Re: Yet another Mathematica docs whopper
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg47156] Re: Yet another Mathematica docs whopper
- From: bobhanlon at aol.com (Bob Hanlon)
- Date: Sun, 28 Mar 2004 00:07:46 -0500 (EST)
- References: <c437v8$ef1$1@smc.vnet.net>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
The search will not locate (step through) all instances of the target word just those that have been indexed. For example, a search for BesselJ will not find the use of BesselJ in the Further Examples under ListPlot. Bob Hanlon In article <c437v8$ef1$1 at smc.vnet.net>, "Steven Shippee" <slshippee at comcast.net> wrote: << 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. >><BR><BR>