Re: This newsgroup
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Re: This newsgroup
In article <bREw2.874$Wb2.17111@newsfeed.slurp.net>,
tomlake@slic.com ("Tom Lake") wrote:
] This is a pity! There was a time, back in the '70s and '80s, when TI
] manuals were the best of the best. They hired educators to write them and
] you could learn all about a TI product just by reading the manual that came
] with it and not have to rely on third-party books. 8-(
I can't comment about TI manuals from the 70s as I've no experience of them,
but it was the manual for the HP15C that really opened my eyes about how good
a manual could be. It was a friendly, informative mathematics education
itself, as well as being an excellent manual for an amazing calculator.
Alas, HP's manuals have never maintained that quality, although they are
still very good in my opinion.
One of the problems with TI manuals is that they often dive into an example
before giving you any basic information, and if the particular example
doesn't happen to cover what you're wanting to do, you're stuffed!
Another real problem is that the index is never complete enough; I very often
fail to find a reference to what I'm looking for. Indices are hard to to
properly, but that's not an excuse for the inadequate mess that we normally
get.
One particularly dreadful manual was an early issue for the TI-85. Mine's
stuffed full of errors (it's such fun learning about commands from incorrect
descriptions, isn't it?), and I had to really rub TI's nose in it before
they'd admit the problem and give me an updated copy with most of the errors
corrected.
Dick
--
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Dick Smith dick@risctex.demon.co.uk
Acorn Risc PC http://www.risctex.demon.co.uk
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