Re:VisiCalc: Information from Its Creators, Dan Bricklin and...
by EricE on Thursday August 19, 2021 @10:20AM
(#28234155)
I managed to rescue a few shrinkwrapped, never open boxed copies of WordPerfect 5.1 that a place I was working at was tossing. Main reason was I wanted the templates that fit over the F keys on the keyboard - those were the ultimate reference cards :)
Re:VisiCalc: Information from Its Creators, Dan Bricklin and...
by mongol on Thursday August 19, 2021 @03:48AM
(#28231410)
Just print the man page, fold it and put it in your shirt pocket.
Re:VisiCalc: Information from Its Creators, Dan Bricklin and...
by citrin_ru on Thursday August 19, 2021 @06:52AM
(#28232327)
It doesn't work for GUI software though. And even for CLI tools mans are not universally used. Sometimes it's just --help and for more information one have to refer to a website (typically a README on github). It seems to me that that quality and quantity of documentation and help files for GUI software degrades over time. Probably because it changes so fast that documenting it would be too expensive.
On other hand now we have a lot of software for free, and even paid one is less expensive than it used to be so it is unfair to complain about lack of documentation. But I miss high quality docs and built-in help I used to see until 2000s (may be even 2010s).
http://danbricklin.com/history/saiproduct1.htm
They were typically folded with several panels, just the right size to sit in your shirt pocket next to the pen and pocket protector.
I still have a bunch of these cards I used to carry around in my job as an IBM mainframe engineer. So damn useful and concise.
I guess things change too fast these days for there to be a place for reference cards. And the days of fitting an entire CPU instruction set on a single card are sure in the past.