Some time ago, I described Windows 3.0’s WinHelp as “a program for browsing online help files.” But Windows 3.0 predated the Internet, and these help files were available even if the computer was not connected to any other network. How can it be “online”?
The term “online” originally meant “immediately available on a computer”. For example, if you are working on a system with hierarchical storage, the “online” files are the ones that are accessible right now, and the “offline” files are the ones that have been archived to tape and will take some time to retrieve and make online.
The term “online help” refers to the fact that the help files are readily available on your computer. You don’t have to go dig through your shelves looking for a manual.
Back in the day, a computer that was accessible via a network or some other remote connection was generally called “up” rather than “online”. Officially, “up” referred to whether the computer was running at all, but since these types of computers (mainframes or timesharing systems) had as their sole purpose to be connected to by other computers, being “up” was useless if they weren’t also open to connections.
It does mean that we have the somewhat paradoxical terminology that online help is available offline.
But it’s not really a paradox because the terms “online” and “offline” are referring to different things. In the phrase “online help”, it’s referring to the help. The help files are online (readily accessible via computer). But “available offline” is referring to your computer (can connect to other computers).
Your computer is offline (relative to other computers). The help is online (relative to your computer).
Bonus chatter: Of course, now that many systems have migrated the help files themselves to Web sites, you now have online help that is not available when offline.
But is it really the case that Windows 3.0 “predated the internet”? It definitely predated the worldwide web, but the Internet is usually considered older. (I looked into it too work out whether I was entitled to wear an “I am older than the Internet” pin that someone gave me. Sadly, I probably am, at least if you go by the adoption of the TCP/IP protocol, on January 1, 1983.) That said, it doesn’t change the fact that “online” would have been understood very differently in the Windows 3.0 era.
@Dave Gzorple What you miss then is the amazing slideshow-style user experience when trying to write some code. In newer versions this feature has grown into a real masterpiece.
And then there’s the “online” button on an ASR-33 TeleType, which is kind of somewhere in the middle depending on where the other end of the connection is. If it’s the PDP-11 across the room, it’s “online” in the old sense. If it’s a computer halfway across the country feeding you up-to-the-minute updates on the state of the world, it’s “online” in the newer sense.
You can still see this now when you install VC++ 6.0, it asks if you want to also install the MSDN online help and if so to insert the appropriate CD.
Forestalling the inevitable questions, VC++ loads, builds the project, and has it ready to run in less time than it takes VS 2022 just to load, and that’s not counting the 4GB update it wants to install once loaded. It’s a great fast dev environment, and then you use VS 2022 for the final build and run.
Fellow VC 6 user here. But actually, I prefer using it for the final build because hello world, and even useful apps are just 16k (dynamically linked to DLLS preinstalled since winxp era). I do miss some of the refactoring functions that VC6 predates, for that I use VScode.
Have you managed to get it to run the compiled app in the debugger? There's a patch to tlloc.dll to get it to run up to Windows 10 but it doesn't work any more under Windows 11, just reports a debug breakpoint hit as soon as you run it. ATM I'm reduced to using VC 6 as an editor and fast code checker with the awkward all-elbows debug experience that VS 2022 gives you, including years-old ignored bugs one of which is pretty critical for my work. I've been contemplating moving to VS 2008, which seems to...
Why does this post look so familiar? Like if I saw it a few months ago with exactly the same text.
Also, now your online (as in on the internet) help can go offline (get deleted or moved so the links from the app no longer work!)
Yeah, but that’s purely theoretical. That never happened to anybody ever.
dism /Online
A good exercise is to identify the meaning of online/offline in the following contexts: FILE_ATTRIBUTE_OFFLINE in file attributes (HSM, placeholder files); “available offline” and “online-only” in placeholder files; feature “Offline Files”.