[6286] in s-news-athena
Re: Use the electronic help facility.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Eric Kostello)
Fri Jan 27 14:22:45 1995
From: Eric Kostello <kostello@math.ucla.edu>
To: s-news@utstat.toronto.edu
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 1995 11:01:15 -0800 (PST)
In-Reply-To: <WVENABLE.95Jan27115917@attunga.stats.adelaide.edu.au> from "Bill Venables" at Jan 27, 95 01:29:15 am
Bill Venables writes:
>
> It is a general problem and the reason seems to be that no-one
> seems to be willing or able to use the online help facility.
> This is a big mystery to me, because it's a very useful gadget.
[example of use deleted]
Bill gave an example of the help facility's hierarchical search
method. It also knows all the words in the title of each function
(and data set) and you can search that way too.
> ... but I am sure if it is
> used effectively the help facility will get you there much faster
> than any hardcopy documentation (yes, *any* :-).
Agreed. Although it still helps to read the main descriptions of
all the capabilities of any software product.
> 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.
I solved this one last year: I gave everyone a special .First
function that started it for them! That gets people addicted to it
before they start to make additional directories for specific
projects. It is unclear to me whether this strategy is left or
right wing. ;-)
Eric
