Re: Re: Re: Produce PDFs of Documentation
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg103288] Re: [mg103280] Re: [mg103266] Re: Produce PDFs of Documentation
- From: "A. B." <functionalcoatings at gmail.com>
- Date: Sun, 13 Sep 2009 08:01:55 -0400 (EDT)
Spotlight on Mac OS X is pretty much useless, at least the GUI version of it. All the best. > On the other hand... > > 1) PDFs are static, where notebooks are not. In the notebook version of > Help, I can type my own code and evaluate it, change WRI's code and > execute it, etc. > > 2) Mac OS X has "Spotlight", which allows me to search for all mentions of > search text in file names or contents. This search omits the Applications > directory, where WRI's documentation is stored (and a lot of other system > directories), but that's no problem... just open the Mathematica package > file, find the Documentation directory, and copy (not move) it to a user > directory. In a minute or two, the full documentation becomes searchable > in Spotlight. Searching for "Collatz" finds ten files on the disk, one of > which I wrote myself, one I got from Ilan Vardi some time ago, and eight > from the Documentation directory. Searching for "Collatz" in help yields 6 > results, omitting files Collatz.m and HandsOnTour13.nb. Both omissions are > unfortunate, since the package file immediately lets me know there IS a > Collatz package, and the hands on tour tells me that there IS a hands on > tour, and it leads me to example code for the Collatz problem. Once you've > opened a notebook, you can use Mathematica's Find to locate instances of > the text you're looking for. > > 3) I think Google Desktop will do a similar thing on Windows machines. > > Bobby > > On Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:58:04 -0500, AES <siegman at stanford.edu> wrote: > >> In article <h8d56e$13s$1 at smc.vnet.net>, Tyler <hayes.tyler at gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >>> One thing I thought was >>> to convert all of the notebooks to a PDF, then concatenate them all >>> together . . . . e.g., for all notebooks in the subdirectories under: >>> >>> /usr/share/Mathematica/Applications/Wavelets/Documentation/English >>> >>> Open the notebook in Mathematica and save each as a PDF, effectively >>> the same >>> name, new extension. >> >> <Sarcasm mode on> >> >> You mean, Wolfram doesn't do this centrally, and make the PDFs >> downloadable, for _all_ their documentation? (Essentially all >> other major and minor software vendors do this.) >> >> <Sarcasm mode off> >> >>> Does anyone have any thoughts or experience on how to do this? >> >> As for "thoughts": >> >> PDFs can be read online using apps designed for that purpose, >> (e.g., Adobe Reader, Acrobat) that have convenient "readability" >> features that make the process much more user-friendlly than >> attempting to read Mathematica notebooks on screen. >> >> And if you're attempting to switch back and forth between a >> full-screen array of windows for a Mathematica project, and a >> nearly full-screen large-type display of the PDF documentation, >> most systems will let you do this cleanly and instantly, with a >> single click. >> >> PDF documents can be _searched_, quickly and thoroughly, online, >> which often brings up info or connections that haven't been >> fully indexed, or might be missed. >> >> In fact, if you have Acrobat, a full set of PDF documents can be >> batch indexed, giving you a particularly complete and fast >> responding search capability. >> >