weems%umass-cs%csnet-relay@sri-unix.UUCP (12/14/83)
From: Charles Weems <weems%umass-cs@csnet-relay>
The Columbia MPC manuals (like those for the Kaypro) are basically
those supplied by the software houses that wrote the packages. The
manuals for Perfect Writer/Calc/Filer are all very well written for
novice users. For more advanced features, one has to dig into a set
of appendices at the back. These packages also come with on-line
tutorials. The manual for Fast Graphs is also good and with the menus
and help, I had it doing bar charts in about 10 minutes. The Home
Accountant Plus and Volkswriter manuals were a little less readable bu
still not bad. The manuals for Microsoft BASIC, MS-DOS, CP/M-86 and
Macro-86 were rather poor -- typical programmer's reference manuals.
These latter four were generic, "any machine", manuals with a few pages
of notes from Columbia on the differences. The BASIC manual was actually
for BASIC-80 with a separate manual for the BASIC-86 and GW-BASIC
extensions. Columbia also supplies an Operations Guide and an Introduction
to the MPC manual. The Operations Guide is purely a reference manual.
The Intro is essentially a "How to set it up, turn it on and what to
type to run the tutorials". There is also an on line tutorial that
introduces the machine, and another for MS-DOS that is run from Perfect
Writer. Oh, I forgot to mention the Terminal Emulator/File Transfer
program. The manual isn't bad, but it won't win any awards. The
program has on-line help which is enough to learn to use it.
Overall, I'd say the manuals are pretty good. The one real problem is
that the BASIC and OS manuals don't tell you the specifics of the system
so you have to go back and forth to the Operations Guide, Intro and
Notes to get all of it together -- but that's only an annoyance to
advanced users. For those who just want to use the application packages,
everything is simple, menu driven and has tutorials and on-line help.
Note: The new DOS 2.0 comes with both a tutorial and an audio cassette
that teach you how to use it.
chip weems