Many years ago, I was laid up with a severe bout of pneumonia. Bed rest for a week at a minimum was ordered by my doctor (tip: never let your doctor become your friend – life can become hell!). As I tend to have the attention span of a 6 week old puppy, that was going to be difficult; I get bored to death in a bath. I had to find something to while away the time. This was before I owned a laptop, well before wireless networking and at about Word for Windows version 2.0. My “laptop” was a Sharp Organiser that a forward thinking Melbourne company had written a synchronisation program for Windows 3.0 that I was coincidentally reviewing for the original “Reseller” magazine.

I decided the only thing to do, was have a read of the manual for the Sharp, and see what other things it could do as well as storing names, addresses, phone numbers and calendar entries. It was most enlightening! I discovered that the basic memo pad function could save files Windows Notepad (and therefore Word) could read – albeit only to 1K in size, but that was enough to be able to make a start on newspaper and magazine stories and it could store up to 50 files in its 64K memory. The fact it had a QWERTY keyboard helped too.

This got me to thinking. What other tools did I have that could do more than I thought? These were the days when software came with manuals (manual; noun: a book with real paper containing lots of words, hints, example and tutorials on how to use enclosed software package).

I summoned the servants to fetch my Word for Windows manual which was about 400 pages back then, and started to read cover to cover. I thought I knew Word pretty well having worked with it from day one in DOS mode, but was surprised almost immediately by functionality I didn’t know existed.
The first was Outlining mode which I have mentioned in Hydrapinion before. The next was the “Spike” (CTL –F3) which is exactly what it sounds like – moving multiple items in order to an electronic Spike to be later inserted in the opposite order. Many more revelations occurred as I kept reading – and no I am not going to give anything else away about Word here as that would defeat the point of the article!

Next on the agenda was my vector graphics application – how many remember Micrografx Designer? I used it for basic things not being an artist of any note as previously mentioned – but all of a sudden the world of Bezier curves opened up to me – a rather important part of computer based graphics as anyone who has dabbled with Illustrator, Freehand and the like will know.

Picture Publisher, later to become known as Micrografx Image, was next. This application is similar to an early version of Photoshop, and I still use it to this day – for no other reason that I know it and it suits my needs firstly for creating graphics destined for the web and secondly, as I learnt while flat on my back, creating alpha channel images for use in video.

So, if my basic software tools I used almost ever day had so much more scope than I had initially realised, what about my hardware? Even back then I had a plethora of cameras, camcorders and other gadgets. In parallel was a boxful of manuals. It was like opening a Pandora’s box of usefulness as by the end of the week I had gadgets talking to gadgets, cameras taking images in a photographic style I hadn’t known possible, printers printing envelopes on call, Excel spreadsheets linked to Word documents linked to databases and much, much more. Today with the plethora of wizards installed with programs, even easier. (Ah I dream of the days of the Excel or Lotus 1-2-3 macro. Those were the days. But don’t get m started on Access! Ugh.)

I woe the demise of the paper manual, these days replaced usually by a PDF file, online document or simply as in the case of Microsoft products, a maze of help systems that are both on and off line. The reason of course is cost. Last week I received my copy of the latest Adobe Creative Suite 3 (CS3) that contains the new versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and so on. Not lightweight packages! The previous woolly mammoth CS2 version weighed in at around 5Kg complete as it came with proper paper manuals. Conversely, CS3 came in a small box with 2 DVDs. That’s it. One DVD is the applications, and the other is “Media” – images, movies, fonts etc the modern day version of clipart. All the manuals and tutorials are in PDF format.

But here’s a tip. Any printer worth his salt can accept PDFs via email and then print them out and spiral bind them. My Sony Vegas manual is one such beast – around 600 pages. Total cost? $50 or so. A small price to pay for something I can physically refer to, take on a plane and read, or relieve that bath boredom.

(As an aside, if as so many keep telling us that the future of print is on the web, why is that so many like me, bemoan the demise of the paper manual and hate the thought of reading them on-screen? Blogs like Hydrapinion are a different animal as it is rare that you would ever refer back to a blog I would think. And with a single screen as most people have, despite higher resolutions, flicking between a PDF and the application is a right royal pain in the arse. Off soapbox.)

I firmly believe that the absence of proper manuals stops people experimenting and learning the capabilities of their installed applications. While this may or may not stifle their possible creativity, it certainly minimises their efficiency.

There used to be a slogan aimed at kiddies; “drinkapintamilkaday”. I’ve invented a new one; “readamanualpageaday”. I guarantee you’ll learn something new every time you do. Don’t say thanks – just throw money. Or go and buy a copy of Australasian Camcorder magazine.

Footnote: Once again thanks to all those shared their sympathies over the very sad pasing of VB the Dog. It was overwhelming and is greatly appreciated. On a happier note, my doggy universe is now complete again with the entrance of Budweiser the Labrador / Staffie who really DOES have the attention span of a 6 week old puppy!