The breakout showed 38 percent prefer online docs only, 31 percent want hard-copy manuals only and 24 percent want a mix of of both. An unhappy 7 percent thought EDA material in both mediums was useless.

The OnLine Docs Uber Alles viewpoint voiced by 38 percent of the respondents is best explained by John Lynch of Pixelworks, who said, "I prefer online docs. I use them exclusively. I gleefully dance on the grave of paper documentation. Hard copy is usually out of date because you didn't bother to replace the pages in the three-ring binder when you received the last SW update."

Jamie Murphy of Ericsson agreed: "Let's face it, watching water drip from a faucet is more interesting than reading most EDA manuals. How is the tedious half-day manual-searching process better than the key-word searches and hyperlinks available with most online documentation? I can generally find what I'm looking for (if it's there) in two to three minutes with online docs."

Within the online camp itself, 56 percent like PDF, 38 percent like HTML and 6 percent like Framemaker.

"Please stay away from HTML. The last thing I need is some yahoo tech writer being cute and inserting JavaScript in the documentation so that little creatures run around the borders of the page," wrote Dan Lutes of Cirrus Logic. "It is not only annoying, it can rob a big portion of your CPU cycles. Besides, anytime I have a Web browser up (i.e., HTML reader), if my boss walks past he thinks I'm goofing off on the WWW."

Speaking for the hard-copy-only view expressed by 31 percent of the readers, consultant Keith Lofstrom wrote, "Online documentation? When asked about a similar oxymoron, 'Western civilization,' Gandhi responded wistfully: 'that would be nice.' The online documents are poorly designed and use up valuable screen space. The folks writing the stuff are more enamored of the medium than aware of the end user's needs. In the quest for whizzy, they forget about little things like adequate indexing."

Gordon McGregor of Motorola agreed: "I find it much easier to get the 'whole picture' with the hard copy in front of me."

Articulating the "we want both" view voiced by 24 percent of the respondents, Miriam Blatt of Sun said, "I'm a die-hard tree killer. I always prefer hard-copy manuals. But not as a substitute for online searches. We really need both."

Ken Goldman of IBM agreed: "Online is better for a reference manual, where [you want] to quickly look up a specific detail, and for links to other references. Paper is better as the user's manual, where [you're] reading chapters at a time and reading linearly to understand concepts."

So, doing the math, (31 + 24 = 55 percent), hard copy still rules.

-John Cooley runs the e-mail synopsys users group (ESNUG), is a contract ASIC designer and loves hearing from engineers at jcooley@world.std.com or (508) 429-4357.