On 13-08-28 05:13 PM, Hadley Wickham wrote:
3/ Some functions are exported normally but hidden by using "." in the beginning of their names. Other package maintainers would know they exist, but end users would not so easily find them. (Duncan's other suggestion of using \keyword{internal} in the .Rd file strikes me as problematic. I'm surprised CRAN checks do not already object to functions exported and documented with \keyword{internal}.)Why? I think this is exactly the use case of \keyword{internal}.
From Writing R extensions "The special keyword ‘internal’ marks a page of internal objects that are not part of the package’s API" which suggests to me that a function with \keyword{internal} should not be exported, since that makes it part of the API. And, if it is really for internal use in a package, why would you export it? I think you are interpreting "internal" to mean internal to a group of packages, not internal to a package. But that is just the complement of what I am saying: there may be a need for two levels of export.
(Also, if you export it then you should document it, but for many maintainers \keyword{internal} is shorthand for I don't need to document this properly because no one is suppose to use it outside the package.)
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