In <[email protected]>, on 06/21/2012
at 01:51 AM, Tom Ross <[email protected]> said:
>We are working on adding help for messages where help is not
>available elsewhere, but including syntax descriptions and
>diagrams to a message manual to explain a COBOL syntax error
>would mean duplicating what is in the Language Reference Manual
>already.
1. Nobody asked for that.
2. It wouldn't help.
What would help is an explanation of the *specific* errors that cause
the message to be issued. The messages are not self explanatory,
despite half a century of IBM's claims that they are.
>For example, P/I has a compiler messages manual, but the
>explanations still require you to read the Language Reference Manual
>to solve the problem.
I've solved plenty of problems using the explanation in the PL/I
messages manuals[1] without recourse to the language reference
manuals, also there certainly some infrequent cases where I needed to
look up the syntax. But I have never seen a COBOL manual that came
close to the quality of the PL/I manuals I've used.
[1] Not that they were perfect.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT
Atid/2 <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
