Re: ReleaseInfo[command_String]? -A useless dream?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg22917] Re: ReleaseInfo[command_String]? -A useless dream?
- From: Jens-Peer Kuska <kuska at informatik.uni-leipzig.de>
- Date: Thu, 6 Apr 2000 02:04:34 -0400 (EDT)
- Organization: Universitaet Leipzig
- References: <8cead2$15g@smc.vnet.net>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Hi, > > Is there a way to access to the 'release information' for each command > in Mathematica? No. > What I'd like to know is the release where the command first appeared > and the releases where it was modified or suppressed. Better yet would > be to access to more detailed information about the changes it has > undergone > (such as the old and the new syntax and the old and new I/O parameters) > Looking up the book each time one has a hunch that the command might > have been changed usually results (I talk for myself) in not looking at > all. Mathematica is more than 10 years old ! Some people that wrote the first version ( Jerry Keiper) are dead, and over 10 years I expect that some kernel developer are not working for WRI. More over it is common in Mathematica, that obsolente functions are removed form the documentation (like Literal[]) but left in the Kernel for backward compatibility. > > It is not difficult to write a simple routine that will show the > information (at least I think so) but the problem resides in where to > find the data, without having to buy all of the four MathBooks and > typing command after command the 'what's new' part. > AFAYK, is this data already available in electronic - a table I mean - > format? > Must be far from small... > > Besides, am I the only one to think that such information would be > useful? Yes. Because I can't see how to benefit from the knowlege that some function is replaced by an better one or a certain option droped from a function. I think such information will create a information overkill for functions and options that are forgotten since 6 years. > To write more robust packages that run on different versions and to > adapt packages that come from different versions are not tasks strictly > for developers. I have several packages since version 1.2 and I have found only minor differences that can be fixed easy. The N[0] change in version 3.0 - 4.0 have created the most problems. Allmost all other problems come form some undocumented functions I had used :-) > Common people can access two different version of Mathematica at the university, > or at work and at home, and it is common to download packages from the > net which may be written in a version different from one's own. > Not to mention uploading packages to the Mathsource. Mathematica share not the version numbering of Microsoft ! so you have only to look for $VersionNumber==3 or 4 and make some changes. I the most cases this are changes to improve the performance and switch to an new (faster) buld-in command. Regards Jens