Sam Clemens

Subject: Sam Clemens
From: Kirk Foster <tscom004 -at- DUNX1 -dot- OCS -dot- DREXEL -dot- EDU>
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 1994 12:47:24 -0400

Along the same lines as Mark Levinson's when he said:

"if you can't include it in 1000 pages of nine-point type,
can you include it in the amount of disk space
that you have time to fill before the product ships?"

Structuring the on-line documents to apply to EVERY problem or task
the user might want to perform would involve a great deal more work.

There is a reason paper documentation doesn't attempt to do this,
lack of enough trees.

Lack of memory has kept this from happening in on-line, but this
limitation is, IMHO, a good thing.

On a tangent, hardcopy of some sort, seperate from the program and the
computer, will always be necessary due to the dreaded "CRASH."

Some reference material advising users "what to do in case of an
emergency" must, or at least should, accompany software products.

To give you a "real life" example of how squimish the lack of hard copy
can make just about everyone, try this:

A recent questionarre asked me if I liked the idea of recieving my
grades,
course selections, etc. ONLY on-line.

One situation should make everyone quiver, the system snafu's
(power failure, whatever) and you don't have hardcopy to show
to the cold bureaucratic eye...

nuff said

Kirk Foster
Drexel University


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