Re: Impressions of Mathematica 6


Nasser Abbasi írta:

I hate the new Mathematica help system. It is just links after links. One
needs to keep clicking on links, and then go back again. As if one is inside
a browser not a help system.

I don't have version 6, but I browsed the online docs a lot. I can't
believe that the documentation in the real program is the same as the
online docs. Now it is much more difficult to find information than in
the old Help Browser.

...
"Hello,

Thank you for the email. I understand that the Documentation Center is very
different from the help browser we've all been used to the past 19 years.
The documentation center has been completely rewritten to include new
technology and new features, and there is not a way to have Mathematica 6..0
use the old help browser to view Mathematica 6 documentation. It may take
some time to get used to, but it is actually now much more powerful than the
help browser used to be.

I'm not surprised that he's saying this. This Google-style crazyness
is the new trend nowadays: Don't organize, use search instead! While
searching is useful for finding emails or for navigating rapidly
expanding wikis (where manual organizing is infeasible), I believe
that a company like WRI should take the time to index and organize the
documentation manually instead of just relying on search.

For one, the searches through the search bar now use an advanced search
engine which will actually search the content of all the documentation as
well as other sources and will give you much better results. Information is
now sorted into boxes on the homepage instead of tabs. The Documentation
Center is also now connects with Wolfram data servers to dynamically obtain
and update new content for you as well. Not to mention the documentation is
now much more expansive with many, many more useful examples.

Given some time, I'm sure you will come to appreciate the new features and
power.

Sincerely,"

1. The old documentation had a table of contents. It was logically
broken down to sections and related subsections. You always knew where
you were in the documentation (even in the online version). Searching
cannot replace this.

2. It had a Master Index, compiled by intelligent humans, and not a
computer. The Index even contained words that didn't appear in the
docs, e.g. "grep" took you to FindList. Or if you looked up Packages,
you got a detailed list of links with a brief description of the
context: e.g. "list of loaded packages: see $Packages". This is much
better than a list of links to every occurrence of the word
"Packages".

3. Those boxes on the front page look pretty, but they are much more
difficult to skim through than a well organized table of contents. The
links aren't even vertically aligned.

4. Content: Why did the Mathematica book have to go? First I thought
that it was just broken into separate "tutorials", but then I noticed
that many things are missing, e.g that nice little tutorial on how to
make a simple integrate[] function using pattern matching. Why remove
useful content? One could learn to use Mathematica by reading the
chapters of the book one by one. There are many programs which have a
"getting started guide" in their help systems, but few have an
organized and _readable_ manual. A reference manual with a listing of
all functions is necessary to have, a "fuzzy" collection of linked
together tutorials is useful, but neither can replace a good and
readable book. They just complement it.

The search feature is very nice to have, but it is not a replacement
for old ways of organizing information. Why can't we have *both*?

.

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