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Documentation Center (Mathematica Help) problem and solution

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg80348] Documentation Center (Mathematica Help) problem and solution
• From: dr DanW <dmaxwarren at gmail.com>
• Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2007 05:36:53 -0400 (EDT)

I have had a lot of problems with Documentation Center in Mathematica
6 (the local version, not the online).  If I type in a function name
that is not a literal match (ie, evaluate instead of Evaluate),
nothing would happen.  Worse, occasionally I would open the
Documentation Center and crash the kernel and front end, losing all my
work since the last save.

I was not a happy consumer.

I finally tracked down the cause and a solution.  I love the package
CleanSlate because it lets me have a clean run of my working notebook
without worrying about previously set values, and it is quicker than
quitting and restarting the kernel.  I have the statement
CleanSlate[Verbose->False]; at the start of almost every notebook I
work on.

Therein lies the problem.  CleanSlate wipes out just about every
context in the $ContextPath, including one called PacletManager`,
which apparently controls the search engine.  I have created the
following function to put in a autoloaded package (or init.m)

SafeCleanSlate[opts___?
OptionQ]:=CleanSlateExcept["PacletManager`",opts,Verbose->False]

Now I put SafeCleanSlate[]; at the top of all my notebooks, and I am
now much happier with the new help system, although I do still miss
the old one...