On Tuesday, 09/07/2010 at 11:25 EDT, Graves Nora E <nora.e.gra...@irs.gov> wrote: > I really like the ability to search every book on the bookshelf for the > occurrence of what I'm looking up. I've been known to search the older > versions first if the latest versions are only available in PDF (DB2 for > z/VM books in particular). Once I narrow down the search, then I'll go > to the latest version of the book to find the current information. > > IMO, that's one of the things that has made the IBM documentation so > much more user-friendly than what is supplied by other vendors.
That is what I do with the Information Center at http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/zvm/v6r1/index.jsp. It searches all the books. I agree that it isn't perfect by any means and, yes, as others have said, some of the VM books have antiquated TOCs that don't do well in an "e-environment," but they suffer in Bookmanager, too. I don't like going to a section 1.1 only to find that it is a single sentence or tiny paragraph with links to 1.1.1, 1.1.2, and 1.1.3. And then some books have the same section titles, which can be confusing. E.g. the TCP/IP User's Guide and the LDAP Admin book both have a section titled "SSL Certificate/Key Management and SSL Tracing Information." But, again, that's nothing specific to Information Center. I'm also not a fan of books with Part 1, 2, 3, etc, unlessf you've got a 2000-page book split into multiple PDFs as the IEEE does for large standards. I am going to be honest and say that, so far, I haven't seen a compelling reason that IBM should continue to invest in generating BOOK files. What you *have* convinced me of is that a portion of any contemplated savings should be redirected to improvements in: - TOC simplification and consistency (avoid useless divisions of information) - PDF bookshelf and search enhancements - Better education within the context of the Library on how to effectively access it with available tools. I mean, I had just learned about the Advanced Linguistic Plug-in a few days before Michael Forte and others posted on the subject.. "Who knew?" - A Linux version of the Information Center - Better bulk packaging of the Library so that it is easily moved around. - New formats for mobile and e-book devices. There oughtta be an app for that, eh? - Tools to transform BOOK files into reasonable PDFs, even if only a meager EXPORT function in BookManager READ. and that it might be good to have some of these addressed before BOOKs are removed. In the interests of full disclosure, I too use BOOK files and shelves for some of the same reasons as many of you do and am not looking forward to learning new tricks. (woof!!) Alan Altmark z/VM Development IBM Endicott
