CompuServe Messages

I think the current printed doc's are excellent. I can always find what I want and they are well written. I do wish they were bound so that they would lie down flat and would stay open when leaning up against something on your desk, like the Animator Pro manuals. I would be suspicious of trying to do too much on-line. The fact is, you need to KNOW what you're about to do in 3D Studio. I use on-line help most frequently when I'm just "skimming the top" of an application I'm not very deep in and I'm not very interested in getting deep into, like a new spreadsheet or graphics program. You can learn a program this way, too, and I bet a lot of us picked up a lot by screwing around going up and down the menu's, but in this case a brief command summary for each command, maybe a bit more detailed than in release 3, is sufficient. What may be a helpful addition on-line, after the brief command summary, is to extensively cross-reference not only the specific page/section of the manual for an in-depth discussion, but a broader "see also" summary. The Borland compiler's help system has that and I find it very useful. –Noah