all-in-one guides

[catt]

hi, i have a weird question/request. i am online at the mercy of others -- wifi at school, the library, starbucks, etc, but my concentration is not the best when i'm in these places. plus i have to be careful of what shows on my screen. so i DL all the FAQs/user guides rapid-fire and go throuigh them slowly at home with a pot of coffee.

as such, it drives me NUTS when a FAQ is a series of linked pages! i get what i can, but invariably i get home and notice 15 more which i also need. and even if i DO find them all the first time around, it's a royal pain in the you-know-what doing 45 right-click "open-in-new-tab"s in a row!!

ideally, i'd like to find everything in ONE pdf or one ONE saveable html page. does such a thing not exist here?

and if it doesn't, is there any way to use a link digger (sorry, i forget the term!) to snag them all in an organized fashion? the way one uses BID to batch-save photo galleries? (a GODSEND in my case!)

anyway, i'm not singling out this site in particular. i have this problem on a lot of sites. but right now i'm trying to troubleshoot "seed" problems, and i know i'm going to be spending a lottttttttttttttt of time here going thru the documentation.

TIA!

[DreadWingKnight]

No all-in-one guide would actually give you what you are asking for.

[catt]

why not? many sites have a self-contained "user's guide" (20 pages or so/PDF), with most of the links just pointing to other sections or other pages within.

i'm not saying anyone SHOULD make such a guide; i'm just saying it would be more useful than those FAQ and Search links which will be DEAD when i need them!

oh well, i'm probably in the majority of people dependent on work/school for my access anyways. c'est la vie.

[Switeck]

uTorrent has to deal with almost every networking issue that exists -- including network attached storage drives, remote servers, firewalls, NAT routers, remote networking, IPv6, etc. Each issue to thoroughly cover could be 10+ pages each.

[catt]

I'm still not getting it. Audacity has a "manual"; eMule and Napster had "manuals", I think.

If each contingency is 10 pages, each contingency is 10 pages. What's the difference between hosting 60 individual sets of 10 pages each vs one massive 600-page PDF? Or even a plain ole ZIP of the 600 HTML pages?

Again, I'm not complaining and I'm not saying anyone SHOULD necessarily make one. If your first answer had been "What a pain" that would have been the end of it! Saying that it is somehow an odd request, however, when most other apps either come with or make available an offline manual...I just don't get it.

In any case, I'll do my best to figure things out, but a guide like Ultima is pretty much a nonstarter in my case. Again, I have two modes: OFFLINE, where I can spend hours/days figuring out how everything works, and ONLINE -- once a week -- where I boot things up in the background and power download. I cannot "surf" much during such sessions, much less DEBUG anything. A few mins to line up downloads or save key info pages...that's about it.

Any third-party/fan sites out there which might have what I'm looking for? Something like that Ultima page, but more-or-less self-contained?

Or any way to use a link-digger (again, not sure of term) to save Ultima...AND ALL CONNECTED PAGES? Like I said, BID has made all the difference in trying to look thru photo galleries....

[Firon]

you know, we have a manual in the client...

[catt]

D'OH!

A) How did I miss that?!

How did DreadWingKnight miss that?!

C) How did Switeck miss that?!

D) What's the point of those 4 links (Ultima, etc) if all that is INDEED covered in the client manual?!

Anyway, sorry for wasting everyone's time (including my own). I could have spent all this time READING that stuff, instead of rewording my QUESTION 15 different ways!

OK, then, I'll be quiet now while I go bone up...mostly offline...cya in a week or so....

And thanks again. Especially Firon.

Ciao!

[Switeck]

I did not miss that.

The manual with the program does *NOT* handle the myriad of troubleshooting conditions handled in our OTHER guides.

Nor does it have my conservative speed guide chart.

Explaining how things are does not explain *WHY* things are.

...And much of that is subject to change as the conditions change!

[catt]

ok, ok, i get that. but i'm at a point where i need Troubleshooting 101 (offline manual), not Troubleshooting 401!

once i know the difference between a node and a peer and a client and a seed and a mexican fruit fly, THEN i'll worry abt the trickier stuff! right now i'm trying to figure out basic stuff, such as: A) why do some of the things actually DLing do so in the "inactive" window, and why do i get a lot more stuff happening when my little light icon is NOT green!

(no, i don't want answers here; just an example of how dumb/basic my grasp is since everything went belly up!)

cheers

[Switeck]

An all-in-one guide would have to be like a 501 level course...and very hard to sort out the easy parts from the hard!