Please tell me it's not true!

[SledDog]

Please tell me that your online "Articles" are not the only User Manual available to me.
Please tell me that I didn't BUY a software package that doesn't come with the barest minimum of documentation.

[RubberToes]

Is this what you are talking about?

http://community.invisionpower.com/resources/documentation/index.html

There's a good amount of information in there. Sometimes I find myself asking why they don't have some things better documented... but for the most part if think it meets the "barest minimum"

What kind of information are you looking for?

[Mat Barrie]

Really? What's wrong with "Articles"? I've yet to ever encounter a bit of info I cannot find in those "articles" you deride so readily. And then there's the inline help in the ACP. And the user help in the board. About the only thing I've ever had an issue with is that settings in the system settings panel can be a little under-documented. Books and PDFs are so antiquated - every piece of software I've purchased in the last 5 years has come with access to a knowledgebase and support forum - sometimes not even that - but not one has come with what you seem to consider the only acceptable form of documentation. Hell, Kayako, an $18,000 piece of software, comes with significantly less than IP.Board does.

[SledDog]

Simply put, I can never annotate, or highlight pertinent information, I cannot mark pages that contain information that is important to what I am doing at the time.
It will never be a valued personal reference that will contain insights garnered during previous reads. I will never be able to take it to a coffee shop when I need a break
from the terminal, it will never be apart of my carry on luggage, I will never be able to read it in bed before I sleep and I'll never be able to read it while I'm
sitting on the john. In short, it will never be mine. And although some will say books and PDF's are antiquated (lamest justification I ever heard), I find online
documentation to be, without a doubt, the least convenient, most time consuming form of documentation yet devised.

[Collin1000]

Simply put, I can never annotate, or highlight pertinent information, I cannot mark pages that contain information that is important to what I am doing at the time.

It will never be a valued personal reference that will contain insights garnered during previous reads. I will never be able to take it to a coffee shop when I need a break

from the terminal, it will never be apart of my carry on luggage, I will never be able to read it in bed before I sleep and I'll never be able to read it while I'm

sitting on the john. In short, it will never be mine. And although some will say books and PDF's are antiquated (lamest justification I ever heard), I find online

documentation to be, without a doubt, the least convenient, most time consuming form of documentation yet devised.

Software is ever changing. New versions are released, features are changed, and information updates. It's simply not economical to have a printed manual. It would be constantly outdated.

If you really want to learn and read through things.... print it all out... or get an iPad... or something.... I mean, just flip through the knowledgebase. Tons to learn.

http://community.inv...s/official.html

[SledDog]

Are PDF's that hard to update? I've been taking care of my own printing for years.
If they have it in a printer friendly format that I can download, that would be fantastic
and it would be inline with my expectations.

[Michael]

They literally update the documentation daily, would you expect them to create new PDFs every time they do that too? While that may be your expectation, you should realize that you are not the only customer they have to please. While individuals opinions are taken into consideration, IPS can't possibly be expected to please every one of their customers about every aspect of their business.

[spicy brains]

To play devil's advocate, this does not mean that they would necessarily have to do a ton of work. They could automatically generate PDFs. They have the option for doing so with the code documentation in doxygen (and choose not to), and there are free HTML->PDF converters (such as the php project dompdf). They could choose to create a daily task that will update the documentation every night automatically, or write a plugin to run the converter on edit/add.

It would not be a something that's necessarily a waste of their time, either, as they could integrate that with the forums (archive a PM as a PDF instead of email, view a topic as a PDF instead of HTML, view an article as a PDF instead of HTML, etc)

[Fishfish0001]

Those PDF converters take time to generate things on the fly, which is what would have to be done to keep things up to date. Honestly I'm feeling some "troll" action going on here. This has to be the first post I've ever seen where someone complains about the documentation not being a PDF. Just print it yourself if you want to, Ctrl+P will do that for you

I don't see how flipping through pages of a PDF is quicker then typing in a word into a live search. Theres also this thing called Bookmarks, and Bookmark folders.

Not to mention you can't really complain about this considering you had all the time before you bought it to ask about this, and view the online docs.

[ᴡᴅツ]

The documentation is good. What I don't like though is when I find out a bug exists through first hand experience a week or two after it's been added into the documentation. I don't want to be announced when new articles are added, but I would like some type of announcement if a problematic bug is found. For example, there was a bug where the email registration didn't go through properly and guests couldn't register or validate (can't remember which exactly).

[TSP]

Honestly I'm feeling some "troll" action going on here. This has to be the first post I've ever seen where someone complains about the documentation not being a PDF. Just print it yourself if you want to, Ctrl+P will do that for you [img]

[/img]

How can it be trolling to complain about things like this? I do agree with the fact that he could've asked before buying and that he shouldn't always automatically expect pdf manuals to be available, but this is a completely legitimate request to make in my opinion. That a customer starts a discussion about something that is important for him is far from trolling in my eyes - even though noone else have done it before him - it should be encouraged.

I support the idea that IPS could automatically generate pdf's from the knowledgebase, but it's not important for me personally - and I probarbly wouldn't use them myself since I've never used the knowledgebase in the first place.

[Robulosity2]

Are PDF's that hard to update? I've been taking care of my own printing for years.

If they have it in a printer friendly format that I can download, that would be fantastic

and it would be inline with my expectations.

Are PDF's any different than saving a Website to your Desktop or printing a page? .


Oh wait...