Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) wrote: >When the manual is well over 1K pages, reading each edition cover to cover is >a bit much.
Agreed. >That's when your skimming and drill-down skills become important. Very true. There are a lots of posts on IBM-MAIN like this 'Where is SMF record X documented? I can't find it in the SMF book!'. Or where is data area X documented? etc. Or where in RACF books I can see how to resolve permission problems for folder\file in a OMVS file. From time to time I see such requests on RACF-L. I really liked that you can do a search for IDC3009* <rc> <reason>, for example IDC3009I 56 8, in Book Manager. When Bookie is dead, I will mourn that loss of that search thing. ;-) Such quick drill-down skills are handy. One nice thing you learn eventually, is that if you see a message, you rather sometimes look for another message(s) for more details. I wish other vendors sharpens up their books to more or less the way IBM build their books (search tools, Table Of Content, indexes, general layout and message prefixes, division of books/contents in shelves, etc.) Trivia note: The first [set of] IBM books I saw were those VM books in a University data centre. Two or three metal rods were placed on a table and holes punched on the pages. You then setup all the books, sliding each pages through those holes on the rods. Then 'they' fastened those rods on the table which are fastened on the floor. So all these books are standing on their back and as you read, you spread out the pages. Books on the left are laying on their front cover and on the right, on their back side. In this way, those books can't be stolen by the students. Sometimes, students tear off the page(s) for their own nefarious purposes. From a distance, those lots of books looked like a very oversized book. [1] ;-) Groete / Greetings Elardus Engelbrecht [1] - Lots of paper bound together is a fire hazard of course. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
