Mark,

I understand your consternation. My advice is - don't try to take everything presented literally, to do so will drive you to madness. All of the help entries and all the manuals represent the best efforts of an expert to communicate his knowledge of a given topic to those who have less knowledge of that topic.

Sometimes the communication is successful and sometimes it is less than successful. Most of the time, the reader has to decide which parts of any given communication to accept and which parts to be wary of. Of course, making these critical distinctions is very difficult for one who is low on the learning curve. Oddly enough, highly knowledgable persons often have the same problem - but for a totally different reason.

Most of us, deep down, want to believe what we read, especially what we read in technical publications. Authors are, after all "authorities" and, a technical education breeds faith in the written word. Therefore, we often go nuts trying to conform our understanding of the subject to what has been written.

Communication is not a perfect science. Just because a person knows a subject inside-out, doesn't mean that person will automatically be able to make that subject understandable to others. Remember that awful minority of really bad teachers you had to endure?

JackHughs