Which do you read? Print vs. online documentation

[#1]

JMP books have long been available in print format. You can order the books through Amazon and other book resellers.

Other help options are:

• Googling a JMP search term.
• Reading PDF files through the JMP Help > Books menu.
• Searching the help through JMP Help > Search the Help (or Help > Search on Mac).
• Purchasing a Kindle book or EPUB at Amazon, Google Play, iBookstore, or another e-book reseller. See JMP 12 Basic Analysis at Amazon for an example.

During last week's Discovery Summit, users told me they search the help most often -- either in the product or through Google. One user prefers the PDF files because each chapter is easier to read linearly.

A few questions:

Which help format do you prefer?

How likely are you to buy a JMP e-book, now that you know about them?

Would you miss the option of buying a print copy of a manual?

I appreciate your feedback.

Sheila

p.s. Thanks to all users for your feedback on the documentation. The documentation team continually improves the documentation with your input.

[KarenC]

Sheila,

I use "Google JMP" and the built in PDFs in an equal amount.  I recently moved one of the PDF manuals to my iPad to have it on a different screen while working in JMP (so I would not buy the ebook version of the documnetation).  The last print copies of the manuals that I used are from v5 and they are still on my book shelf even though I know they are no longer of value.  That said, I would not miss the option of buying a printed manual.

Karen

[sheila_loring]

Thanks for your reply, Karen. It's interesting that you prefer Googling JMP terms instead of searching the help. We're looking at a new help format for JMP 13 that has better search capabilities. That said, it's hard to beat Google for searching.

[volinoca]

I use the pdf's quite a bit. Ctrl+F in Windows makes them searchable.

[sheila_loring]

volinoca, thank you for your feedback. I'm glad you find searching the PDF files helpful.

Here's another great search tip for PDF files: In Acrobat, select Edit > Advanced Search. This lets you search a directory of PDF files or the current document. The search results are displayed in a tree view and include the sentence the term occurs in.

The JMP Documentation Library PDF file contains all books so is handy for searching the entire doc set. It's in the Help > Books menu in JMP 11 and 12.