Re: WinHelp 95 help approach

[Patrick O'Connell <titanide -at- MICRO -dot- ORG>]

> Date:    Tue, 23 Jan 1996 17:56:00 PST
> From:    Kent Newton <KentN -at- METRIX-INC -dot- COM>

> (As a side note, I've been after my boss to buy the department a serious
> set of reference materials -- American Heritage Unabridged Dictionary,
> Thesaurus, Dictionary of Technical Terms, etc.  Instead of spending the
> $100 or so dollars to buy one set of manuals, he wants to upgrade two PCs
> with quad speed CD-ROMS and buy an electronic reference library!  What
> kind of logic is this.  Besides spending more money than necessary, the
> electronic is more trouble than its worth.)

Kent, your boss knows what he's doing. CD-ROM now *is*, without a doubt,
THE distribution medium for PC software. He's not just thinking of the
electronic reference library he wants to buy, he's probably thinking how
little time is left before you won't be able to get ANYTHING on 3.5"
floppy disk -- whether or not you specifically request that format.

Nor do I know why you're complaining about having an electronic ref.
library rather than a paper-based one. Yes, I like honest-to-God,
printed-and-bound dead tree editions, too. However, provided the people
who wrote the search engine know what they're doing, I dare you to find a
completely-new-to-you word in a paper thesaurus FASTER than you could with
an electronic one.

I have a hate-ove-hate relationship with FrameMaker, but its online
thesaurus is a bloody marvel. While at Eicon Technology I once brought my
PC into a marketing name-the-product meeting so we could make use of
Frame's thesaurus while brainstorming. People were often slack-jawed at
what it came up with.


PatO'(Patrick O'Connell)
titanide -at- micro -dot- org