MaplePrimes - answers and comments on Question, Using Help with more than one search word (search phrase)

Perhaps this...

lemelinm — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 05:35:24 Z

In the help browser, you cannot search a topic with two or more words. You can do a text search but the quantity of results are too big to be helpfull, even if you choose Resources: Help pages only. But if you search for topic the word date, you will find in the result :

StringTools[FormatTime] - return a string containing a formatted date or time

So you are not missing something. I think that Maplesoft should do some work on this aspect of Maple.

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Mario Lemelin

Maple 14.01 Win 7 -  64 bits
Maple 14.01 Ubuntu 10,10 - 64 bits
messagerie : mario.lemelin@cgocable.ca
téléphone :  (819) 376-0987

Online Help

pagan — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 09:57:53 Z

The top two hits using the Maple program's own Help (Text search, not Topic) in my Maple 14 are

StringTools,ParseTime
StringTools,FormatTime

which looks pretty good. Having pages and pages of hits is not bad in itself, as long as the top hits are relevant and the process doesn't take too long. Unfortunately, such a Text search does take too long even on a fast machine, using Maple's own Help. It ought to be much faster.

An often faster alternative is to use the Online Help, on the web. That is usually speedy, and allows for multiple keywords without having to toggle between Topic and Text (as in Maple's own Help Search). Unfortunately such a search for date format brings up some Finance toolbox hits amongst the top half dozen. This aspect is less useful for the majority of people, who wouldn't have that toolbox installed. And apparently toolbox specific results cannot be turned off in the query.

Thanks Mario and pagan2722 for the rpelies.

Ninetrees — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 18:24:10 Z

Thanks Mario and pagan2722 for the replies. Of course, it is always awkward being the new guy and not knowing all this stuff. Maple (and other products like it) are so large that it takes some time just to get to a useful level of competency. I have bookmarked the online Help, and have already used it several times. I started out w M12 and moved to M13, then M14. I really didn't use the earlier versions very much because I considered them clunky. Maple seems to be a mixture of /really// advanced features AND some primitive and awkward ways of using that power. I am currently beta testing a non-math product w international exposure, and that company is focusing heavily on polishing the UI and how users interact w the product. Maple needs such a focus, IMO, else they would not have basic feature flaws essentially not addressed across 3 major releases.

Speaking of such items, I looked here for a spell checker and found none...?

~R~