Re: Octave Function Reference Manual?

[Søren Hauberg]

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.
  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?

Søren