max,

> I am having a hard time learning the .NET CL because the online help, MSDN
> is the best example of bloatware that I have ever come across.


MS has never been very good on documentation. I remember when they brought
out far strings with PDS 7.0, none of the samples on how to call assembler
worked. Not only did they not work, the whole philosophy was wrong. I took
me a couple of weeks to figure it out on my own.

Now I'm trying to get up to speed with XML and the documentation is
absolutely diabolical. Its as though they through bits and pieces of a giant
puzzle at you and you have to spend hours and hours trying to figure how
they all fit together.

Gary