Re: defined and functions

[Hans-Bernhard B. <br...@ph...>]

On Sat, 24 Apr 2004, Petr Mikulik wrote:

> Could someone review help (in gnuplot.doc) for "defined", "function",
> "variable"?
> 
> I searched "what's the name of the function returning 0/1 if given variable
> exists".
> 
> "help variable" -- it does not mention existence of such function
> 
> "help defined" -- goes to "help palette defined" ... but actually
>   "help pal defined" itself cannot be called like that

	help palette defined

works, though.  Abbreviation doesn't work for sub-node queries, I think.
At least not in all our online-help systems.

> "help function" is quite different from "help data" -- I would expect "help
> fun" to go to "help functions" which lists functions, not "help style func"

The way gnuplot online help is organized, things like this are bound to
happen, esp. as doc authors write "?" line carelessly.

The basic problem is that people want to type 'help foo' when the node
they actually want to see is correctly called 'help commands set foo'.

Requiring not just incomplete, but also *abbreviated* searches to always
yield the expected result is futile.  That just can't work.  In the case
of 'help fun', there are at at least three nodes eligible for display,
given here with their "full" names:

gnuplot expressions functions
commands show functions
commands set function style     # deprecated syntax for 'set style function'

-- 
Hans-Bernhard Broeker (br...@ph...)
Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.