G'day everyone,

Firstly, thanks to everyone who has contributed answers to this list.

I'm about due for a holiday, so now seems a good time to get
something off my chest! ;-)

I'm a part-time hobbyist programmer of only 7 months experience
with CPPBuilder & IBObjects & SQL & Interbase. My first app in this
environment is slowly but surely coming together nicely, but as I
find myself searching once again through 1/ The IBObjects help file,
2/ The Getting Started Guide, 3/ The Interbase Docs (9 different
pdf's), 4/ the many Borland help files, 5/ the online IBObjects FAQ,
6/ the online IBObjects "Help Online" and 7/ the dozens of single-
topic text files I've snipped out of this list, I can't help but
wonder if there isn't a better way to bring all this information
together. (Did I forget the example programs, which I haven't had
much luck in converting to BCB).

How do you more experienced programmers out there manage this
plethora of information? Who has the best system? Help file pages
can't be searched for specific words once you've found the right page
(a task in itself, given the somewhat cryptic headings in some
indexes), annotations are prone to getting lost when re-building your
system, a group of pdf's can't all be searched at once (can
they?)...etc. etc.

With regard to the IBO help files and their many brief/cryptic/non-
existent explanations, I wonder if we couldn't all be adding to these
via a web-based (IB?) database, as we find and solve various
problems. This could relieve some of the pressure on the main
responders to this list, provide a single(?) point of reference for
many IBO queries, as well as let the rest of us feel we were able to
contribute in some small way. Is this possible? (It's beyond me, I
might add :-) )

I've convinced myself that it's more important to be able to find the
right answer quickly, than to try and remember it all, especially
given my rapidly reducing neuron count.

Hoping to learn how the better organised amongst us function,
Cheers,
Steve Beames