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Re: Documentation - what is the big secret?

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  • Subject: [mg87516] Re: Documentation - what is the big secret?
  • From: David Reiss <dbreiss at gmail.com>
  • Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 06:57:02 -0400 (EDT)
  • References: <fti3v2$oho$1@smc.vnet.net> <ftkbce$b8b$1@smc.vnet.net>

I basically agree with David here.  I think that there is indeed a
style of working that corresponds to the workflow in Workbench.  And I
suspect that there are many who like to work with it.  However My
approach to Mathematica programming (and I have done a **lot** of it
over the years) is to code in notebooks and save to packages.  So it
does make sense to include documentation tools inside of Workbench as
WRI is in the process of doing.  But it is also important to have such
tools available directly in Mathematica; hence, why I am including
such tools in the next version of http://www.scientificarts.com/worklife/.

The way that I have created these has been to reverse engineer the
examples that are included with Mathematica: essentially the content
of the Documentation Center itself.   This wasn't trivial, but with
experimentation it could be figured out.  With this knowledge, while
there are many things that one can do via the text editor approach to
modifying, for example, Pacletinfo.m files, there is much that really
needs to be done programatically to create the functionality that you
see in the Documentation Center.  So it really requires the creation
of an application within Mathematica to do this.

One thing that I my do over the next week, if I can find the time, is
to write up a bit of what I have learned in the 100 hours or so that I
have devoted so far to this aspect of http://www.scientificarts.com/worklife=
/.
Perhaps that will help some folks get launched on their own at least
making simple additions to the Documentation Center.  With a cores set
of tools for Documenting within http://www.scientificarts.com/worklife/
I will then have a platform for creating a variety of other
functionalities (personalized electronic books, for example)  in
follow-on releases of http://www.scientificarts.com/worklife/.  So,
plese send me your thoughts on what you'd like to have included in
later versions.

  Frankly, the more folks who try and buy http://www.scientificarts.com/work=
life/,
the more time I can devote to this.  give it a spin!


Hope this helps,
--David
A WorkLife FrameWork
E x t e n d i n g MATHEMATICA's Reach...
Trial Version at:
http://scientificarts.com/worklife/



On Apr 11, 1:48 am, David Bailey <dave at Remove_Thisdbailey.co.uk>
wrote:
> Jens-Peer Kuska wrote:
> > Hi,
>
> > the secret is called "Wolfram Workbench 1.2" ..
>
> > Regards
> >    Jens
>
> > Linda (Lin) wrote:
> >> Given Mathematica 6 has been out for several months, why is there still=
 no
> >> information about how to write documentation for 6? I see plenty of
> >> references to this on the web, including some on this mailing list very=

> >> recently. But there seems to be no official information.
>
> >> I'm puzzled where there is so little information.
>
> >> Lin
>
> Yes, but some of us are happy developing without using the Workbench,
> and it does seem unreasonable to bundle part of the core Mathematica
> system into this product.
>
> David Baileyhttp://www.dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk



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