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Verify documentation example before the release of a new version?

My question is based on the observation that when a new Mathematica version is released (this time being 12.2) some of the functions that don't even receive an update from the previous version often get broken.

How is it so that the examples in the documentation are not checked for consistency of operation/results before a new Mathematica version is shipped? I believe that even with a team of 5-6 people in the quality control department (assuming there is any) it is possible to check the examples for all listed functions in Mathematica in about a week.

Why is such a simple task and simple expectation so hard to meet? The issue at the end is that a buggy release will cause many of the mission critical functions for say an end user to break.

It is a pity that I have to install not one version (that I can fully trust) but keep four versions of Mathematica (11.3, 12.0,12.1 and 12.2) simultaneously (grabbing over 50 GB). Reason: because some things work in one version and the others in another version. Please do enlighten me how hard are the user expectations to be met. We do not want more and more functions; we just want the functions to work reliably and correctly. There seems to be issues with the quality control here that needs to be sorted before releasing future versions.

Take this simple example:

ReplacePixelValue did not receive any update since 2014 (version 10). Then how come the second example in its documentation (in the "Applications" subsection) cease to function properly. Furthermore, I am attaching a notebook with another example for this particular function to demonstrate that something that works perfectly in 12.0 and 12.1 fails in the 12.2 release.

Attachments:
BUG.nb
POSTED BY: Ali Hashmi
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Hans Milton
Hans Milton
Posted 5 years ago

Mathematica 12.3 just came out. The second example in the documentation reference for Manipulate shows this:

enter image description here

??

Here is the the same in 12.2:

enter image description here

I am using Windows 10. Was the Manipulate documentation tested, on Windows, before release of 12.3?
POSTED BY: Hans Milton

Without seeing anything else, I'm going to go out on a limb that the Preferences dialog also looks weird and you probably are using an older Intel integrated GPU. If that is the case, I would evaluate CurrentValue[$FrontEnd, {RenderingOptions, "PreferredGPU"}] = "Software" and restart the app.
POSTED BY: Ian Hojnicki
Hans Milton
Hans Milton
Posted 5 years ago

Thanks Ian. Setting "PreferredGPU" to "Software" solved it.

enter image description here

Btw, I did not see anything wrong in the Preferences dialog
POSTED BY: Hans Milton

Great. If you use 3D graphics a lot, you might want to consider setting 3DRenderingEngine to OpenGL while PreferredGPU is set to Software.
POSTED BY: Ian Hojnicki
Hans Milton
Hans Milton
Posted 5 years ago

It looks like it is more than Manipulate that is affected by the GPU setup, in 12.3.

I have two PC's with Mathematica 12.3. I will label them as A and B:

A. Has an Intel CPU with integrated GPU. It had the Manipulate problem, fixed by the "Software" workaround as discussed.

B. Has an AMD CPU with Radeon GPU. Manipulate works fine out of the box, without need for any workaround.

The new feature of auto replacements, replacing [[ with \[LeftDoubleBracket] etc, works fine on B. But on A there are no replacements done. Not even the familiar -> \[Rule] or :>\[RuleDelayed]

I will take this up with Technical Support.
POSTED BY: Hans Milton
Hans Milton
Hans Milton
Posted 5 years ago

Resetting Mathematica on A solved this problem. Input auto replacements now works.
POSTED BY: Hans Milton

Perhaps this might be useful somehow: https://redmine.wolfram.com
POSTED BY: Kapio Letto
Hans Milton
Hans Milton
Posted 6 years ago

Quoting Stefan:

We do in fact check documentation examples before a release. However, things do sometimes get missed from time to time, or a fix was not ready in time.

Locator has a documented option AutoAction. But it has not worked after version 10.4. That is more than 4 years ago.
POSTED BY: Hans Milton

We have been aware of this issue for quite some time. I cannot give any estimate on a time frame for a fix, though.

POSTED BY: Stefan Ragnarsson

Please file a report to support@wolfram.com. They usually monitor the community, but not always.

Documentation can be updated in paclet updates, which are (mostly) silent, but they need to know about the problem.
POSTED BY: George Woodrow III

Hi Ali,

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. We do in fact check documentation examples before a release. However, things do sometimes get missed from time to time, or a fix was not ready in time.

Please note that the Wolfram Language is highly interconnected. Many functions internally use other WL functions as part of their implementation, or share a codebase with several related functions. So even though a particular function did not get a specific update in a release, something it depends on might have been changed.

POSTED BY: Stefan Ragnarsson

Here is another example in the Documentation which used to work in 12.1.1 but not anymore in 12.2:

GeoSmoothHistogram[
WeightedData[
CountryData["UnitedStates", 
"LargestCities"], #["Population"] &], 20, PlotLegends -> Automatic]
POSTED BY: Philipp Winkler
Hans Milton
Hans Milton
Posted 6 years ago

Another case when documentation examples are broken is Locator with option AutoAction set to True. The documentation example works in 10.4 but not in 11.3, 12.0, 12.1 or 12.2.

There is a change between 12.1 and 12.2, but only for the worse. In 12.1 the locator with AutoAction can be moved if you click on it and drag. But in 12.2 it will not move at all, clicked or not.
POSTED BY: Hans Milton
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