Survex

[David Gibson]

In article "Survex" in <!survex>, on Fri, 12 Jul 2002
Andy Waddington on Survey stuff <Survex@pennine.demon.co.uk> wrote

>And I have to say, I have bought such books and read them cover to cover -
>that's what they are for. Anyone who doesn't read *all* of *every* manual
>which came with their system deserves no assistance, sympathy, or to be
>allowed to continue using their system!!

Not only is this off-topic for this *surveying* list (and Wookey once
chastised *me* for going even *slightly* off-topic here) but Andy, in
the pursuit of his deep-seated prejudice, had wilfully missed the point!

We're not discussing *system* manuals, but *applications* manuals.  The
lack of a manual for a particular application has absolutely nothing to
do with the merits or otherwise of any particular operating system.  If
the predominant personal computer in the market place was the Acorn RISC
machine then you can bet that there would be loads of badly written
applications with little documentation, and we'd all be cursing Acorn
for being the cause of that problem. This is clearly nonsense, just as
it is nonsense to blame Bill Gates for the fact that the Windows version
of Survex has an 'unusual' method of driving it.
-- 
David Gibson