Re: Online vs. Paper (fwd)

Subject: Re: Online vs. Paper (fwd)
From: Gwen Gall <ggall -at- CA -dot- ORACLE -dot- COM>
Date: Thu, 22 Dec 1994 09:07:32 EST

In-Reply-To: CNSEQ1:TECHWR-L -at- VM1 -dot- ucc -dot- okstate -dot- edu's message of 12-21-94 09:45

Sherri Hall made this interesting remark:

My experience is
that paper manuals are perceived as low-tech (read __bad__) by high-tech
audiences. (For the past 10 years I've mostly written for high-techers,
so it's good to get other perspectives.)
*******************

My experience with Unix-based engineers and programmers is that _any_
documentation is bad. You are either supposed to know it already, figure
out from its cryptic name and -h options how it is used, or (as a last resort
only) read the online (text file) "man" pages. These "man" pages are written
for Unix "gurus" by Unix "gurus", and it is a sign of weakness and incompetence
to admit that you find them incomprehensible. Ain't Unix grand!

How does that quote go about reading the documentation is admitting failure?

Cheers,

Gwen (ggall -at- ca -dot- oracle -dot- com)
Oracle MultiDimension

"Why can't somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and
nobody says, and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks."

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes


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