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Re: Organizing Task and Ref Info (Was Good Software Manu...
Subject:Re: Organizing Task and Ref Info (Was Good Software Manu... From:Karen_Mayer -dot- TOUCH_TECHNOLOGY -at- NOTES -dot- COMPUSERVE -dot- COM Date:Wed, 24 Jan 1996 13:31:53 EST
IMHO, one good example of what *not* to do is what Borland did in
shipping Delphi 1.0. There were manuals on using the user interface, but
none on the PASCAL language. For those (like me) who were moving over
from Visual Basic to Delphi, the languages are different enough to
warrant a language reference, which was provided *only* online in the
form of Help.
Why was this not useful? Because in this particular case, the reference
was needed more than the guide to using the UI. Microsoft shipped out a
language reference with VB (at least ver. 3, which is what I have), so I
could flip through a book to learn their version of BASIC. Had Borland
shipped a hard copy of the language reference with their product, I would
not have been so frustrated and might not have needed to spend $35 on a
book to teach me the language. And I might have been singing their
praises like everyone else in the country (did they already know
PASCAL???)