Re: calculator help

[Nils Barth <nbarth@fas.harvard.edu>]

Thus spake George:
> On Thu, Feb 10, 2000 at 01:01:46PM -0600, Chema Celorio wrote:
> > Where can I find the file that contains the content of the help window
> > of the calculator.
> > The one that comes up after typing help.
> > 
> > I just wanted to order it and gruop it by types like : operators,
> > matrix, trig functions, etc.
> 
> It's automatically generated.  Nils was working on some sort of docbook
> version of the docs for the functions which would be far preferable.  It
> would be best to work on that.  If that gets done, then by default we can
> wire the "help" command to launch gnome-help-browser with the docbook docs.
> So if you wish to help with that talk to nils as he is our head documentation
> dude.

Yup!
If you want to dump the contents of `help' to a file, the following
works under bash (which should be your default shell in RedHat):
echo help | genius &> help.txt

However, I've already made a huge SGML table of the contents of help
(as of 0.4.5), which is doc/C/built_in_functions.sgml
Operators are at doc/C/operators.sgml

I've made a start at organizing/classifying mathematical functions;
this is in:
doc/C/math/math.sgml

This stuff is all much easier to read if you get DocBook tools and
convert the SGML to HTML, then go and edit the SGML using PSGML in
emacs. Take a look at the GNOME documentation project, especially
their handbook:
http://www.gnome.org/gdp/
http://www.gnome.org/gdp/gdp-handbook/

Note:
I decided on <refentry> for function reference pages; this is a part
of DocBook designed to document functions, so it is ideally suited for
this. Take a look in math.sgml to see how some of them have been
documented. Right now what most needs doing for functions is to just
have a <refentry> for all of them. This mostly consists of cutting and
pasting an existing <refentry> and then filling in the details for
another function.
Ideally each entry should have a description of the function,
informative examples, pictures if possible (graphs of functions,
etc.), description of internal implementation/algorithm (with
literature reference, if possible), references to related functions,
references to places in the literature to learn more about the math
involved in the functions.

Feel free to hack away at math.sgml in particular.

Oh, and for introductions (maybe we should have short bios on the
site! ;-):
I'm a 4th year undergraduate in math at Harvard, in Cambridge, MA, USA.
I'll be going to grad school in math next year (maybe at the
University of Chicago) and studying classical algebraic geometry or
algebraic topology.
I'm most familiar with mathematica (shouldn't this be m9a, not m10a?),
and while I respect its features, think that its interface and
implementation leave much to be desired.
I don't program much these days except in GEL.

-- 
  -nils