default help text

[John W. Eaton]

On 10-Feb-2009, Søren Hauberg wrote:

| tir, 10 02 2009 kl. 17:16 -0500, skrev John W. Eaton:
| 
| >   * I noticed that help function now prints a list of all functions
| >     together instead of grouping them by directory.  Is that
| >     intentional?  I thought the previous output format was more
| >     helpful.  What do others think?
| 
| Hmm, I thought I actually fixed that, but apparently I didn't.
| Personally, I would actually prefer neither of the two options. I think
| just typing 'help' provides waay too much output. I think it would be
| better to simply print something like (very much written off the top of
| my head):
| 
|   This is the GNU Octave prompt.
| 
|   To run a script saved in the file 'myscript.m', type
| 
|     myscript
| 
|   and press ENTER.
| 
|   To get help with individual commands and functions type
| 
|     help name
| 
|   where you should replace 'name' with the name of the command or
|   function you would like to learn more about.
| 
|   For a more detailed introduction to GNU Octave, please consult the
|   manual. To read this from the prompt type
| 
|     doc
| 
|   Enjoy GNU Octave! If you have questions, feel free to join the GNU
|   Octave community. See http://www.octave.org for details.
| 
| Or something like that.

I think this is worth changing, and your text is a good start.

Does anyone else have comments about this?

jwe