I have a more than healthy interest in the discussion about documentation that recently spawned on the list. I had similar discussions with some off-line in the past months. We may be at a point where your opinion counts.
Not everyone seems to realize that the Author's Edition actually has 4 parts for users with different level of experience. This is more granular than for example the REXX books. 1. Introduction 2. Task Oriented Guide 3. Specialised Topics, Tutorials 4. Reference I sometimes find friends complain about the description in part 4 being too brief, while they never even looked at the other parts. It's a bit like learning assembler by just looking at the Instruction-Use Examples in Appendix A (yes, me too). The 1.1.12 level covered by the Author's Edition has a lot more function than the 1.1.10 level in the z/VM 6.3 books. In the style of the z/VM 6.3 books, describing the latest level might take 3,000 pages. The consistent design of CMS Pipelines makes the description appear very repetitive and likely obscures the details. We do need a document to decide whether behaviour is right or wrong. It would be strange not to share such a document with you. Part 4 of the book is just that. I understand the value of examples, like in Part 2 and 3. Maybe we need more. Showing the full potential just by examples is hard. It reminds me of the SHARE presentation "50 Ways To Chop Your Records" many years ago. When you think you have ideas to help us improve the documentation, I'd love to hear. We can discuss here or off-list. Sir Rob the Plumber z/VM Development - CMS Pipelines
