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Re: Yet another Mathematica docs whopper

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg47133] Re: Yet another Mathematica docs whopper
• From: "Steven Shippee" <slshippee at comcast.net>
• Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2004 01:34:36 -0500 (EST)
• References: <c3udt9$9pd$1@smc.vnet.net>
• Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

I'm REALLY not meaning to be a knucklhead here, but if I click on HELP in
Mathematica then click on HELP BROWSER, I get a "text box" where I can type
in a term to do a search on.

What do you all (more experienced users) mean, remembering I am a novice
user, by "it would be nice if help were searchable"?

Thanks in advance,

Steven Shippee


"J Krugman" <jkrugman at yahbitoo.com> wrote in message
news:c3udt9$9pd$1 at smc.vnet.net...
> I've posted about the poor quality of Mathematica's documentation
> before, and received several e-mails challenging my claim that this
> documentation is awash in errors and woefully incomplete.  Well,
> for those who doubt, here's the latest example I just bumped into:
>
>   In[1]:= ??AspectRatio
>   AspectRatio is an option for Show and related functions which specifies
the
>               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>      ratio of height to width for a plot.
>
>   Attributes[AspectRatio] = {Protected}
>
>   In[2]:= SetOptions[Show, AspectRatio->Automatic];
>
>   SetOptions::optnf: AspectRatio is not a known option for Show.
>                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> Faced with this sort of nonsense, what is a user to do?
>
> I am furious, because I spend an unreasonable amount of time
> resolving inadequacies like this one in the Mathematica documentation.
> Considering the exorbitant sum we paid for Mathematica, I expect
> something much better documented than this.
>
> jill
>
> -- 
> To  s&e^n]d  me  m~a}i]l  r%e*m?o\v[e  bit from my a|d)d:r{e:s]s.
>