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RE: default help text
From: |
Hall, Benjamin |
Subject: |
RE: default help text |
Date: |
Wed, 11 Feb 2009 09:29:20 -0500 |
|-----Original Message-----
|From: John W. Eaton [mailto:address@hidden
|Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 10:05 PM
|To: Søren Hauberg
|Cc: address@hidden
|Subject: default help text
|
|On 10-Feb-2009, Søren Hauberg wrote:
|
|| tir, 10 02 2009 kl. 17:16 -0500, skrev John W. Eaton:
||
|| > * I noticed that help function now prints a list of all functions
|| > together instead of grouping them by directory. Is that
|| > intentional? I thought the previous output format was more
|| > helpful. What do others think?
||
|| Hmm, I thought I actually fixed that, but apparently I didn't.
|| Personally, I would actually prefer neither of the two
|options. I think
|| just typing 'help' provides waay too much output. I think it would be
|| better to simply print something like (very much written off
|the top of
|| my head):
||
|| This is the GNU Octave prompt.
||
|| To run a script saved in the file 'myscript.m', type
||
|| myscript
||
|| and press ENTER.
||
|| To get help with individual commands and functions type
||
|| help name
||
|| where you should replace 'name' with the name of the command or
|| function you would like to learn more about.
||
|| For a more detailed introduction to GNU Octave, please consult the
|| manual. To read this from the prompt type
||
|| doc
||
|| Enjoy GNU Octave! If you have questions, feel free to join the GNU
|| Octave community. See http://www.octave.org for details.
||
|| Or something like that.
|
|I think this is worth changing, and your text is a good start.
|
|Does anyone else have comments about this?
|
|jwe
|
I like concise help text. For me, I find the PDF version of the manual the
most useful format for reading/learning new material (better than both the info
reader and html format). It would help me to have a pointer to the PDF version
of the manual also indicated in this help string (even if it means a pointer to
the web somewhere if we can't know where the PDF file ends up in different
distributions). For example
For a more detailed introduction to GNU Octave, please consult the
manual. To read this from the prompt type
doc
A PDF version of the Octave manual is distributed with Octave and
also available at http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/docs.html
Enjoy GNU Octave! ...
Of course, I realize that the PDF version of manual is *not* currently
available at the location above.
Ben
- default help text, John W. Eaton, 2009/02/10
- RE: default help text,
Hall, Benjamin <=