Re: Have you all gone crazy? Was: On being web-friendly and why info must die

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Tom <address@hidden>
> Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 21:32:13 +0000 (UTC)
> 
> Users want to get the information fast and it is much faster to
> search for something in google than trying to find the relevant
> section of the manual.

That's simply incorrect, if you use the 'i' command in Info, which is
the main way of searching an Info manual.

> The manual is great for looikng up again something which you know
> where to find. E.g. what kind of text properties are there?
> 
> C-h i -> m elisp -> g -> text properties
> 
> But if you want to lookup something unfamiliar then google is much
> more efficient.

Give me an example of what you want to find, and I will show you how
to get there faster than with Google.

Once again, with Google, you never know whether the info you see is up
to date or even correct.  That's one definite advantage of looking up
in manuals installed on your system -- you _kinow_ it's correct and
accurate (barring docs bugs).

> I wonder how many people read the manual from the beginning to the
> end like a book. These days (when average attention span is very
> short due to years of filtering through huge volumes of information
> on the net) I'd guess not many.

Irrelevant.  Finding information quickly and efficiently calls for a
very different kind of reading than when you read the entire manual.