<VV> why constant newbie questions? corvair literature criticism

[Dave Thompson]

<SNIP>
You end up searching, and leafing through lots of pages (one reason a CD is
useless, BTW).

Just my thoughts.....

-Mark
<SNIP>

Mark, I beg to differ about using a CD. I spent many years teaching for a
telephone system manufacturer. Most of the phone systems had about 6 feet of
manuals if you stacked them up. At one point several years ago, upper
management decided to stop printing manuals and only providing documentation
in CD form. There was a general outcry about it. Since as an instructor, I
was "stuck in the middle of the argument", I spent a great deal of time
getting used to the CD's. I found that once you open a .PDF (Acrobat reader)
document, there is a "find" tool. I would select the manual for the task and
then type the search word or words in under "Find". Acrobat reader would
step me through the manual to every time the word(s) existed. After several
tries, I found that I was able to find anything I wanted in far less time
than with a printed book. If I really need to, I could print that page or
pages.

The first time we "looked in the book" In each class, I would spend some
time teaching my students how to properly navigate a soft copy of the books.
The arguments over hard or soft copies went away.

By the way, the table of contents were just OK and the Indexes were
terrible.

All my Corvair shop manuals are in soft copy and I appreciate "Corvair
Basics" being available that way too. I hope Santa will give me a new
Technical Guide in CD format. I've been a good boy!(well sort'a)

All in all, I guess it all boils down to what YOU like. Every body has their
opinion. This is mine.

Dave Thompson