Originally posted by UncleVanya Today's excuse for a manual isn't even close to what they once were. The ebooks available here were born from that frustration.
My previous statement was basically correct; technical manuals were never well-written.
I have told this story here before, but this seems like a good time to repeat it.
I entered Purdue University as a Freshman Computer Science student in September 1965.
In those days, you would send the bookstore a list of your courses, and they would have a bag of books ready for you.
So, I paid for my books, took them back to the residence hall, and dumped the bag out on my bed.
I saw two computer-related books in the pile, so I picked one of them up and started reading it.
It was the IBM FORTRAN manual .... after a few minutes, I was ready to change majors.
Later, I was told by other students that the other book - a FORTRAN textbook - was for reading, and the manual was for when you needed to look up the details of some issue.
As I have already said, manuals are useful when you know what feature you want details on, but hard to find information otherwise.