--- On Mon, 23/11/09, Roy Wada wrote:
> I thought about the translator thing, and this should not
> be difficult. I also see that the Stata Corp is silent on
> this issue.
Probably because the entire discussion took place over the
weekend.
> If you look at the official help files they avoid writing
> too much and use small paragraphs only. Users don't know
> this, and they cram too much, and it starts looking hideous
> This is how people get sucked into putting hours and hours
> of work with nothing to show for it.
My analysis would be different: StataCorp has always had the
paper manual, so the help files were just there as a quick
reference, hence the short paragraphs containing only basic
information (there are exceptsions, see for example
-help classman- or -help dialog_programming-).
We could also mantain two sets of documentation, but it is
easier to maintain 1 document rather than 2. I have played
around with that two level documentation format, but I found
it too much work and too easy to get inconsitencies across
documentations. So, I will stick with using smcl help files.
-- Maarten
--------------------------
Maarten L. Buis
Institut fuer Soziologie
Universitaet Tuebingen
Wilhelmstrasse 36
72074 Tuebingen
Germany
http://www.maartenbuis.nl
--------------------------
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