Le 19/09/2018 à 15:36, antoine monmayrant a écrit :
Another one of my favorites, that highlights the fact that scilab
needs a lot of polishing (in particular in the documentation & naming)
to help new or non-specialist users:
Compare the choice of name for matlab poylval() and scilab horner().
How could I know that to evaluate a polynomial I should call horner()?
If you don't know the name in advance, trying to use the help system
for "polynomial evaluation" or similar strings is not going to help
you much¹.
As I can never remember the name of the horner() function, I always
end up opening the help system, browsing manually down to the
Polynomials page and parse the listing of the functions to find the
one mentioning "evaluate".
Arrrrgghhhhh....
This is why uman() has a redirection list:
--> uman polyval w
brings you to the horner page
and more than 200 other redirections that could be easily included in
help(), with a switch in the Preferences (to use the automatic
redirection or not).
horner() is also applicable to rationals. I am happy to use -- and have
to document and maintain -- a single same function to evaluate both
polynomials and rationals.
So, this example shows that a generic polynomials page is missing,
or/and that the polynomial tag could be added to the currently existing
most appropriated page.
Anyone is welcome to write this page, or/and to indicate which existing
one would be the best hook to polynomial features.
Samuel
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