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...