Nostalgia for printed manuals
July 17, 2006 6 Comments
Being nostalgic seems to be in vogue this week so I’ll continue with subject. Back in the old days of ArcInfo (you know like way back in the early 90s 
) ESRI used to have a wonder set of printed manuals. These were in nice binders if I recall and were such a great reference (binders lay flat so you don’t have to fight them like the latest ArcGIS documentation). Well in time they have been replaced by PDF and online help, but I can’t help but begin to wonder if the days of even PDF documentation are over. We use the ArcXML reference so much, we paid to have it printed and bound.
I’d love to do the same with ArcDesktop help, but I’ve never found a PDF of the whole help to print. I’m guessing there isn’t one and the web help is supposed to be the primary method of getting documentation. I’m left wondering if we’ll be able to print out the AXL reference at 9.2 (I’m guessing not) which is too bad. I’d have no problem paying for printed documentation from ESRI for ArcGIS Desktop and extensions as well as their server products. I don’t expect ESRI to all of a sudden start making documentation, but there has to be a way they can hook up with a printing service where we could order such documentation. Maybe I’m the only one here who thinks like this anymore, but web-based or HTML help isn’t my cup of tea.
About James Fee
Oh don’t get me started on documentation James. I still have my old ArcInfo 6.0 documentation and use it still quite a bit. I too would have no problem paying thousands of dollars for good documentation like ESRI used to product.
No way….That what your second (or third) monitor is for.
I’ve keep opening up my old notes from GIS school…
If need be, I’ll print off a section of the ArcGIS Desktop manual if I’m doing a specific task a lot (i.e. editing in ArcMap) and I haven’t done it in a while.
James, I can’t believe that you want this! Do you remember the volume of the entire ArcInfo documentation? With a couple of sets of the documentation you could feel a decent office. I bet that even if you had the entire set you did not open 90% of the books (they just gathered dust in the corner of your office…). I think that the current format is much better (at least for me). Remember these are not novels (I can’t imagine reading a Steven King’s eBook) – you never read documentation from the start to the end. You rather need it as a reference when you want to find something specific. From this point of view the current format of the documentation looks fine for me (and my office looks much better without the pile of printed documentations in the corner).
Here I’d like to clarify something. I’m talking about the format and not for the quality. In this aspect the ArcInfo documentation from the good old times was giving the user a lot of value (I still refer to it if I need some definitions, explanations etc.). The current documentation (not the format it is provided in) lacks the depth that the old one had.
I even don’t want to start a discussion about the Developers Guide. It’s been weak right from the start (and I consider ArcGIS 8.1 as the “Startâ€), but since version 9.0, it is an absolute disaster. For two years (or about) ESRI managed to produce 3 (three) samples for use of the Arc Toolbox environment programmatically and they are not included in the developer’s guide. You will not find a single example in the Developers Guide that will help you to understand how to use the geoprocessing tools programmatically or how to make your own geoprocessing tool. Actually I think that in the Geoprocessing part of the Developers Guide, you will not find a single line of sample code. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
“Do you remember the volume of the entire ArcInfo documentation?”
It was wonderful, no? I’m not saying we’d need a set for every license in the company, but why not one volume per office? You are right, I doubt I ever hit every page, but when I needed it, they were invaluable.
I wasn’t talking about quality either. I think that would be another topic for another rainy day.
From a vendor’s point of view, it is hard to justify/know if the expense related to creating printed manuals is worth it or not. From some of the comments in here, it seems that the money might be better spent creating examples/tutorials/screencasts/howtos that are electronically distributed. What we try to do is create printable PDF for each of our manuals, where the tools we use allow it, so that those that want prints can do make them. Maybe we should even consider setting something up at mimeo.com that would make it really easy for one-offs to be created and sent out. But one hurdle is that there is a gap toolset wise between what you need to use to make good online help and what creates/formats good printable help. Maybe mapcap software will ride over the hill and save the day…