Some time ago, I described Windows 3.0’s WinHelp as “a program for browsing online help files.” But Windows 3.0 predated the Internet, and these help files were available even if the computer was not connected to any other network. How can it be “online”?
↫ Raymond Chen at The Old New Thing
I doubt this will be a conceptual problem for many people reading OSNews, but I can definitely understand especially younger people finding this a curious way of looking at the word “online”. You’ll see the concept of “online help” in quite a few systems from the ’90s (and possibly earlier), so if you’re into retrocomputing you might’ve run into it as well.
I miss the complete, indexed, well-formated, well-organized, searchable, detailed, interlinked offline help files of the 90s.
I miss when tools had meaningful documentation. Today, there’s companies over there deploying solutions with tools whose the author didn’t bothered even to write a “man”: it don’t have at all, or is auto generated garbage extracted from code comments.
Some “young people” have trouble understanding what “device drivers” or even “files” are.
Yeah I wrote my share of Windows 3 documentation in the Help format as well as the tech tips. I loved how RTF corresponded to the help functions.
Oh my, how times have changed. Now I feel old!
For the record: “offline” at the time meant printed paper documentation. Online meant available in the computer, possibly with a single keypress within the application itself.
As for the help files being complete, well formatted and well organised: it is true that they are a rarity now. I blame their demise on the fact that “move fast and break things” software won – nobody makes better but costlier software (than the competition) any more, for a reason: by the time it gets to market, it is too late! Quick iteration has shown to trump the search for perfection.
Also, most software is written for the general public, who would not read manuals anyway. Long gone is the time when primary software consumers where nerds, tinkerers and engineers.
As a bandaid, there is the fact that “make the software so easy that a 5-years old could not get it wrong” is now a well accepted development guideline, with all the good and bad that it entails…