Re: Woctave-another gui front end

[Stephen Montgomery-Smith]

On 12/20/12 07:36, Nicholas Jankowski wrote:

> Many systems will have the entry prompt or MOTD say 'type help for a
> list of basic commands'.  From there, a list appears and the user can
> use those visual cues to start fumbling around. A GUI takes advantage of
> a modern user's built in tendency to 'click around' for what looks
> right. It takes advantage of the parallel processing nature of visual
> learning, with a minimum of prior knowledge required. In Octave, if you
> intuitively type HELP, you are informed that you can get help with
> individual commands by typing 'help NAME'.  but what if I don't know the
> name? I might find it in a GUI list of commands, or list of help topics,
> but now I just have the blinking cursor.
> help integrate -->  'integrate not found'.
> help quad --> Numerically evaluate the integral...
>
> how would a user intuitively know the name of one numerical integration
> function is quad... he wouldn't. now, the 'see also, at the bottom of
> many helps is immeasurably useful. it provides visual cues in a parallel
> format for further exploration. user knowledge of how to overcome the
> initial CLI progress barrier can't be assumed since the DOS prompt
> disappeared under XP.  how do you get them started...


I tell people to use "google."  It is actually rather easy to have an 
octave window and a browser window open at the same time.  And google is 
really good at intelligent searching, even correcting your spelling 
mistakes.  You can type "matlab integrate" or "octave integrate" and 
read whichever documentation you think is better.  (In this case I 
personally preferred the octave documentation.)

I think google is so good that even when I am using commercial software 
like Mathematica, I use google instead of the Help facility that comes 
with the program.  You get the same information, but the google/browser 
interface is better IMO.

Stephen