Mathematica Documentation
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg37999] Mathematica Documentation
- From: dgolber at aol.com (DGolber)
- Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 01:56:36 -0500 (EST)
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
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