RTFM = Read the Funny Manual? 414
coronaride writes: "This article over on Wired discusses the issue near and dear to every sysadmin and support tech's heart. I, myself, never read any manuals that accompany the products I buy (but when does cheese-whiz really need instructions anyways?) unless something majorly goes wrong! The article talks about how some countries, including Japan, try to spice up their product manuals in order to entice the users to read them. Is this just too much work for our lazy American manufacturers to do?"
Manual Use (Score:2, Funny)
This is not a new idea... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is not a new idea... (Score:5, Funny)
Technical Note 31 (Clarus the Dogcow) [apple.com]
Can anyone find a link to the bogus Technical Note which was attributed to Scott Knaster, or the even crazier one he wrote in Macintosh Programming Secrets in response to it? Among other things, it attempted to describe how a program should deal with users upgrading their CPU while the program is running, and the API to a new compression routine called "PackMan" which could compress anything to exactly 4 bytes....
Re:This is not a new idea... (Score:5, Funny)
Like any talented dog, it can do flips. Like any talented cow, it can do precision bitmap alignment.
For some reason, hardly anybody else cracks up at this the same way I do. I like to think that this is because everybody else is crazy.
Re:This is not a new idea... (Score:2)
I keep threatening to get out my old IIsi and try to write a little Pascal, just for old times sake.
Re:This is not a new idea... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This is not a new idea... (Score:3, Informative)
As well, I seem to recall an excellent topology textbook used at NYU in the 1960s that began with chapter 00 (double-zero), progressed through 0 (zero) and on up, and was quite witty (in the way of all togologists, I suppose).
And, let us not forget "The ZH Guide" by China Scholar George Kennedy (published by the Far Eastern something or other at Yale?). One would normally expect a manual on a (Classical) Chinese encyclopedic dictionary to be quite dry. But Prof. Kennedy was prone to pose tough questions of his students: why (he might ask) does one commonly used Chinese character for Japanese contain elements meaning "yellow" and "dwarf" . . . I imagine the use of such devices kept his readers' interest (I know they worked for me). But, for some reason, this work seems no longer to be in print.
Re:This is not a new idea... (Score:2)
Unfortunately, after they stopped making hardware and became a boring "enterprise-oriented" company, the writing got really dull. It must have been a neat place to be a technical writer for a while, though.
Re:This is not a new idea... (Score:2)
Re:This is not a new idea... (Score:2)
American manuals are funny. (Score:5, Funny)
This page intentionally left blank.
Re:American manuals are funny. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:American manuals are funny. (Score:4, Interesting)
When I worked for Fifth Generation Systems (Fastback, Direct Access & Suitcase), the person in charge of producing manuals used to do this on purpose to "F" with management because they never read the manuals or even knew what the products really did. I guess this is why the company was sold to Symantec for a bargain basement price.
That oxymoron is there for a reason (Score:4, Informative)
This page intentionally left blank.
Yes it's an oxymoron and its self-contradiction is funny. But having it on otherwise-blank pages of manuals is really quite important.
Without it, the people in the technical publications department (and readers of the manual) are likely to spend time trying to determine if the page is blank due to an error. Manuals are delayed and costs rise. And if there is not a policy to insert the phrase on blank pages, manuals may occasionally be published with one or more blank pages that aren't SUPPOSED to be blank.
(Of course the humor of that catchphrase has led to parodies. Example: An experimental microchip that (due to the early silicon compiler's tendency to group repetitive circuitry tightly) had some large, rectangular chunks of the chip unused. So the deisngers hand-instantiated that lettering in the blank area.
Re:That oxymoron is there for a reason (Score:2, Funny)
I got tired of seeing the same thing over 6 or 8 chapters, so each was a variation on the wording.
And so on.
Re:That oxymoron is there for a reason (Score:5, Funny)
"This page inadvertently left blank."
I don't think anybody caught it.
solution. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:American manuals are funny. (Score:5, Funny)
1. Tuning of the frequency dial shall ivigorate and give much happy.
2. Inner peace of power supply please activate
3. Installation finish! All your base are belong to us!
Re:American manuals are funny. (Score:5, Funny)
There was only a couple of lines in the instructions (some of which sounded like Yoda should have said them) but the absolute classic was:
Thwock it with hammer.
From now on wheneven I use a hammer a thwock stuff with it.
Fortune has a good oldie. (Score:3, Funny)
in Japan]:
The excellent output machine of MODEL CI-300 as extraordinary DOT
MATRIX LINE PRINTER, built in two MICRO-PROCESSORs as well as EAROM, is
featured by permitting wonderful co-existence such as; "high quality
against low cost", "diversified functions with compact design",
"flexibility in accessibleness and durability of approx. 2000,000,00
Dot/Head", "being sophisticated in mechanism but possibly agile
operating under noises being extremely suppressed" etc.
And as a matter of course, the final goal is just simply to help
achieve "super shuttle diplomacy" between cool data, perhaps earned by
HOST COMPUTER, and warm heart of human being.
Re:American manuals are funny. (Score:3, Interesting)
THIS PAGE IS BLANK
Kind of reminded me of all the area 51 Gags. You could always get a laugh going up to a guard in full military attire, and getting him to deny that he works for the US government. And, of course, they're always guarding 'nothing'.
I have many funny Japanese manuals (Score:4, Funny)
Hours of fun...
Definitive Japanese language humor (Score:5, Funny)
Example:
:-)
The powers of being concise and clear (Score:4, Insightful)
Adding jokes, dilbert cartoons, puns would, in my opinion take away from that. I have comics taped to my monitor because they are funny, I have manuals on my shelf because they give me information. Don't make me put manual pages on my monitor or comics on my shelf.
-Sean
Understandable, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
But once they start putting examples (this is where my dander usually gets up, for the lack of) a little inside humor isn't necessarily a bad thing. Yes, putting cartoons, particularly those in some of the older computer books I've read, fall flat, because the humor is lame or dated, and waste space. But there's nothing wrong with using 'foo' 'bar' or 'fnord' in examples. Unless the reader is so dense they take it literally, then you have to question why they have the book in their hands and rip it out of them before they do something really dangerous.
Re:The powers of being concise and clear (Score:2)
A good index helps a lot. Most manuals don't have robust enough indecies.
Re:The powers of being concise and clear (Score:5, Informative)
You didn't RTFA, did you? The article was all about the various cultural differences. For example, when translating for an Italian market, it was said that you should never just flat-out say what to do. Instead, suggest around it (apparently, Italians are stubborn and don't like being told what to do). Hungarians like instructions on how to fix things, some images and phrases that are benign in one culture are offensive in another, and so on.
Personally, I agree with you that a manual should be clear, concise, and just plain useful. And that's how most good manuals are in the States. That's not necessarily true around the world, and that was the whole point of the article.
Re:The powers of being concise and clear (Score:2)
Re:The powers of being concise and clear (Score:2)
What is funny is delicacy and wit in the presentation of the appropriate information. Like an earlier poster's example: 'This is the annoying red light' or something like that. That's funny and indicates the part of the device as well as does 'Red Light.'
Re:The powers of being concise and clear (Score:3, Interesting)
Many Cram Courses rely on dirty limericks to allow students to memorize patterns quickly, and the best books on anything that I have read have at least some humor in them.
Hell that is why on any given day I could read through a few thousand pages of Asimov talking about almost ANYTHING but damned if I could do the same reading for a textbook even in a topic I am interested in.
My logic textbook has SOME humor in the logical examples, but the actual writing is so bone dry as to make reading it straight through (or even for one chapter. . .
There are two chapters where the author lets up, and they are an absolute blast to read, easy to remember material from, lots of readily applicable examples pop into the readers mind when needed. Too bad the entire book is not written that way.
Maybe a money saver in the end (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Maybe a money saver in the end (Score:2)
Ever read the Lightwave Manual? (Score:5, Funny)
There was a tiny caption under it that said "this isn't the finger that was raised when they showed this to me."
We have those here, just not included in the box. (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't try this at home, kids: (Score:4, Funny)
Touching Italians is fine, but you must never, ever tell them how to use a product.
I tried this with the local Italian, and believe me, I'd be much better off if I'd just told him how the microwave works.
The Open Source Solution to this problem (Score:4, Funny)
is to put the jokes in the source.
"You are not expected to understand this".
in this manual (Score:2)
Cheese in a Can (Score:3, Funny)
"I, myself, never read any manuals that accompany the products I buy (but when does cheese-whiz really need instructions anyways?)"
Never.
-Cheesewhiz
Humor in Docs/Texts (Score:5, Interesting)
Randal Schwartz's first O'Reilly Programming in Perl was also fun, for the humor placed in it, which keeps the student amused rather than dry, clinical and boring, which IMHO the 2nd edition was.
Some people view humor as a distraction in documents, perhaps so, if the humor gets in the way of getting the information across. I try to put some humor into sample data and documents, but usually it takes someone with special knowledge to notice (i.e. an address for J. T. Kirk, 1701 Enterprise Place) or silly things to fill in space in an example form, like creating combinations of funny words randomly to fill out the space in a new P.O. form. (BTW, programming in PCL sucks!)
It also seems to make the job of writing documentation a bit easier.
Yes, it is. (Score:2)
Well, in the software development world we have a corrolary to that:
...oh come one, you know I'm right.
Seriously, writing documentation is the worst part of programming, at least for the one writting the software. Most places can't afford a on-staff tech writer and so the people writing it are just developers on their coffee breaks. They want to get it done as quickly as possible.
Though, to be fair, an old IBM manual (from a system 390, if you care) iI have read, on teh very Last page "This page intentionally not left blank". I guess that was a laid back as IBM got in the 1980's..
Re:Yes, it is. (Score:2)
Are you sure that is what it said? Pages saying "This page intentionally left blank" (no "not") are common in IBM manuals (as well as quite a few others). It's actually there as check against duplication errors. If you found an actual blank page in an IBM manual it meant something went wrong when it was printed.
Re:Yes, it is. (Score:2)
Ah, here it is: "Environmental Record Editing and Printing Program (EREP) User's Guide and Reference", (C) 1988, Page 344.
Corel: Better manual then product (Score:3, Interesting)
I still use the thing as an occasional reference, very nice pack-in.
Now that particular version of Corel Paint on the other hand. . . . sucked. Big time. Apparently it has gotten better since then (heh) but I am not going to spend more $$$ finding out. . . . ickies. Awful nasty program
Re:Corel: Better manual then product (Score:2)
Any on-line links to that mini-book? I would really like to read it!)
(Corel Photo paint is actually quite good these days. I use it everyday.)
Mackie manuals (Score:2, Funny)
I concur with the Japanese manuals remark. (Score:2)
The localized manuals were also very funny (for different reasons) they were usually so badly translated to be comical, some (honest, I didn't make these up) examples are:
'joystick' translated as 'rod of command'
'drivers' (as in printer drivers) sometimes translated with 'car pilots'
'server' (as in network server) sometimes translated with 'whom who serves'
and so on and on... it's funny though when you read stuff like 'plug the rod of command in and don't forget to install the car pilot in your computer'
Lazy? Nah.... (Score:2)
All the lousy manuals we have today is the result of "product strategy" or "business model strategy", whatever the big cheese calls these days. Manuals are created as confusing as possible, so that customers will pay for product training and consulting.
And I quote (Score:2, Funny)
"And even highly technical Japanese engineers don't feel at all childish when they view or interact with these animations," Adams said.
And this is supposed to suprise me when taken in context about the people who gave use PokeMon, Tagamichi, and Digimon?????
O que e berimbau?
Uma cabaca, um arame, um pedaco de pau!
Good product design... (Score:5, Interesting)
I found this to be an amusing story. However, the best way to deal with the whole manual issue is to design your product better. You know how you're not supposed to remove a game cartridge while you're playing? If you look at the SNES and the GameBoy, you are physically prevented from removing the cartridge because the power switch moves a piece that blocks the exit of the cartridge.
I realize this won't work in every situation, but the solution of 'we need to get people to read the manuals!' isn't going to go very far.
Getting back to the SNES example, I read the manual before playing the machine. Heck, I'm an expert on it! I used to sell them! Despite my detailed knowledge of how the machine works and the consequences of pulling the cartridge out while it's on, I'm still aware of the power switch blocking exit of the cartridge. Why? One day, a friend of mine came over with a new game I had been waiting for for ages. In a rush to pop this game in, I gave the cartridge in the machine a pretty good tug. Fortunately, it didn't give though. The safety feature of the SNES prevented me from making a 'wandering mind' mistake.
In cases like that, you could know the product inside out and still make bone-headed mistakes like that. Fortunately for me, Nintendo was smart enough to anticipate that I might make a mistake like that and design it so it's not easy to do.
Re:Good product design... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good product design... (Score:2)
Total bull.
A truly good product design would have the act of pulling the cartridge out of the game machine turn it off before any damage could be done. They are not the only ones. My Cell Phone's 'On' switch is shared with the 'No' button. That's completely barmy and totally counter-intuitive! I cut several people off by pressing the 'On' button to hopefully talk to the caller, but it was programmed to be 'No', so I cut the buggers off. Poor sods, and very embarrassing for me. Ericsson, are you listening? No, I didn't think so. Somebody, please so kind and tell the silly half-wits.
Similarly the 'Submit' and 'Preview' buttons on this form are around the wrong way. ( Most people using computers work from left to right. ) This is presumably the reason why we are blessed, sic, with so many obviously "first cut" postings. See the risks digest [ncl.ac.uk] for many more of these idiotic carryings on. They'd be funny if they weren't tragic. Don't get me started on road design and the traffic laws.
Re:Good product design... (Score:2)
I totally agree with what you're saying (which probably explains why the N64 didn't have this 'feature'), but I never said that the switch idea was the best one ever. I just used that as an example.
Re:Cart swapping on the N64 and GBA (Score:2)
Speaking of not documenting stuff correctly, the SNES manual says one must 'flip off the power switch' in order to turn off the SNES. Seems a bit rude, doesn't it?
About the Rumble Pak: Unfortunately, it was probably concieved after the release of the N64. Notably, the screen will tell you exactly when you can remove the mem card. It's giving you special case permission to do so.
manuals.. (Score:2)
I think the article is correct though that manuals just seem to be very boring in general. Third-party books tend to be much better and more enjoyable to read. Honestly, I like manuals the way that they are, which is basically pure information and no "fun stuff". I would buy a book on the software package if I wanted something that was fun to read. Most of the time, however, I use manuals for reference, and not reading material..
Easyflow (Score:5, Funny)
Many years ago (1986) I worked on a project that required us to create "Flow Charts" of our software design. In times past, I'd used the time-honored "flow chart template" (a piece of plastic with specialized shapes cut out of it) and while I didn't actually like it, it got the job done.
On this project, however, we were provided with a piece of software (Easyflow) to accomplish the same goal, but without the need to put pencil to paper. Instead, we used the software so we could fiddle endlessly with the design before committing a single pin to paper (yes, children, this was in the days when the dot-matrix printer ruled, before laser printers came free in your breakfast cereal).
Easyflow's Bloodthirsty License Agreement [netfunny.com] was the first hint that the user manual would be an interesting read.
IIRC, there were also 2 entry points to the manual proper, worded somthing like this:
Ah, the good old days.
I always liked... (Score:2)
"For best results, hand wash in warm water and drip-dry.
For not so good results, drag through puddles behind car and blow-dry on roof rack."
O'Reilly (Score:2, Offtopic)
However, I like the informal tone for a different reason altogher. It leads to "unique" quotes, which can be used in Robust Hyperlinks [google.com] (re: the recent Google programming contest).
Here are some examples, from O'Reilly's "Programming Perl".
Besides being useful in the longer run, hopefully these also get around the precedent set by the 2600 ruling [slashdot.org], that links can be illegal.
For a more complete set of examples, see this page [paperlined.org].
Re:O'Reilly (Score:2)
Programming Perl
I found the second edition's self-conscious attempts at humor annoying. The first edition was much funnier, especially the part about sending clay tablets by carrier pigeon.
Dummy's guide (Score:4, Funny)
Keep It Simple Stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
The exeption to this rule has been some of the Nutshell books that are both informative and entertaining. But if you try to add too much humor, the message gets diluted.
Maxis Manuals (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Maxis Manuals (Score:2, Funny)
My favorite "documentation"... (Score:2)
If any of you have read the little jokes, etc all over the box (inside, outside, under flaps, etc) - you know what I mean - truely a great piece of packaging (and not a really bad product for the time).
at least skim it (Score:5, Funny)
Never could pass up the opertunity for free stuff.
A bank did that once (Score:4, Interesting)
I read a while ago (no, I can't find a reference) that a bank sent out an update to the terms of service for their credit cards. Buried somewhere in the middle was a line telling you that all you had to do was call a number and they would credit your account $5. They wanted to see how many people actually read the change.
IIRC the response rate was under 1%. I try to tell myself[1] that they weren't doing this as a prelude to screwing their customers even harder.
[1] What I say when I don't want to think about something I have no control over that I am absolutely convinced is true.
Re:at least skim it (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.snopes2.com/college/homework/foundcar.
Well-designed software (Score:2)
Well.... (Score:2)
Don't RTFM (Score:2)
Now, I don't want to sound pedantic. I'm sure there's a whole lot of "gifts" other people have that I don't.
The problem for us is that it's pretty hard to relate to people that can't get their VCR's to stop blinking or adjust the brightness on their TV sets. Take my father for example. He once asked me what a computer program was (about two years ago). For a while there, I just looked at him, wondering if he was joking. How can someone _not_ know what a computer program is? then I thought and thought about it and realized that without our special ability, it MUST be pretty hard to figure these sort of thing out.
Enter the manuals. Manuals are supposed to take people from not understanding how something works, to understanding, at least in general terms, how the device/machine/programs work. Unfortunately, most manuals I've read don't do this. Instead, they take people from not knowing how something works to still not knowing how it works but at least being able to use it. I believe this is a Bad Thing.
See, we humans have the ability to understand a whole lot of things, but we've grown lazy as hell. We want to be able to drive a car without first understanding what internal combustion even means. We want to use VCR's and watch TV without first understanding what "video" is. And so on and so forth. Because of this, human knowledge is not growing at the same rate a human capacity, because most people just don't care. We want to have all the goodies, but not earn the right that knowledge gives us to use it. Instead we hack at them and struggle with them, and break them, and demand a growing tech support industry that helps us when soemthing doesn't work "as expected".
The funny thing is, we've become soooo good at creating products that shield the user from their internal workings that we've become accustomed to it. We demadn it this way. We even approve laws against actually telling people how it really works. And then we complain when our customers don't read the manuals.
I say, in a perfect world, all products should have basic documentation about usage and how the product actually works, and a lot of references to papers and materials that you can go to if you want to learn more. This is not what I get when I buy something nowadays. This is why I don't RTFM. And I'm pretty sure this is why a lot of people do love linux.
Re:Don't RTFM (Score:2)
More dummies guides for dummies... (Score:2)
Abour ten years ago, there actually was a "Dummies Guide to the Apple Macintosh". Ironically**, it was bigger than the actual Mac manual.
** You may have to be old enough to remember the Mac vs. IBM ad campaigns from the 80's to fully appreciate this!
Prime manuals had some interesting humor (Score:5, Interesting)
It is a manual for a version of "runoff", which is used for formatting documents. The examples given in the book are for a restraunt chain that servers "frog burgers". There are a whole bunch of Cthulhu references throughout.
I need to scan some of them and post them to the net. Pretty funny.
Another example is in the error return values in GLIBC. Included are EIEIO and EGREGIOUS and other bogus errors.
Unfortunatly all traces of humor are removed from manuals, not due to burn out or other causes, but because Corporate America sees them as "Not Profesional".
Funny documentation and Easter Eggs are both a causualty of the War on Fun.
Manuals becoming obsolete? (Score:2)
However, I think this leaves Joe-Blow-Who-Doesn't-Think-To-Search-Google in the dark. Not *everyone* thinks to do that before they assume that something's broken and make a support call. Hell, half the people at my work would sooner log a call with Compaq before searching for an error code.
So should companies even bother writing extensive information on their product if most people are going to either be too lazy to look it up, don't know to look it up, or find their own answers without the company's help?
Volkswagen repair (Score:2, Interesting)
Ahhh, nostalgia, but I would not own a VW even if it was given to me, easy to work on but you had to, all the time
two words - man condom.1 (Score:3)
There are a huge bunch more right here [ls-la.net]
- [grunby]
Boy, did they miss an opportunity (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Boy, did they miss an opportunity (Score:2)
best manual I have is for a 1-button device! (Score:2, Funny)
This reminds me of ... (Score:2, Funny)
Congratulations! You have purchased an extremely fine device that would give you thousands of years of trouble-free service, except that you undoubtably will destroy it via some typical bonehead consumer maneuver. Which is why we ask you to PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THIS OWNER'S MANUAL CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU UNPACK THE DEVICE. YOU ALREADY UNPACKED IT, DIDN'T YOU? YOU UNPACKED IT AND PLUGGED IT IN AND TURNED IT ON AND FIDDLED WITH THE KNOBS, AND NOW YOUR CHILD, THE SAME CHILD WHO ONCE SHOVED A POLISH SAUSAGE INTO YOUR VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDER AND SET IT ON "FAST FORWARD", THIS CHILD ALSO IS FIDDLING WITH THE KNOBS, RIGHT? AND YOU'RE JUST NOW STARTING TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS, RIGHT??? WE MIGHT AS WELL JUST BREAK THESE DEVICES RIGHT AT THE FACTORY BEFORE WE SHIP THEM OUT, YOU KNOW THAT?
-- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
The Poster Seems to Have a Pot & Kettle Proble (Score:2)
I can't help but laugh at the irony of the poster calling American manufacturers lazy for not putting knock-knock jokes in their product manuals to get the lazy American CONSUMER to RTFM. ;)
How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive for the Compleat (Score:2, Interesting)
It's a repair manual so well written that I read it more than once, even before I had a VW. It taught me a lot about auto repair, and reinforced what I learned in High School auto shop.
He's funny. He has nice line drawings.
He also editorialized. He refused to explain how to fix an automatic choke because he felt that the choke was bad for the car. The choke allows you to drive the car before it's warm. His suggestion was to roll a cigarette while waiting for the car to warm up, rather than cause excessive wear by putting a load on a cold engine. The edition I read was definitely an artifact of the 1970s.
Unfortunately, most manuals cannot be written in such a literate fashion. He had the luxury of explaining auto maintenance. These are concrete, well-understood, and intuitive concepts. The example vehicle is the air-cooled VW, technology is well over fifty years old, and consequently simple.
I usually need manuals (for instance) to document a poorly designed or arbitrary interface to a product whose mechanism of action I may not ever fully understand, and will (if I am lucky) never use again. Sometimes I need manuals to provide detailed specifications for an implementation of a process that I already understand well. Neither of these is much of an opportunity for an author.
There are still plenty of opportunities for well written manuals, but since most vendors seem to regard mere accuracy as a luxury, I never expect them to be literature.
Unintentional funniness... (Score:4, Funny)
I used a picture of George Bush in mid-speech to illustrate my point. When using the lower resolution, the picture was pretty clear. But when I used a higher compression setting (at the higher res) to achieve the same data rate, his mouth became two big pixels, resembling Bender a little bit.
I drew an arrow to his mouth, drawing attention to the loss of detail, with the caption "See how the mouth loses definition?"
Too bad my manager caught that before it went out, heh.
Apple does it too (Score:2, Interesting)
I'll never forget -- when I was just a kid, back in the mid-late eighties, my father had just upgraded our Macintosh to a Mac Plus. As he was reading one of the owner's manuals, he started laughing, and I asked him what was so funny.
"Oh, nothing," he said.
Still, I pressed him.
"It says here in the setup steps, 'First, eat some chocolate'".
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked. I honestly had no idea why "Eat some chocolate" would be written in a computer manual.
"Oh, programmers are just weird," he chuckled.
Ever since then I've had a healthy respect for computer programmers.
MetaTools did something neat... (Score:2)
Personally I want my manuals to remain straight forward and informative. I don't want cute anecdotes or useless tutorials, just information. If I want the latter I'll buy a third party book which covers the material in this manner. The other thing I don't want is HTML help systems to replace the printed manuals. HTML help manuals are so poorly designed it's more cumbersome to search through them than it is a dead tree edition.
My Bablefish can your ass kick! (Score:2)
I Want a Manual, Not a Comic Book (Score:2)
I certainly hope so. Those Hungarian manuals, on the other hand, sound like just the thing.
Reminds me (Score:3, Funny)
If you need the manual... (Score:2)
The Manufacturer or the consumer?? (Score:2)
Is it the lazy manufacturers' or the lazy consumers' fault that people don't read the manual?
But on another note, because of the letigious nature of this country, the manufacturer has to cover its ass with a bunch of worthless and stupid warnings. The more warnings that they put on the package/manual, the less likely the consumer will read it.
Suggestion for Windows Installer (Score:2)
e-mail: mailto:mswish@microsoft.com
fax: (425) 936-7329
post:
Microsoft Corporation
Attn. Microsoft Wish Program
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-6399
Examples of Japanese Documentation (Score:3, Insightful)
Read some good Japanese documentation to understand what I am talking about:
The first is translated into English, the second hasn't been translated yet. The first book explains Fourier, starting with basic trig.
In the US, our educational material is very poor. Pictures are either not present when they should be, or present when they shouldn't be. Marketting tastes usually move people towards glossy pictures over iconic representations that do a much better job of abstracting the message (read Chapter 2 of Understanding Comics to understand this well). Many technical people know that the images in our books are not there to help explain things, but rather, to sell books, and thus hold pictures in contempt. "Just give me the text symbols, and leave out the nonsense cute pictures. AraRararrARarr!" is a common attitude here, and it harms us, because we are not open to diagrams when they will help us.
I have seen many other examples of Japanese documentation, but I don't own them, so I can't list them here. Go to your local Japanese communities bookstore, though, and look for Linux documentation or educational materials. (They seem to think the Penguin is kawaii.) They are quite different than ours- beyond just different types of characters.
Backup dump humor (warning: juvenile) (Score:5, Funny)
I may not remember it 100% verbatim, but that was the gist of it. Honest truth. (And it was otherwise a very dense and serious book.)
Re:O' Reilly (Score:3, Informative)
It's a great idea really... at least I think so. I tend to pay more attention to writing when I'm occasionally hit with a bit of humor. I try and do the same with comments in code and rather mundane updates I may email out to a team I'm working with.
Re:So what is different? (Score:2)
Re:So what is different? (Score:2)
Re:Game Manuals (Score:2)
Maxis made some wonderful manuals for the Sim games - also the About boxes were full of laughs. Haven't bought one lately, so I don't know if EA killed that, but I hope not.
Re:Game Manuals (Score:2)
Tim
Re:OS Tamagochis? (Score:2)
Re:You meant Engrish ? (Score:2)
In A.D. 1989, game was beginning...
Player 1: What Happen?
Player 2: Somebody set us up the game!
Nah... I'm sure that didn't happen.
Re:Hmmm... pardon the hypocrisy? (Score:2)
Probably because the product should work easily to begin with, the manual should only be for advanced features. I know how to use Lightwave very well, for example, but occasionally I run across a feature I need specific info on. I started using LW before reading the manual, but that doesn't mean I never pick it up.
I believe the focus of the article above was in getting people to read the manual before they use the product. People simply won't do that. But if there's some secret feature that they've partially uncovered, most people have no problem reading about that.