Wow! If you think IBM Assembler Language and POPS manuals are difficult to navigate, you ain't seen nutten. Compared to other computer makers, IBM's attempts are golden! For a truly eye opening experience, try writing interface code for Motorola and ATT radio systems. You would never bitch about IBM manuals again.
Why not just do Google searches for the what you are searching for? -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Assembler List [mailto:ASSEMBLER-LIST@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of John Walker Sent: Monday, August 22, 2011 3:30 PM To: ASSEMBLER-LIST@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Re: ASSEMBLER-LIST Digest - 18 Aug 2011 to 19 Aug 2011 (#2011-135) In regards to the comments about IBM assembler manuals: The biggest issue for me is that NONE of their manuals in pdf or tso datasets have any easy connectivity. I am sorry, but I don't know the answer to the following question: Do I look it up in POOP or in Language Reference? AND that is crucial to know. NOT knowing where to look I always have to look through x number of manuals. And by-the-way, it might not even be in an Assembler manual. It might be in a totally unrelated manual. So THEN, I have to go look through ALL IBM manuals on the face of the planet. PLEASE. That's just wrong and it wastes your valuable time. You know how I avoid that? I keep everything I want to know, regardless of what it's about in ONE flat file on the mainframe. I keep a consistent naming convention for each 'how to' entry and so GENERALLY I know how to find the info I'm looking for. Table of contents? It's nice, but my next question would be then, 'which chapter do I look in?'. I don't know which chapter something is in sometimes(or most of the time), so here we go again. Looking through all of the TOC entries in this book, then this one, then this one... Again, that's not good. Yes, some of you know how and where to look. I don't, and I never have in IBM manuals. And yet, with the way I keep notes, I can ALWAYS find what I need. More importantly, for anybody except experts, it's a technique which would be best for EVERYONE(unless you have a preferrence to take longer finding something). So, my goal would be to get IBM to implement one file for anything which has an Assembler related datum in it. Then provide a simple, non-techie-cized search algorithm to find things. Keep it up-to-date everytime there is any new procedure, instruction, or problem found with an Assembler instruction or a procedure implemented in Assembler. BTW, yes I know about IBMIN. It's ok for looking for some things, but it has significant irrelevancy in what searches done on it finds.
