>>>>> "Harald" == Harald Geyer <Harald.Geyer at gmx.at> writes:
Harald> Hi!
>> If somebody is looking for a mostly non-mathematical project,
>> one possibility is to improve 'describe.' What I'm thinking
>> about is something like:
Harald> I wonder, whether anybody is still using 'describe' and why... It
Harald> seems to have some major disadvantages:
Harald> It is old fashioned and user unfriendly - you observed this yourself.
Harald> Its output tears the current session apart.
I use describe in exactly this way. Maybe because I'm
old-fashioned. :-) But mostly because I just run maxima in shell
buffer in xemacs. I never really liked xmaxima or any of the GUI
things because the editing part was not emacs-style key commands.
Harald> In short my point is: There are lots of help systems out there,
Harald> with different aims and for various environments. Why reinvent the
Harald> wheel instead of using one - or some - of them. If we are
Harald> unsatisfied with what they provide we could still contribute to them.
Harald> Actually this would be both: easier and more valuable than improving
Harald> 'describe'.
I don't really care what happens to describe or the other help systems
as long as there is one and only one place to edit the help
information. I don't care how describe gets the information, as long
it produces something similar to what it does now. Actually, I could
live with a different describe, but I think the help system
information must be in exactly one place. We should never have to
keep two or more copies of the documentation in sync. (Translations,
however, are different.)
Ray