Re: what's new in 8.0.1?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg117259] Re: what's new in 8.0.1?
- From: Murray Eisenberg <murray at math.umass.edu>
- Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2011 05:25:47 -0500 (EST)
I disagree: Before a new release, all the input cells in the doc pages should be evaluated to be sure at least that they produce actual output and not errors. On 3/12/2011 5:08 AM, Bill Rowe wrote: > On 3/11/11 at 4:35 AM, mike.honeychurch at gmail.com (Armand Tamzarian) > wrote: > >> 1. re: bug. Evaluating user documentation before a release ought to be >> part of the pre-release screening. Bugs that show up when evaluating >> user documentation are, by definition, bugs that are readily >> detectable. Allowing these through creates perceptions of carelessness >> and poor quality assurance. > > How easily an issue in user documentation is found clearly > depends on the size of the documentation. For Mathematica > version 4 (when the documentation was still be distributed as > hard copy), the documentation was a 1470 page hard bound volume > with an additional 535 page soft cover volume. For Mathematica > 8, if the documentation were printed, it would likely be 15-20 > volumes of the size of the hard bound volume that came with > version 4. It is unrealistic to expect that much documentation > to be error free. Nor is it accurate to say errors in that much > documentation are "readily detectable". > > -- Murray Eisenberg murray at math.umass.edu Mathematics & Statistics Dept. Lederle Graduate Research Tower phone 413 549-1020 (H) University of Massachusetts 413 545-2859 (W) 710 North Pleasant Street fax 413 545-1801 Amherst, MA 01003-9305