I agree about reference cards. But I remember when I learned how ~expensive~
it is to print physical manuals.
At this employer we were encouraging end users to learn DYL-280II so they could
write their own inquiry programs instead of disrupting the developers'
projects. ("Listen, I know you promised me that update in three weeks but I
just gotta know how many red cabovers Ford sold in Michigan between 1969 and
1998.") So I was ordering manuals for each new user, and my boss got tired of
approving purchase orders for the manuals on a onesy-twosy basis; order a bunch
of them, he said, and pass them out and charge them to the user department as
needed. How many? Oh, say a hundred. The manuals at the time came in two
thick ring binders and went for $150 a set.
So I went to the folks at Dylakor and asked for a discount for ordering a bunch
of them at a time. Sure, they said, and offered me half off. Wait, you don't
understand, I said, we're ordering a HUNDRED! (I was perhaps overly impressed
with myself at the time.) So they said Tell you what: We'll issue you a
license to print the manuals at your own print shop, and we'll just sell you
the binders and tabs. Now you're talking, I thought, and went to our print
shop for a price.
Then I went back to Dylakor and accepted their $75 offer. Turns out printing
hard copy is expensive.
Nowadays I can save hundreds of manuals on a single flash stick, and search
them for a few key words in minutes. I like this system better. (Though I
still miss the HTML search function.)
---
Bob Bridges, [email protected], cell 336 382-7313
/* Leadership is getting someone to do what they don't want to do in order to
achieve what they want to achieve. -Tom Landry */
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of
Tony Harminc
Sent: Friday, May 6, 2022 13:16
No - IBM stopped being a paper publisher around ten years ago.
Obviously they still print some marketing stuff and the like, but to my
knowledge nothing with a manual number is available on paper anymore.
This makes sense for most pubs, but you'd think there'd still be a small market
for things like reference cards, or - something I was looking for a decade ago
- APL keyboard stickers, either SC33-0604-00 or GX20-1783-02.
--- On Fri, 6 May 2022 at 11:36, Phil Smith III <[email protected]> wrote:
> Jeez Louise, the PofOp is 2,124pp and the "green card" is 118pp! (Yes,
> still in green card-sized pages.) I wonder if this is still
> purchasable in print format, and if it's coil-bound or perfect-bound
> if so. Not that I'm about to buy a copy.
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