I do not myself believe that IBM messages are almost totally useless, and I
doubt that many people do. They vary in quality from component to component;
some of them are misleading to some readers; and some of them are 'radically'
uninformative.
Those that are egregiously incorrect are usually corrected when their
deficiencies are brought to IBM's attention, but thery are not common.
There are real problems, but wholesale condemnation is unlikely to be helpful
in getting these problems addressed. It is to easy to shrug off as uninformed.
To whom at what level of experience are they directed? Are they now viewed as
free-standing? Or are they still viewed as vehicles for directing attention
to a manual where fuller information is provided? What are the informal
constraints on, expectations about, their lengths within IBM? (The IBM HLASM
now permits macro MNOTEs to be as much as 1024 bytes in length, but those
generated by IBM macros continue to be much too cryptic: they make almost no
use of text that is more than two or three lines in length.)
About Agean stables I will limit myself to noting that the 5th labo[u]r of
Hercules/Herakles was the cleaning of the enormous [cattle] stables of King
Augeas,. hence the Augean stables in a single day. Herakles succeeded in doing
so by diverting two streams through them.
Apposite classical allusions have their uses, mais le bon Dieu est dans le
détail.
John Gilmore Ashland, MA 01721-1817 USA
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