Re: Informix and OnLine Docs...

: What features are most important to you when using online docs, for example : the ability to do boolean searches, to copy and paste from a document, to : maintain user annotations, to use automatic cross-references, others? The most important feature of any online doc is that the information must be readily accessible to programmers. Programmers are quite good at accessing the information _they_ need using tools _they_ are familiar with. On Unix, this means grep, sed, awk, more, vi, and the like, all of which operate on ASCII (American _Standard_ Code for Information Interchange) files. Typically, tools that stray from ASCII and move into representations with (often superfluous) semantics impede the programmer. Certainly others have preferences different from mine, but I find I slow down whenever I have to grab a mouse and learn some new graphical paradigm just to get at textual information. When I'm at home, and in the mood to look at pictures, hear sounds, or just play, I like graphical tools such as Mosaic just as much as the next person does. At work, when I need information fast, I wish it were presented as simply as possible, leaving me to my own ingenuity to access the part I need as quickly as possible. A very good (and time-proven) organization is text files, with no formatting information embedded, and no arbitrary structure imposed that requires some special program to access the files. Just my $0.02, Craig Ludington craigl@craigl.pr.mcs.net