers.
Real geeks... (Score:2)
Speaking of which... what does the "SysRq" key (under "Print Screen" (which I have figured out)) do?
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Paper manuals will never die... (Score:3)
One thing you (person who asked the question) should keep in mind is a paper manual gives the consumers another reason to buy your product. I know when I was young I would warez games and stuff. Every game except flight simulators. That was because they didn't come with manuals if you pirated them. I bought those. Nowadays I've matured (at least I like to think so) and I buy all my software. I simply hate opening up a new game and just seeing a cd jewrel, no manual or anything except a registration card (Microsoft Motorcross Maddness). Paper manuals are a great way to add value to your package. I know I havn't bought a Microsoft game since I got ripped off like that. (That and I don't have Windows anymore). It seperates yourself from others when you give your consumers a good deal and treat them right.
Not until HandHeld Ebook exist (Score:3)
Paperless Bathroom? (Score:2)
Not easy to copy. (Score:2)
I like having printed manuals, their batteries do not wear out, and they can be taken anywhere.
Re:No they aren't (Score:2)
Why print when you can have something searchable? (Score:2)