Re: Mathematica Documentation
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg38354] Re: Mathematica Documentation
- From: stevebg at adelphia.net (stevebg)
- Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 01:37:52 -0500 (EST)
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
> DGolber wrote:
> >
> > So today I'm doing some graphics. Oh: there are _options_ and _directives_.
> >
> > So I try to find out what are all the graphics primatives?
> >
> > When you look in the index of the 1500 page book, or type "Graphics Primatives"
> > in the on-line Help, you don't find it. You have to look under Graphics or
> > Graphics3D. In the book, it's in the appendix.
> >
> > And the entry in the appendix is not quite complete:
> >
> > It says "Graphics[primatives, options] represents a two-dimensional graphical
> > image".
> >
> > It should say "returns a graphis object" The reason is that the appendix is
> > the place for the complete and formal description of the functions and all
> > their arguments and returns. No longer the place for chatty-teachy.
> > ("represents" is chatty-teachy)
> >
> > To understand the system, I need to be able to trace the sequence
> >
> > Line[...] is a graphics _primative_
> >
> > Graphics[ ... graphics primatives ....] is a graphics _object_
> >
> > Show [... graphics object...] puts a picture on the screen.
> >
> > I don't know if this sounds dumb on my part, but I do know that I have just
> > wasted a bunch of time on this, and that having to go back and forth just to
> > find out the type of the return of a function (to use old fashioned
> > nomenclature) .... which people knew thirty years ago was part of documenting a
> > system .... seems pretty dumb on the part of Mathematica.
> >
> > Dave Golber
GRAY:
Here again I agree. All the different kinds of graphic-related
entities are quite confusing. The only way I cope is to copy a working
graphic sequence and change it bit by bit until it does what I want. This
usually works but is very slow. I have wasted hours on this. I expect
better from documentation of an expensive professional product.
Another thing that bothers me is that the error messages tell me
nowhere near enough to help find the error easily. And so far as I know
most of these messages are not documented anywhere. There are about 12
entries under "error" in the book but there should be a place where you
can just look up anything that appears in the microscopic blue print.