RE: [Axiom-developer] Documentation and HyperDoc Future

[Bill Page]

> > Fabio S. writes:
> > > Anyway, I must say that I never liked the Hyperdoc (moreover,
> > > it crashes quite often).
> >
> Bill Page wrote:
> > Again, I agree. I also do not use Hyperdoc very much. My 
> > experience is also that it often crashes, although I am
> > not yet able to document a specific sequence which causes
> > a crash. 
>

On January 22, 2006 11:51 AM Martin Rubey wrote:
> 
> That's very strange. I use hyperdoc extensively (really), and 
> I did not see it crash *once* yet -- provided I did not press
> the forbidden buttons like "dependents, "users", "uses" and
> maybe a few others.

Are you making a joke? What do you mean by "forbidden buttons"?

> 
> > If we could report and reproduce such bugs, then it 
> > should not be difficult to correct the problems.

Can you document some specific sequences that cause Hyperdoc to
crash? If so, I think it would be very useful.

> > But even then, I do not much care for the "look" of the
> > user interface. 
> 
> Well, I don't *mind* the look of the user interface, but,
> as you probably know by now, I've been shouting for a long
> time: replace HyperDoc, AxiomUI, MathAction by a single
> facility.

Usually shouting is not very effective in open source
projects. :)

> 
> I must say that I find it a little sad that -- although the 
> above proposal is certainly doable within a few weeks, maybe
> months time -- nobody has found time to help Ralf (whose
> ALPROSE is certainly the way to go).

Your point of view seems quite unreasonable to me. How much
time have you devoted to this concept (not counting the
shouting ;)? I also would like to see more people working on
Axiom development but I think we have to lead by setting an
example, not just by making suggestions. I personally doubt
that it is "doable within a few weeks", but if you think so
then perhaps you could help by creating a prototype to show
how it might work.

How can ALPROSE be used to do this? What about navigation?
What about access to the Axiom database? What about conversion
of the existing Hyperdoc material?

> 
> > There have been much discussion and some programming work 
> > to replace Hyperdoc with a modern web browser interface,
> > but so far we do not have a good replacement for Hyperdoc.
> 
> > I can also add that with modern dvi viewers which allow 
> > searching, I prefer to look directly into book.dvi. 
> 
> But hyperdoc can do A LOT more than that. Did you ever press 
> the button "Domains"? Far from most of the domains are covered
> in the Axiom Book!
> 

Perhaps that is a criticism more appropriate to the Axiom
Book, then to the choice of user interface?

Regards,
Bill Page.