genera 8.0 announcement

[pc@flash.bellcore.com (Peter A Clitherow)]

>From:  JCMA@reagan.ai.mit.edu (John C. Mallery)
> 
> Of course, many users complain that file access in the ``document examiner''
> is unusably slow.  They find it faster to look up documentation in the
> manuals.  Is this fixed in rel 8?  If not, don't expect people to neither read
> the documentation nor use Symbolics Lisp Machines.
> 
> This is not to mention numerous other shortcomings of the document examiner.
> 
> Hardcopying documentation suffers similarly.
> 

I think you're griping too much.  Yes, formatting SAB files is **slow**,
but compared to man pages, i'll still take the power of cross
referencing, intelligent indexing et al, any day.

Vote of thanks from at least one satisfied user of the doc examiner.
(But, drawing graphics really is abysmally slow (in 7.2);  i trust that
at least, has been worked on in 8.0)  I'd still like however, a way of
getting user documentation into SAB format, without spending 10k on
concordia though.  The low end writing tools would have been much
appreciated.  Failing them, but about some documentation for the format of
SAB files, so that we can write our own stuff??

> 
>     Actually, many of our customers have said that we send them too much
>     documentation, i.e. too many sets. You can buy more sets, and parts of
>     sets for a nominal fee. Your sales rep has details.
> 

Yes, i'd like to second this.  At this local site having 7 copies of the
complete doc is too much.  But i think perhaps rather than 1 copy per
site, something like one for every 6-8 machines would be more
reasonable.

pc