Philip Freidin <[email protected]> writes:
> Some of the manuals are single page PDFs, that point you to
> the web site to get the real thing.

Ugh! I always hate that sort of thing. CDs are cheap, they should
include the real docs. (It's all well and good to suggest looking at
the web site for updates.)

What happens in five years when a customer needs you to revise an
old design? You discover that Foundation ISE 11.2 doesn't support
the old parts, or that for some reason the old design doesn't build
right with it, so you get out your old CD of ISE 6.3. And then
discover that you don't have the actual documentation.

Years ago people told me that as more and more information became
available digitally, particular works would be available on a permanent
basis, because storage capacity and bandwidth keep increasing, and
there's no longer an reason why things should go out of print. The
publisher doesn't have to keep a warehouse of books that only sell a
copy occasionally; instead it is just bits on a hard drive.

While there may be some small amount of truth to that, the reality is
that most digital works are even more ephemeral than the paper they are
replacing.

Sigh.