Hi, Rob,<br><br>I haven't seen a good manual for a paid application for years. The last one I know of for MS Office was for Office 4.3 professional, and that's Windows for Workgroups. And I've got that set!<br>
<br>I've yet to see any help files that come with a program, to worth be much when it comes to details. And often, the online help at the web page is simply those help files on your hard drive, and any PDF that you download is the same thing.<br>
<br>It just a personal thought, but I'd bet a lot of users get frustrated and simply give up because the help files, whatever form they take, prove to be worthless and/or useless to the user.<br><br>I've got a couple paid applications where the "help" is simply a forum where the answers come from other users. Nary a peep from the developers. And it's really frustrating when none of the users know the answers, and there is no way to contact the developers you've paid good money to for their software. I've got a lot of unanswered questions out there.<br>
<br>Another good corollary to "It's impossible to RTFM when there isn't an FM." is "What good is online help when you can't get online?" LOL<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 2:29 PM, Rob Oakes <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:lyx-devel@oak-tree.us">lyx-devel@oak-tree.us</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"><div class="im"><br>
On Jan 29, 2011, at 2:20 PM, a.l.e wrote:<br>
<br>
> or 20 years ago were vendors providing software and manuals for free?<br>
<br>
</div>No, but they did provide manuals and product documentation. I understand why this is near impossible for open source (and I think that selling high quality documentation is a perfectly valid revenue strategy), but when was the last time you saw a paid application shipped with good quality documentation (that wasn't a web page)?<br>
<br>
The copy of Microsoft Office 2007 I bought a couple of years ago includes online help and no manual. Even there, half of the links are dead or point to 2010 which includes a different way of doing things. I understand the original posters complaint.<br>
<br>
It's impossible to RTFM when there isn't an FM.<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
Rob<br>
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><br>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br>Ken Springer<br><br>"All progress depends upon the unreasonable person."<br>George Bernard Shaw<br><br><br>Cheap prices make for cheap goods; cheap goods make for<br>
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