Doc Exam vs. Paper

[buff%pravda@gatech.edu (Richard Billington)]

First advantage: much better cross-referencing and the doc. exam.
overviews and table of contents features are unrivaled in paper for
finding relevant doc. when you don't have an exact index.

Second advantage: I used to find I had three or more volumes I was
juggling in between (doing something obscure with loop, trying to
make dw do the right thing, and once again forgetting about some
i/o options - all more or less at once). Now I just open up a new
viewer for each major area of doc. stuff I'm looking up and juggle
viewers rather than floppy volumes that are always closing, or I'm
looking at three different things in the same book, etc.

Speed: well, we don't have much trouble accessing the SAB files
(we're subnetted with about 20 machines, only one of which is a
diskless sun net-hog, and our SAB's are on a Symbolics). Yes, it
is slow - or more accurately it is not quick. BUT, that's to format
and display actual documentation the first time. However, for zooming
around looking for candidates, scanning overviews or table of contents,
and especially for viewing documentation I've already loaded (which I
find I do a lot - see advantage 2 above) its much more conveniant.

I went through a training period. I forced myself to only use online
doc. Similarly, years ago I forced myself to get rid of yellow pads
for the early stages of writing. Both were worth it.

Is anybody still reading this thread?