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From: lippin@jell-o.berkeley.edu (The Apathist)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer,comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Inside Mac
Message-ID: <16035@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 26 Oct 88 19:09:50 GMT
Article-I.D.: agate.16035
References: <19358@apple.Apple.COM> <234@lloyd.camex.uucp>
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>In article <19358@apple.Apple.COM> mjohnson@Apple.COM (Mark Johnson) writes:
>>                     ... how would you feel about Apple publishing _Inside
>>Macintosh_ (and maybe other technical manuals) in loose-leaf or some other
>>form which would lend itself to revision without new "delta" editions?

I'm ready for the change.  I'm sick of having to scrounge through all
the documentation before I can discover truth in `the book of
Macintosh.'

Another advantage of the loose-leaf form is that it would be possible
to publish new chapters individually.  From reading IM V, it seems
clear that some chapters just weren't ready to go to the printer when
the deadline hit.  They could have been published later, or published
as draft versions and rewritten if it was a loose-leaf.

On the other hand, none of this will work if Apple isn't willing to
properly keep up the loose-leaf manuals.  This means that when there's
a revision, they need to print replacement pages, not just a set of
deltas, which would be less expensive.

Recently kent@lloyd.UUCP (Kent Borg) wrote:
>Don't do it.  A book is much tougher, loose-leaves are always loose.

This looks to me like the biggest problem with loose-leaves.  But I've
seen a few UNIX manuals that could stand up to heavy use, so I think
this can be done right.  Just keep robustness in mind when designing
the manuals.  Use reinforced cover pages, roomy binders, and heavy
paper.

>The only reason for publishing Inside Macintosh in loose-leaf form
>would be to make it easier to change.  If that happens it'll just keep
>changing.  If you think system software revisions are confusing in
>their numbering, just think if pages all had revisions, pages die,
>pages are born.  Hardly anybody's copies would agree.

On the other hand, people's IM's all agree now (assuming they're up to
volume V), but, often enough, they're all wrong.  And even when
they're not, you have to consider that what's in one volume is
sometimes contradicted by what's in another, or by a tech note.  And
keeping your knowledge of the tech notes up to date is certainly no
easier than keeping a loose-leaf binder up to date.

I don't think that making the manuals hard to change is going to keep
the system from changing -- it's the existing applications that do
that.  And, IMHO, Apple is already bending over backward to keep some
programs alive that deserve to die.

					--Tom Lippincott
					..ucbvax!math!lippin

"This view derives partly from what is known as common sense, whose
	virtue, uniquely among virtues, is that everyone has it."
					--Tom Stoppard, "Jumpers"