Documentation: a rant and a cry for help

["McCallion, Martin" <MccalliM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all.

We recently upgraded a machine t V4R4, and I've been looking at getting
the documentation installed.  Now, I knew that some of the docs had been
moved to the "Infocenter" and had to be viewed in a browser; I can cope
with that.  The rest are still in BookMangler format, or whatever it's
called.  I know this was discussed at some length here in the past.

But as far as I know, one additional little feature never came up.

Before I started I wanted to check the existing books, so I typed
STRINFSKR.

If you're on V4R4 and haven't tried it, try it now; go on.

What you get is message CPFA27F.  I'll quote its entire text, for those
of you who aren't fortunate enough to be in this rarefied atmosphere:

Message . . . . :   Command STRINFSKR has been removed.

Cause . . . . . :   Command STRINFSKR has been removed and is no longer

  available.

Recovery  . . . :   Use the IBM online library reader program to read
the     
  Softcopy Library CD-ROM from your workstation.  You can also view or
print  
  the AS/400 Online Library from the Internet.  See the readme.txt file
on the
  CD-ROM for instructions for using the CD-ROM or for the Internet
address.   

So, there it is: IBM are finally trying to declare the death of the
green screen.

Maybe your developers who are stuck on dumb terminals never RTFM anyway;
but now they _can't_.

So after I prized my dropped jaw off the desk, I decided to install the
Infocenter.  Stuck the CD in, read the readme. It says, "run the
setup.exe in the root directory of the CD."  Fine.  There isn't one.
But there is one in \inst32.  I ran that.  I got: "Unable to locate
source file directory.  Install aborted."

So I tried double-clicking on index.htm in the root of the CD.  That
worked.  It gave me a nice page with two links.  One to the on-line
infocenter at Boulder, the other to the "Local" version.

The local version wasn't found.  I viewed source.  The link is to:
"file:///c:\info\index.htm".  Yeah, hard-coded to the C: drive.

Now, I could no doubt manually copy the files to a drive and kludge up a
working index page by editing IBM's HTML; but is this really how I
should have to install IBM's documentation?  Don't they _wan't_ me to
read it?

To top it all off, the other CD, the one with the softcopy books,
doesn't contain an installable licensed program: how do I install it on
the AS/400?  I'm sure I've done it that way in the past.  Ok, OK, I've
just been reminded that the correct way is with the RSTSHF (Restore
shelf) command.  But, to really, really cap it all, RSTSHF gives
CPFA27F.  Yes, it has been removed as well!

Sorry about the length of this post, but HELLLLLLLPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!

Cheers,

Martin.

--                                                                     
Martin McCallion                 
Midas-Kapiti International
Work:  mccallim@midas-kapiti.com
Home: martin.mccallion@ukonline.co.uk

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.:. 
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