sue@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au (Sue McPherson) (12/19/90)
Two of the programmers in my group have been develping applications using INGRES (release 6) in a Unix environment. They have both complained (quite forcefully) about the manuals provided with INGRES, in particular; - difficulty finding information - lack of cross-referencing within documentation - incorrect details, ie. instructions for passing a parameter to a report show the use of quotes, after much trial and error it turns out a different combination of quotes are required. They seem to spend a considerable amount of time 'browsing' through the manuals looking for information and quite often find it by chance or when they are looking for something else. I have two questions; 1) Does everyone have the same problem with the manuals? 2) Is there a good "Developers' Guide" written by any third party? Thanks, Sue McPherson
eric@wdl47.wdl.fac.com (Eric Kuhnen) (12/19/90)
sue@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au (Sue McPherson) writes: >Two of the programmers in my group have been develping applications using >INGRES (release 6) in a Unix environment. >They have both complained (quite forcefully) about the manuals provided >with INGRES, in particular; >- difficulty finding information >- lack of cross-referencing within documentation >- incorrect details, ie. instructions for passing a parameter to a report > show the use of quotes, after much trial and error it turns out a > different combination of quotes are required. >They seem to spend a considerable amount of time 'browsing' through the >manuals looking for information and quite often find it by chance or when >they are looking for something else. >I have two questions; >1) Does everyone have the same problem with the manuals? Yes, I have found INGRES to be masters of obfuscation. However, the manuals are much improved over the 5.0 manuals I used to have. The 6.0 manuals do have cross-referencing, but not at the same detail level as, say, a MS-Word 4.0 manual for the Mac. "Q"