[6284] in s-news-athena
Re: Use the electronic help facility.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Don MacQueen)
Fri Jan 27 13:24:42 1995
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 95 09:39:45 PST
From: macq@mairi.llnl.gov (Don MacQueen)
To: s-news@utstat.toronto.edu
An excerpt from Bill Venables:
> In every course
> I teach no matter how much I stress to my students how valuable
> it is, they still seem to head for the books first. I simply
> cannot understand people's reluctance to use the electronic help.
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Bill Venables, Department of Statistics, Tel.: +61 8 303 3026
> The University of Adelaide, Fax.: +61 8 232 5670
> South AUSTRALIA. 5005. Email: venables@stats.adelaide.edu.au
>
With respect to SPlus version 3.2 running under OpenWindows,
the reasons why I don't use SPlus online documentation are these:
1. My screen is already too cluttered. I generally have two command
shells, a text editor window, and a graphics window open. There isn't
really enough room left over to use online help without covering
up something else I also need to look at at the same time. I don't
like having to continually move windows around to uncover something
I need to see.
2. Flipping back and forth between reference pages for several
different functions is less convenient. Attempting to look at
more than one function on the screen exacerbates problem #1.
One can't put a page marker to help quickly get to frequently
used functions.
3. The windows for individual functions come up too small.
Admittedly, this can be changed in the X11 resources, but not all
users have the time or experience necessary to delve into
X11 resource tweaking.
4. The help windows do not respond to the Page Up and Page Down keys
on my keyboard.
5. I spend too much time looking at my monitor as it is; it is not
good for my eyesight.
6. Last, and most important, quitting the help window for an individual
function also causes the main help window to quit. This, I think, is
a bug. Even with all my other objections, I would probably use
online help in Splus, except for this one problem.
I do agree with Bill, that the way in which the main help window is
organized is useful and effective.
-Don
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Donald H. MacQueen macq@llnl.gov
Lawrence Livermore National Lab
7000 East Ave., L-629 (510) 423-1062
Livermore, CA 94550 fax (510) 422-2748
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