Re: Octave Function Reference Manual?

[David Bateman]

Søren Hauberg wrote:
> David Bateman skrev:
>> One thing I don't like about the current octave manual is that I don't
>> believe that it is in fact a manual but rather a collection of the help
>> strings and in many ways is closer to a reference manual. So why not
>> have a real reference manual and rewrite the manual itself to go beyond
>> the scope of what the reference manual itself gives.
> I agree that the manual is closer to a reference manual than a manual.
> I think it makes sense to remove the "reference manual" part of the
> manual from the manual and write a "real" (whatever that is) manual.
> However, I see two problems:
>   1) Does anybody actually want a reference manual. I had a look
> through it, and while it seems to be nice, I also found it a bit
> useless. It's very slow to find the function you are looking for
> compared to just typing "help function_name".  If the reference manual
> would help me find a function name that I can't remember (or don't
> know) then I see how it would be useful, but the current version
> doesn't do that. I'd prefer to use the HTML reference manual that's on
> the octave-forge beta-site any day.
Some people like books and others websites. So I believe there is
probably still room for a reference manual of this form. The same
functional as on the website might be supplied with appropriate
cross-referencing in the texinfo file and therefore the PDF might have
navigation that makes it about as useful as the website.

>   2) Somebody actually has to write the "real" manual. I think I've
> suggested this before, but wouldn't it be easier to write tutorials
> for specific parts of octave instead of having a manual?
There are some chapters (especially the early ones) that are ok and
source material (del segno, etc) that might make writing the manual
easier. There are also octave/matlab tutorials already on the web that
might be useful

http://www-mdp.eng.cam.ac.uk/CD/engapps/octave/octavetut.pdf

and I'm sure there are lots of others around... I suppose the first
thing to do if split between manual and reference is made is a table of
contents for the manual to more fully understand what parts of the
manual are missing or don't have any source material..

Regards
David

>
> Søren
>


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