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<TITLE>T E X T F I L E S</TITLE>
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<H1>Piracy Textfiles: Soft Documentation</H1>
<P>
Why many software programs are self-evident or contain help sections
within the program itself, many others are complicated enough that the use
of them is not self-evident. To counter this, piracy groups would transcribe
the manual of the program so that anyone who got a copy of the program
would know how to use it. In this say, Software-Based Documentation was born.
It was shortened in name to "Soft Documentation" and then "Soft Docs", and
even "dox" in some cases.
<P>
An interesting side-effect of this process, which was pretty tedious by
any standard, was that the writer/transcriber would include a lot of 
interesting side-comments about the program, or the BBS world as they saw
it, or any amount of gossip/opinion they could fit in.
<P>
This is not the only section with Soft Documentation; there is a very large
collection of Apple II-Based Documentation in the
<A HREF="/apple">Apple II</A> section. 
<P>
<TABLE WIDTH=100%>
<TD BGCOLOR=#00FF00><FONT COLOR=#000000><B>Filename</B><BR></FONT></TD>
<TD BGCOLOR=#00DD00><FONT COLOR=#000000><B>Size</B><BR></FONT></TD>
<TD BGCOLOR=#00AA00><FONT COLOR=#000000><B>Description of the Textfile</B><BR></TD></TR>

