more gripe about the new documentation center (DC) in Mathematica 6
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg77788] more gripe about the new documentation center (DC) in Mathematica 6
- From: "Nasser Abbasi" <nma at 12000.org>
- Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2007 05:56:41 -0400 (EDT)
- Reply-to: "Nasser Abbasi" <nma at 12000.org>
1) so I start DC, and click on the "index of functions" link, near the bottom, and after a little while, I get a new screen showing all the functions listed alphabetically. Great, I said, now I can see all the functions out there in one place. I searched for the function PrincipalComponents but it is NOT listed. But if one does search for PrincipalComponents from that DC tiny search window (after erasing what was there every time), this function comes up. So why was it not lised in the index of functions output? Does this mean that the "index of functions" only lists those functions that does not exist inside packages which requires loading first? This makes this listing less effective then. 2) When I ask DC to search for something, there is no indication it is busy searching. On a slow PC, one thinks it is frozen, or may be the command did not 'go through', and tries the same search command again. There should be something spinning or some indication that the command was actually accepted and being processed. This is a UI design 101 thing. Sometimes DC takes more than 5 seconds to return a result on my old PC. 3)For whatever it is worth, I still think the 5.2 help system is MUCH better for learning and finding what is in the new system. I do not really need the DC as it is, I can just as well use Google directly, which I find myself doing more, since the same information in DC is already on WRI web pages and Google finds it just as fast. The earlier help system provided a structure to the documentation which added an exrtra dimension which DC does not provide. The people have spoken: We want the the old help system back. (WRI could always keep the new DC for those users who prefer Google style documentation). Thank you for listening. Nasser