NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/lang/c++-part1/8025

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 6.0 KB

Path: news.cyberport.com!usenet
From: [e-mail] (Warren Young)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Borland C++ 5.0 PRICE-E!!!
Date: Sun, 18 Feb 1996 18:00:35 GMT
Organization: none
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]> <4esv0s$[e-mail]> <4fdqt6$[e-mail]> <4fe8io$[e-mail]> <4fgm7d$[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: ppp22.cyberport.com
X-Newsreader: Forte Agent .99d/32.182

[e-mail] (Morten M. Christensen) wrote:

>>only go to the printed books as a last resort.  There is NOTHING in the
>>books that is not on-line.  But we are, of course, keeping the books
>>available for those who like paper.
>
>I think you underestimate the demand for printed manuals!!! For
>instance, you can take printed manuals with you and read them in your
>couch or bed (which are sort of hard to do with the online Windows
>Help version - Incidentally, why not use Adobe Acrobat Reader which is
>at least a GOOD on-line reader ?).

That's my gripe with most online books -- the readers are positively
junk, at least compared with recent state of the art.  The only reader
I've found that I can deal with is InfoView, the viewer used for the
MSDL discs (and the new MSVC stuff, I hear).  I've not played around
with Acrobat much...can it handle hyperlinking?

However, paper still has a place as well.  Paper doesn't take up
screen real-estate, you can't mark up a hyperdocument (not really,
yet), and you can have several open at the same time AND VISIBLE.
It's not often that I have four references open on my desk, but when I
need to do it, there's no substitute.

Plus, I've found Borland's manuals _themselves_ to be nothing but
disappointing.  Don't get me wrong, I really like Borland, and I hate
MSVC (or at least MFC) with equal fervor.  But, the quality of manuals
with BC++ makes the source code the only reasonably detailed and
reliable reference.  How many places does this sort of thing occur in
the manuals (a C++ class example used here):

retval operator<<(args...)   Inserts the object into a stream.

Really?!?  I didn't know _that_.

I want the _format_ of the data.  I want _details_, requirements,
side-effects.  Don't just tell me what I already know.

So, I guess the question comes down to this for me: whether online or
paper, does the upgrade come with _useful_ manuals?

Maybe the stuff you included for 4.5 was adequate for newbies, but
it's quickly outstripped.  Maybe you think it's good business to send
out junky manuals -- I spent almost $100 on Borland Press books as a
result, and many times that on your 1-900 consulting line.  I don't
even know how much of my_time_ I spent grepping the OWL code looking
for answers even the 1-900 number couldn't answer.

I was also going to gripe about your bug report form, but it appears
that it's been shortened and streamlined some (the previous version
was something like four pages).  Still, it does ask a lot of questions
that are clearly irrelevant in some cases.  I realize that the more
information you have, the better chance you have of fixing the
problem, but it still amounts to _us_ (the customers) spending maybe
an hour of our time cutting, pasting, looking things up, etc in order
to tell _you_ (Borland) of _your_ problem.

To top it all off (maybe I'm unique in this regard, but I don't think
so), I've never received one reply (even an autoresponder) for any of
the five or so bug reports I've sent in.  As a result, I have several
problems I know about that I haven't reported yet, because I refuse to
spend my time helping you if I don't even get confirmation out of it.
You'd think you were doing me some kind of favor by _allowing_ me to
send in a report.

Now, I'm not all gripes, I do have a suggestion to fix this:  Write a
program (Delphi would do this easily) that would present a form for
information that only the customer can know.  Information that the
program can look up, though, should be gathered by the program
(machine info, compiler/OS version info, etc).  Also key here would be
that the program would remember information like the PIN and user
info.

Most importantly, the program should reduce work.  For example,
usually only one of questions 16-18 on TI1226 applies.  The program
could present a series of three checkboxes in a pane titled
"Symptoms", and this would guide which screens were presented next
(I'm envisioning a wizard-like program here).  At least one check box
would have to be checked for the user to go on, but if one doesn't
matter, the program would simply generate the appropriate "NONE"
question response.

This program could generate a form of the same format as TI1226, which
would have the advantages of consistency, accuracy, and completeness.
You wouldn't even need to change your parsing software.  Nice, extra
features would be Internet email support (automatically sends the
report in) and integration with the IDE (you could send in a project
as a response to question 20).

To sum: if you want your customers to help you make your product
better, you need to give them some incentive to do it.  Making the
reporting process easier helps, and an autoresponder's "Thank-you, we
got your report." reply is a bare minimum.

You might also consider storing email info for bug reporters in your
bug database, and when the problem is resolved in a public fashion
(patch/new version released) you could email the reporters about it.
I'm sure there are people out there who have skipped upgrading because
they don't know if the showstopper they've found is fixed, and
everyone knows that modern software marketing depends on the upgrade
train.

= Warren --

P.S. You'll ([e-mail]) have to pass this on to the people
in charge of this.  They won't take anything that isn't in 1226
format, you see.  (HINT: Publish a "suggestions" Internet address.  I
know you have a mail gateway.)