> Once upon a time Sam Ammons shaped the electrons to say...
> >How do I set the inactivity timer in my portmasters?
>
> 'set s# idle [minutes]'
>
> People are getting manuals with their products - right? If we're not
> shipping them I'll make sure that gets fixed.
Lets look at the manual in the index. Page I-6
IDLE status 3-6
idle time
setting 6-12,9-7
Seems like I should be able to tell how to do it from that but the section
on page 6-12 Setting the Port Idle Time only talks about it and doesn't
tell you how to set it. Maybe on 9-7? What, this is nothing more than a
rehash of 6-12. What the hell? I guess the manual doesn't tell you how
to set the idle-timer. This has been the problem with these fancy
manuals since they came out. You can't find the thing you need to find
when you need to find it. I complained about this in email and on the
phone to someone whose name I can't remember. In many ways the older
wire bound manuals were better because at least you could find the thing
you needed and when you read it you knew that it wasn't written by a tech
writer that had never actually looked at the product or set one up.
Oh, wait. I found it! Page 20-7 under Async Port configuration. Hmm,
kinda lame not having a pointer to that in the index. And the listing of
Async commands isn't sorted. Makes it a lot harder to find even if you
know it is there.
Lots of the stuff in the new manuals was good but a description of the
command and then an example of use would be a lot more useful. And the
help stuff in the boxes is horribly outdated. Is this updated in 3.5?
One of the most interesting things to do would be to make design engineers
work for about 6 months in test engineering and technical support before
being allowed to design anything. Tech writers need at least the tech
support part of the lesson. Otherwise they never understand just how bad
some of the stuff they do is.
Doug Ingraham A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner
Rapid City, SD and outer life depends on the labours of other men,
USA living and dead and that I must exert myself in order
to give in the same measure as I have received.
-Albert Einstein