[Octave-patch-tracker] [patch #8988] Adding to index.html of manual, installation/loading commands

[Carnë Draug]

Follow-up Comment #20, patch #8988 (project octave):

Fernando Pujaico Rivera <trucomanx> said on comment #17:
< [...]
>  And statistics work the same way for me, but bsltl not. 
> [..]

Yes, this only works for functions that exist in Mathworks toolboxes. For
example, it will "fail" for fftconvn, a function from the Octave image
package, because it is not on the Mathworks image toolbox. This is why I said
"I'll guess that new users are more likely to be faced with this issue [...]
when dealing with functions from one of the Matlab toolboxes".

Fernando Pujaico Rivera <trucomanx> said on comment #18:
> [...]
> I think that to install and load is a simple job, for people that know that
the commands exist,
> but to people that only found a library by your characteristics, and is
through of this search that begin in octave, I know that is a great help.
> [...]

Which is why I said "this boils down to: who's the target audience for the
index page of a package?". The audience you are targeting, people that "found
a library by your characteristics, and is through of this search that begin in
octave" is not the target. The target audience are Octave users that are
looking for a package that does something specific. In that case, this page
should describe briefly what the package does, and a link for further
documentation (which may include install and load instructions).

If the target audience is someone that has never used Octave before, and
you're assuming that someone will start to use Octave because of the package
index page, there are a lot of other things that will need to be explained.

---

Just my opinion. I think Julien is right that if Octave users are having
trouble installing and loading packages, then we need to fix that other
documentation and making it much easier to find.

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