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Re: Presentations Package Announcement

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg84047] Re: Presentations Package Announcement
• From: sdw <nospam.warwick at jps.net>
• Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2007 03:13:50 -0500 (EST)
• Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com
• References: <fj0ms8$ilm$1@smc.vnet.net> <29853547.1196765372088.JavaMail.root@m35> <200712051221.HAA15971@smc.vnet.net> <fj88v5$9rg$1@smc.vnet.net>

point is,  graphics and presentation construction capability had been 
considered a core strength of Mathematica for as long as I can remember,
and yet functions that many of us would consider fundamental are only found as 
add-ons with varying levels of support and extra cost.  I believe 
Wolfram should look more globally at what people are doing with 
mathematical graphics and do a much better job of reducing the 
requirements for folks to either a: reinvent the wheel or b: purchase 
extra packages.    If that means that they license Mr. Park's code and 
integrate the functionality directly, perhaps that is a good solution.

for an example of extraordinary graphics,  take a look at the following 
presentation: 

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/92

I think we all know that capability and usability are two different 
things.  I often wonder how many hours people have to spend to get the 
results they do when using Mathematica - what percentage coding, debugging, etc. 
before getting meaningful results,  especially in larger projects that 
include text and graphics, along with developing the calculation strategies. 
I wish that the measure wolfram used to include new functions was more 
usability based - designed to reduce time to construct common tasks, 
reduce keystrokes,  etc.  As a interesting measure, I wish that when 
people posted to the demomstrations project that they also included an 
honest indication of the time spent to develop / release their code.  
for a system as diverse and complex as Mathematica,  usability would seem to be 
as big a shift in focus as was reliability and security was for 
Microsoft a few years ago. 


on another note,  I am also deeply appreciative of the level on online 
support wolfram gives to this newsgroup.  The Mathematica organization is full 
of very wise and gifted people. 

• References:
  • Re: Re: Presentations Package Announcement
    • From: DrMajorBob <drmajorbob@bigfoot.com>