[Info-vax] VMS v8.4 Documentation CDROM bugs

[Paul Sture]

On 2015-05-07, Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:
>
> In more recent times, I've become quite fond of tools such as Dash 
><https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dash-api-docs-snippets/id458034879?mt=12>, 
> which allows the selected documentation to be cached locally, and can 
> maintain and update the documentation cache, and collects together a 
> wide variety of documentation.   Bash, C, Rust, SQLite, Objective C, OS 
> X, PostgreSQL, man pages and a whole pile of other documentation is all 
> cached locally.   Among other upstream resources, Dash also integrates 
> with the Stack Q&A sites, so you can cache those discussions locally, 
> too.    Combine this with the gonzo-speed OS X Spotlight search — 
> OpenVMS SEARCH is utterly *glacial* in comparison — maintaining a local 
> library becomes easy, and the results are very effective.

Hiccups such as HP are experiencing or other times when one is offline
aren't the only reasons to cache documentation offline.  Having stuff
indexed locally can be productive to the extent you really don't want to
go back to the "old way" of doing things.

Many thanks for the Dash tip.  I've been using EagleFiler for about 6
months now but it's starting to get a bit sluggish with the amount I've
thrown at it; moving the documentation over to a more specific tool
such as Dash would be a good move.

<http://c-command.com/eaglefiler/>

One of EagleFiler's features is that it maintains checksums of your
documents and reports if it finds a mismatch.  Only one document
reported thus far here but it was a useful catch.

> Also fond of the integrated and context-sensitive information available 
> in Xcode, an IDE which completely and utterly demolishes LSEDIT.
>
> But yes, the Y2K-era documentation web site that HP implements for 
> OpenVMS has and will work (eventually), and the PDF files can be 
> manually cached.
>
> FWIW, the (other) common reason for CDs and for local caches of 
> documentation is to keep copies of documentation for retired products.  
> In your particular case, you probably have a cache of AlphaServer 
> server documentation, for instance.  For others, it's the docs for some 
> ancient OpenVMS version, or some long-retired product.

Another reason for caching stuff locally.  I don't think a month has
gone by in the last couple of years where something useful hasn't
disappeared from the web, original content modified in some way* or gone
behind a paywall.

* in some cases where features have been backported, the original
documentation has been adjusted, which isn't always helpful; in other
cases the documentation has been dumbed down or replaced by a new
documentation system which isn't quite there yet.

-- 
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as
equals.                                            -- Winston Churchill