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The Intel Fortran Compiler User and Reference Guide is usually pretty good, but, occasionally (probably more than occasionally) it takes me ages to find the information I'm looking for and that I know is available. For example today I wanted to see the entire list of character intrinsic routines. These are a sub-set of the full intrinsics available. I knew INDEX as a character intrinsic but found no link to the complete list in the INDEX topic. I tried CHARACTER AND INTRINSIC as a search string which revealed Categories of Intrinsic Functions. But whilst all intrinsics were listed no link was provided to the sub-set character intrinsics. I then spotted further down the list, Character Intrinsic Functions - I knew it existed, I've been there before but I can't find it easily when I've been away for a while. I've now added this topic to my list of favorites - since I now realise what favorites means in the context of a help system. It might be that I'm not using the system in the way it was designed but I feel that this system could and probably should be improved - simple addition of appropriate links would have lead me to the information I needed. It seems to me (although I'm prepared to stand corrected on this) that the help system has not really been udated for many years - I recall this sort of problem from many year's ago. I wonder what Intel's policy on the help system is ad whether it might be improved?
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We're always open to suggestions for how the documentation can be approved. As it happens, we're in the middle of discussing changing the organization of the documentation, though one of the proposals was to do away with the tables you found so useful. I already pushed back on that and I'll provide your feedback to the writers.
The basic problem is that we never know how someone is going to look for information and we try not to have too much repeated information (since if it is written twice it is probably wrong in one place...)
The section of the docs you would probably find most useful is the "A-Z Reference > Language Summary Tables" in the Language Reference. This has the lists of routines by category.
Our job is not helped by Microsoft changing the required format of the help text every couple of VS releases, often requiring new tools and a large effort to convert the documents. But we do the best we can...
The basic problem is that we never know how someone is going to look for information and we try not to have too much repeated information (since if it is written twice it is probably wrong in one place...)
The section of the docs you would probably find most useful is the "A-Z Reference > Language Summary Tables" in the Language Reference. This has the lists of routines by category.
Our job is not helped by Microsoft changing the required format of the help text every couple of VS releases, often requiring new tools and a large effort to convert the documents. But we do the best we can...
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We're always open to suggestions for how the documentation can be approved. As it happens, we're in the middle of discussing changing the organization of the documentation, though one of the proposals was to do away with the tables you found so useful. I already pushed back on that and I'll provide your feedback to the writers.
The basic problem is that we never know how someone is going to look for information and we try not to have too much repeated information (since if it is written twice it is probably wrong in one place...)
The section of the docs you would probably find most useful is the "A-Z Reference > Language Summary Tables" in the Language Reference. This has the lists of routines by category.
Our job is not helped by Microsoft changing the required format of the help text every couple of VS releases, often requiring new tools and a large effort to convert the documents. But we do the best we can...
The basic problem is that we never know how someone is going to look for information and we try not to have too much repeated information (since if it is written twice it is probably wrong in one place...)
The section of the docs you would probably find most useful is the "A-Z Reference > Language Summary Tables" in the Language Reference. This has the lists of routines by category.
Our job is not helped by Microsoft changing the required format of the help text every couple of VS releases, often requiring new tools and a large effort to convert the documents. But we do the best we can...
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Pleased to read your response Steve and thanks for pointing me to the A-Z reference. I'm beginning to write a help system for my application and I am attempting to understand and even pre-empt (although only time will tell whether I actually do this) how a potential user might cope with it. It is difficult in a number of ways - the first difficulty being getting hold of a reasonable (HAT) software tool to make the task simpler!
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