effective ways to use the documentation (get help)

[Szabolcs Horvát]

Hello,

I'm new to Sage and I am still struggling with finding what I need in the documentation. I'm writing because maybe I'm not approaching this the right way, and I'm looking for advice. I am using the notebook interface.

I can evaluate "something?" in the notebook to get some help, but this is usually very brief and more useful as a reminder than learning something new.

Is there a way to go directly to the documentation page of a certain function, from within the notebook? Coming from Mathematica I was used to just pressing F1 over any functions to get the documentation page (the short usage messages also have links to detailed documentation in Mathematica).

Is there a way to search the documentation? Clicking "help" in the notebook brings it up but there's no search box! What would I go if I wanted to find help, say, on Primes() ? Is there anything better than going to the reference manual, opening the full index, then trying to search in the page until the right result comes up? (This takes many clicks and a lot of tedious searching.)

Szabolcs

[John H Palmieri]

On Wednesday, April 2, 2014 1:41:06 PM UTC-7, Szabolcs Horvát wrote:

Hello,

I'm new to Sage and I am still struggling with finding what I need in the documentation.  I'm writing because maybe I'm not approaching this the right way, and I'm looking for advice.  I am using the notebook interface.  

I can evaluate "something?" in the notebook to get some help, but this is usually very brief and more useful as a reminder than learning something new.

The documentation you get this way is the full documentation for "something". How much is there depends on how well documented that particular function or method is. You can evaluate "browse_sage_doc(something)" and it will open up the same page, but in a different window.

Is there a way to go directly to the documentation page of a certain function, from within the notebook?  Coming from Mathematica I was used to just pressing F1 over any functions to get the documentation page (the short usage messages also have links to detailed documentation in Mathematica).

Is there a way to search the documentation?  Clicking "help" in the notebook brings it up but there's no search box!  What would I go if I wanted to find help, say, on Primes() ?  Is there anything better than going to the reference manual, opening the full index, then trying to search in the page until the right result comes up? (This takes many clicks and a lot of tedious searching.)

This certainly could be better. After you click "help", the best thing I could find was to click "Fast static versions of the documentation". Then click "Reference Manual". Now there will be a search box which will return helpful results. From within Sage, you can also evaluate "search_src('string')" or "search_doc('string')" to search the source code or the documentation for 'string'. If you do these in the notebook, they will give a list of links.

--
John

[Szabolcs Horvát]

On Thursday, 3 April 2014 13:48:39 UTC-4, John H Palmieri wrote:

On Wednesday, April 2, 2014 1:41:06 PM UTC-7, Szabolcs Horvát wrote:

Hello,

I'm new to Sage and I am still struggling with finding what I need in the documentation.  I'm writing because maybe I'm not approaching this the right way, and I'm looking for advice.  I am using the notebook interface.  

I can evaluate "something?" in the notebook to get some help, but this is usually very brief and more useful as a reminder than learning something new.

The documentation you get this way is the full documentation for "something". How much is there depends on how well documented that particular function or method is. You can evaluate "browse_sage_doc(something)" and it will open up the same page, but in a different window.

Thank you for the response John.  This gives the same as "something?", right?  Is there anything that would take me directly to:

http://www.sagemath.org/doc/reference/structure/sage/sets/primes.html

if I search for "Primes"?  That page has a better overview as it also has documentation for the methods right there on the same page.

 

Is there a way to go directly to the documentation page of a certain function, from within the notebook?  Coming from Mathematica I was used to just pressing F1 over any functions to get the documentation page (the short usage messages also have links to detailed documentation in Mathematica).

Is there a way to search the documentation?  Clicking "help" in the notebook brings it up but there's no search box!  What would I go if I wanted to find help, say, on Primes() ?  Is there anything better than going to the reference manual, opening the full index, then trying to search in the page until the right result comes up? (This takes many clicks and a lot of tedious searching.)

This certainly could be better. After you click "help", the best thing I could find was to click "Fast static versions of the documentation". Then click "Reference Manual". Now there will be a search box which will return helpful results.

Thank you, this works.  In the meantime I figured out that the online documentation also has a search box.

Why is that if I click help, then "reference manual" on the top, then the search box will be missing?  Otherwise the page looks the same.

 

From within Sage, you can also evaluate "search_src('string')" or "search_doc('string')" to search the source code or the documentation for 'string'. If you do these in the notebook, they will give a list of links.

This is helpful too.  Yes, I always use the notebook.  Is this the typical way people use Sage?

 

--
John