RTFM = Read the Funny Manual?

coronaride writes: "This article over on Wired discusses the issue near and dear to every sysadmin and support tech's heart. I, myself, never read any manuals that accompany the products I buy (but when does cheese-whiz really need instructions anyways?) unless something majorly goes wrong! The article talks about how some countries, including Japan, try to spice up their product manuals in order to entice the users to read them. Is this just too much work for our lazy American manufacturers to do?"

Comments

This is not a new idea...

[Adrian Voinea]

Apple have been inserting funny stuff in their manuals for ages. And they are the only manuals I've read and enjoyed :)

Re:This is not a new idea...

[zamokzam]

The idea is a lot older than Apple. Perhaps 45 or 50 years ago science fiction writer Fred Pohl (poss. collaborating with C.M. Kornbluth) wrote a story in which he/they described how the military of the future spiced up manuals to keep the soldiers' interest: a fairly simple rifle manual, for example, might be illustrated with scantily clad women demonstrating the various features of the rifle; because of its complexity, a tank manual, on the other hand, would be heavily pornographic.

As well, I seem to recall an excellent topology textbook used at NYU in the 1960s that began with chapter 00 (double-zero), progressed through 0 (zero) and on up, and was quite witty (in the way of all togologists, I suppose).

And, let us not forget "The ZH Guide" by China Scholar George Kennedy (published by the Far Eastern something or other at Yale?). One would normally expect a manual on a (Classical) Chinese encyclopedic dictionary to be quite dry. But Prof. Kennedy was prone to pose tough questions of his students: why (he might ask) does one commonly used Chinese character for Japanese contain elements meaning "yellow" and "dwarf" . . . I imagine the use of such devices kept his readers' interest (I know they worked for me). But, for some reason, this work seems no longer to be in print.

Re:O' Reilly

[pi_rules]

I think this has alot to do with Larry Wall's influence in the Perl world. His writing is absolutely hilarious to me at points... and I really enjoy reading anything he writes. Granted, most of the humor would fly right over a non-tech's head.

It's a great idea really... at least I think so. I tend to pay more attention to writing when I'm occasionally hit with a bit of humor. I try and do the same with comments in code and rather mundane updates I may email out to a team I'm working with.

Re:The powers of being concise and clear

[Osty]

You didn't RTFA, did you? The article was all about the various cultural differences. For example, when translating for an Italian market, it was said that you should never just flat-out say what to do. Instead, suggest around it (apparently, Italians are stubborn and don't like being told what to do). Hungarians like instructions on how to fix things, some images and phrases that are benign in one culture are offensive in another, and so on.

Personally, I agree with you that a manual should be clear, concise, and just plain useful. And that's how most good manuals are in the States. That's not necessarily true around the world, and that was the whole point of the article.

That oxymoron is there for a reason

[Ungrounded Lightning]

American manuals are funny.

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Yes it's an oxymoron and its self-contradiction is funny. But having it on otherwise-blank pages of manuals is really quite important.

Without it, the people in the technical publications department (and readers of the manual) are likely to spend time trying to determine if the page is blank due to an error. Manuals are delayed and costs rise. And if there is not a policy to insert the phrase on blank pages, manuals may occasionally be published with one or more blank pages that aren't SUPPOSED to be blank.

(Of course the humor of that catchphrase has led to parodies. Example: An experimental microchip that (due to the early silicon compiler's tendency to group repetitive circuitry tightly) had some large, rectangular chunks of the chip unused. So the deisngers hand-instantiated that lettering in the blank area.

Re:O' Reilly Perl stuff

[layingMantis]

The Camel book does have humor, but it isn't as funny, or as engagingly written, as the "Llama", Learning Perl. That is one of the best written technical books I've ever read. (Compare this to the ultra-dry and boring Running Linux, also by O'Reilly)

Larry Wall isn't a gifted writer, and isn't a gifted teacher for that matter - Programming Perl can be too terse and obtuse at times. It is a still a good book worth the money, though.

And while we are talking Perl and O'Reilly -- stay far away from Perl In A Nutshell, first edition - it is not concise, contains no examples, and is written in a flat and boring style. The 2nd edition, coming out right now, might be better, but I'll only believe that when I see it.

~mantis