This is more of an r-devel topic, so I've sent my reply there.
On 06/07/2009 6:50 AM, antonio.gasparr...@lshtm.ac.uk wrote:
Dear R users,
I included 2 internal functions in the package 'dlnm', called 'mkbasis' and 'mklagbasis'.
Despite they are not meant to be called by the users, I included them in the
namespace in order to make them available, keeping the process more transparent
and giving the opportunity to change or improve them.
The usual reason to make something an internal function is so that you
feel no obligation to maintain the interface. If it is in the
NAMESPACE, you should feel guilty whenever you make incompatible changes.
Another reason to keep them internal is that they don't really fit with
the goals of your package: they are just a distraction. You don't want
people to use your package just for those things. (This is actually the
same reason as the first: the reason you don't want your package to be
used for some little utility function is that you would drop it if it
showed up in a base package.)
So if you think those functions are useful and on target, and you don't
foresee changing them, then exporting them is reasonable.
I included an help page 'dlnm-internal.Rd' to document them, and some examples
in a package vignette I want to add.
The problem is that the link to this help page doesn't work in the version
installed by the CRAN (eg. try ?mkbasis).
I checked the help pages for internal functions in other packages: some of them
work (e.g. ?geepack::anova.geeglm), others don't (e.g. ?gam::.First.lib).
Any suggestions?
Did you set aliases in the help pages? Those are what help uses to find
the page.
And what OS and R version are you using? ?gam::.First.lib works for me
(on Windows, with 2.9.0 or 2.9.1 patched).
Duncan Murdoch
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