I'm late getting into the documentation discussion,

[kosma%stc-sun@STC.LOCKHEED.COM (Monty Kosma)]

   Date: Mon, 12 Mar 90 11:56:40 EST
   From: buff%pravda@gatech.edu (Richard Billington)

   so someone may have said this and I just haven't read it yet. 

   (a) with regard to number of doc sets: I'd like to see Symbolics send out
   doc sets in roughly the ratios they mention, but then give each machine at
   a site a "Credit" good for up to ninety days to be cashed in for a doc.
   set. The two sites I've been acquainted with never needed all the doc sets
   we got and the proportion that Symbolics suggests would be just about right.
   However, I don't think it's in Symbolics interest to penalize places where
   this is not the case.

   (b) I've never heard so much griping against the doc. examiner. Let's hear
   more - should this be a session at SLUG90? I've found that the doc. examiner
   is much better cross-referenced than any printed material could be, and I've
   found it much faster to use than the doc. set. Yea, it seems slow, but by
   the time you juggle the index, the volume you want, etc., the slow 30 - 40 
   second response time on the system is nothing to complain about. I used to
   race people who told me the doc set was better. I never lost.

Well, I've never lost with the doc set :-)...For any particular thing I
need to look up -- if it is documented -- I can usually get the volume
right just be the title, no need to shuffle through the index or find the
volume I want.  Especially if I need to look up something which I refer to
often (like loop macro docs, or format tilde control strings), I can find
it faster in the hardcopy documentation, and flip through it faster to find
exactly what I'm looking for.  

I don't  know if the problem is so much the document examiner as the file
i/o time (not again!).

monty 
kosma@alan.decnet.lockheed.com