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Re: Introducing the Wolfram Mathematica Tutorial Collection

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg99730] Re: Introducing the Wolfram Mathematica Tutorial Collection
• From: AES <siegman at stanford.edu>
• Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 03:10:38 -0400 (EDT)
• Organization: Stanford University
• References: <gu3aub$t$1@smc.vnet.net> <gu8uj7$6v0$1@smc.vnet.net>

> On May 9, 1:21 am, Bill Rowe <readn... at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> > In fact, on the Mac, I cannot see any benefit to PDF
> > documentation over the existing online documentation.

and (if I'm kept the threads straight) Bill F replied

> You can set your own Bookmarks, you can add notes, you can search for
> a string and see all the occurances at once and then click on any one
> of them to go to a specific spot in the document, you could even merge
> your own notes into the document by inserting pages from one PDF to
> another and the resulting document would be a whole lot more useful to
> your specific needs. I would wager there are more...
> 
> 
> So, can you do any of that with the DC interface - NOPE. Are these of
> benefit? For some yes, and some no.

And Bill F is exactly right -- and there are more such benefits.

PDF is a long-standing, stable, high-quality open standard that was 
designed for "documentation" (online and printed); is near universally 
used for it (in myriad ways); and is very good at it.  Mathematica isn't.