This is probably my fault for not getting with the program (be on the internet like everybody else!) but locally ISP’s are unusually greedy, and i don’t find the net interesting anyway.
So i had to download the manual from a public terminal and install it at home later.
Only problem, it comes without assembly instructions; no ReadMe. So, pt. 1, i can’t install it within 2.8, and the Search function is disabled, deep sigh. I can live with the former, but not being able to find data without semi-randomly wandering through the manual is a major PITA.
Ideas??
Vancouver blenderoid newbie.
Hey Infinice! Welcome to the community. I’m trying to understand your question here. Are you looking to learn Blender and not able to find/use the manual or? Sorry for not understanding
I don’t know how i could put more simply. I downloaded the manual but it’s non-searchable.
What format is the manual in? Most windows programs have a built in search option shortcut key ctrl+f and it will pop open a window at the top right. Just type in what you are looking for and it will show the number of results and highlight the keywords you searched for. No internet required.
Infinice is probably referring to the Blender 2.8 manual that can be downloaded as ZIPped HTML files. It’s true that, within any given page, one could run a search or find function, but if the global manual search function is disabled it would make things difficult for him or her.
I never thought I’d say something like this, but I really recommend biting the financial bullet and buying internet access for your home, infinice. I don’t know how to sell the idea to you if you’re set against it and I don’t know what things are like in Vancouver, but to me not having internet access would be like not having access to running water or a method of transportation that I’d need to get to work and the grocery store. Also, the internet is literally the medium that my livelihood swims in - without it, my education in art and computer science would be worth very little.
You’ll have to forgive me if I’m both impressed and very puzzled by your quest to learn something like Blender with limited net access. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been awake at 1am working on something with Blender, (or any other software program), and I’ve posted a question here or at blenderartists.org and within half an hour I have an answer. Not to mention the video training courses available online, and having some way to place your videos and still images and game designs, and so on and so forth. In the end, it’s difficult for me to describe the difference it can make… it’s like describing the color blue to someone who has never had any particular need to see anything.
I wish you the best of luck. 
Your bemusement as to my reluctance to pay $100 a month for the privilege of getting an answer hours sooner is quite besides the point.
The point is the Blender documentation team’s ineptness in adding a Search function that doesn’t work.
In a way, Blender reminds me of Linux. Talk to a linuxer and invariably will come the brag that if you have a problem there are oceans of help for it. Yeah right- the catch is that it’s of erratic quality, disorganized/scattered, and distro-centric (not on Ubuntu? sorry). But i guess that’s better left unsaid. (I certainly recognize that i’m looking a gift horse in the mouth here. Still, it’s a rarely admitted gotcha.)
Thanks for trying to help!
PS: Speaking of gaps- i’m sad to find there’s no clean-screen feature for Blender. I’m easily distracted by all those icons and would appreciate even just a viewport background dimmer.
Ok, I just had to download the offline manual to see this for myself, and all is working fine, even the search function is working perfectly. Perhaps redownloading it again would fix it. Check the filesize (119,981KB) Like you infinice, I too used to have limited internet connectivity before. So I download files from an internet cafe as ISP providers charge too much.
In addition to complaints to other blender users about things that don’t seem to work or could possibly be made better there is a site for users to post such stuff. That is where bug submissions better use of features lack of a feature and so on get reported and voted on if it should be implemented in an update/daily build. Here is the link https://blender.community/c/rightclickselect/ please keep in mind that In 2015, the International Telecommunication Union estimated about 3.2 billion people, or almost half of the world’s population, would be online by the end of the year. But I digress and hope you can get to using and understanding blender through the manual.
I was able to download the ZIPped HTML files and see no problem with the offline reference manual search function. If you want to write again and step through your process, maybe we can assist a bit more.
If you’re looking for free supplemental training material, I recommend Blender Guru’s channel on YouTube. There are playlists within that channel that help new users to become better acquainted with the basics. These sorts of channels and playlists give you the advantage of free training without being as scattershot as a vanilla YouTube search.
Please see attached image for example of working search.
“I see no problem with the offline reference manual search function.” I don’t know what to say. When i plug any search time into my copy i get nada. I will try re-downloading it, tho that doesn’t sound promising (quite a selective bug don’t you think?!).
Follow-up: after re-downloading/re-installing manual, my new copies Search now works. But about half the search returns lack images!
I ran tweaking-com’s repair utility and even upgrade installed Windows 7, and i’m not having any other glitches. Just this wonky manual problem. So it sounds like it’s the manual, not a one-off/my-system-only problem. But nobody else seems to have such manual problems, so…???
I’m not going to get too far exploring 2.8 at this rate.
Infinice in vancouver
Why are computers like the old testament God? Lots of rules and very unforgiving!
