I believe in paperless offices, but it often seems as if on-line documentation emphasizes definitions of keywords and brief generic (lame) answers to troubleshooting questions, and doesn't bother with the sort of detailed explanations of how to get things done which we expect to find in developers' guides. I'm still waiting for my office to buy me vfp6, so I'm waiting to see whether the full contents of the old vfp dev guide are really in the help now (they weren't in vfp3, but someone said that they are now). You can read the old developer's guide like a book and learn how to do things. Try that with, say, the Office 97 help.

I often think that M$ is phasing out documentation alltogether because it eats into the profits.

>Mike,
>
>If I may throw in a vote here. . .
>
>I like *both*, but always find myself making more use of paper docs over electronic! Therefore I would say that paper docs should be mandatory.
>I bought the VFP Programmer's Guide on the basis of talk here that:
>1) it (VFP docs in general) were *much* improved;
>2) someone wrote that it was over 1200 pages, which reinforced the first point.
>Imagine my extreme disappointment when it was identical to the VFP5 book except that all of the new stuff was simply added to the end (and not at all integrated into the original!).
>
>Print-your-own doesn't really cut it for me. I doubt that it would print **EXACTLY** as planned and the binding would surely be a big problem.
>
>I suspect that the majority would prefer the paper too, and that products should include it (which of course means that pricing would be marginally steeper). What MS included in the VS 6 Enterprise Edition borders on the tragic. I have spent an extra $400+ to buy the books (and, as I said, the VFP one at least was most disappointing).
>
>Regards,
>
>Jim N
>
>>You do know that the :-) indicates I was kidding right? As a software manifacturer, this issue is of interest to me. What do you think about on-line documentation that allows you to print the manual if you want to?