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Re: RE: Re: Mathematica Documentation

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg38280] Re: [mg38216] RE: [mg38160] Re: Mathematica Documentation
  • From: George Woodrow III <georgevw3 at mac.com>
  • Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 04:17:38 -0500 (EST)
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

I wish all software had the same level and quality of documentation 
that Mathematica does. The stuff that Microsoft includes for the Office 
apps is a joke -- especially considering what the documentation for the 
older versions used to be. Mathematica is the only major program I know 
where the amount of documentation increases with each new version.

More than many technical programs, Mathematica has a different 
'mindset', which can take some getting used to, especially if your mind 
works differently.

Whenever I get a new version of Mathematica, I always read the entire 
book -- even the parts that I do not understand. I find that this makes 
tasks like guessing the correct thing to type in the help system much 
easier.

George

On Thursday, December 5, 2002, at 03:31  am, David Park wrote:

> Dave,
>
> I disagree. I think that Mathematica has very good documentation and 
> that is
> one of its strong points. All of the principal commands have 
> individual Help
> pages and also their individual usage messages. It is easy to get to 
> them.
> The book index and master index are very long.
>
> One of the best features is that the user can write his own 
> documentation
> for his own packages and completely integrate it with the standard
> documentation.
>
> Yes, the documentation is not completely perfect - but this is a 
> massive
> piece of software. As with any program it does take new users a little 
> while
> to find their way around.
>
> My experience is that Mathematica has the best documentation of any 
> program
> I have used (mainly things like Word and Excel).
>
> David Park
> djmp at earthlink.net
> http://home.earthlink.net/~djmp/
>
> From: DGolber [mailto:dgolber at aol.com]
To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
> To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
>
>>
>>> Have an entry under "Graphics Primitives"
>>> Have an entry under "Primitives"
>>> Have an entry under "Graphics Directives"
>>> Have an entry under "Directives"
>>
>> ............
>>
>> Dave,
>>
>> I almost always use the on line Help Browser
>>
>> Set the category to Master Index and these are found.
>>
>> The first three are in the printed book's index,
>>
>> --
>> Allan
>>
> I type "primitives" in the Master Index and get section 2.9.1, which 
> does
> not
> have a list of all the primitives.  Yes, of course I found it sooner or
> later.
> But that's not a good index.
>
> All I can say is that, when someone asks me about Mathematica, I'll 
> say it
> is
> hard to use for many reasons, and one of them is the poor 
> documentation.
>
> Dave Golber
>
>



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