A User's Complaint about the Help Manual

[Greg Waddell]

Hi,

I just wanted to say that I have often sought answers in the online user's manual only to go away frustrated. It appears that this is a manual for programmers, but of no use to the end user like me who just wants to use the software to ... you got it... store books and then find them.

So, for example, I go to the manual and I'm wondering if I can get some help on using boolean arguments in the search box (kinda like Google has trained the average user to do). So, I go to the manual and type "search" in the search box (which, btw, I had to do quite a bit of searching myself to find, since it's way down at the bottom of the page).

When I click "search." Do I get help on how to search? No, I get a bunch of links to extremely technical information for those who want to program calibre.. such things like: --sr1-search, API Documentation for plugins, calibredb, CHM Input, FB2 Input, HTLZ Input. XPat.

I scratch my head and say: "Say What?"

It would be nice to have a help manual that's for the average user.

Just a thought.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Greg Waddell

It would be nice to have a help manual that's for the average user.
Just a thought.

I think you are complaining more about the search function than the content of the help manual. Go here:
http://calibre-ebook.com/user_manual/index.html
Look at the Table of Contents and work through the Main User Interface, or go directly to the part on the Search interface:
http://calibre-ebook.com/user_manual/gui.html#id21
I've also found the search function of the online user manual to be pretty useless, but it's easy to find what I want via the TOC.

[Greg Waddell]

Thanks Starson17,

Like often happens in help documentation, once it's pointed out, it seems so obvious. I realize now that Calibre has an abundance of ways to search.