Comment by bombcar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bombcar | Hacker News Reader

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There was a sweet time from the early 80s to just before Internet distribution of programs took off where you could "gauge" the quality and value of a software package by lifting the box.

If it was heavy, you knew there was an impressive manual inside, and if they took the time to make and print a manual, they probably took the time to develop the software well.

Here's Lotus 1-2-3: https://www.ebay.com/itm/283699892988

SimCity 3000 was perhaps the last game with a big printed manual: https://www.ebay.com/itm/354226256399

There were exceptions in both directions of course (for example, shareware-distributed Doom; random clip-art compilations with a crappy "editor" that came with a printed book showing each one), but if you were browsing a shelf it wasn't a bad rule of thumb.

Shortly after that everything went to small box with a CD/DVD in it (and a manual in PDF form, if any) and then even those mostly disappeared and now everything is online help.

It spawned the whole Missing Manual series, and there's something lost that interactive help can never replace - the manuals had a journey and a theme and you'd often find things you never even knew you wanted by reading them.

I still sometimes pick up old manuals at thrift stores just to read.

I tend to ignore manuals, but two exceptions stand out to me. The Civilization series always continued making decent in-game manuals, or maybe 'wikis' is the more appropriate term. And while I would say that the manual for bash and python are decent, if inconsistent --- I wish bash manuals would prioritize frequently used arguments or flags --- R has really taken things to another level. R is probably the only software where my first instinct is not to google it, but to actually look at the documentation, because it is integrated so seamlessly, and because it is well organized: parameters at the top, examples at the bottom. And R's cheat sheets are also something else: https://posit.co/resources/cheatsheets/ . I had some of those laminated, because they are just such a joy to look at and browse.

One of my favourite Unix manuals: https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/coherent/ftp/manuals/COHER... (Coherent died in the mid-90s but it had a really good manual).

Working at Egghead was great. Commission was basically based on the size of the box. Miss you PageMaker.

I worked at Egghead when Windows 3.1 was released. We pushed that hard because the spiff for it was $25, iirc. My sales bonus that month was something like $2,000. (And Egghead was how I met the people that got me into software dev at Interplay when Egghead changed owners and went downhill.)

I remember Baldur's Gate 1 manual having near enough info to play D&D session

I have a small pile of old manuals like Windows OS manuals, Corel, some MS Office manuals, a three volume IBM set (I think for 5150?); Disk Operating System, Operations, BASIC. I hate to throw them out.

Some of them go for relatively decent prices on eBay.

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