Duncan Murdoch wrote:
On 6/7/2005 11:12 AM, Robert Gentleman wrote:
Robin Hankin wrote:
My 0.02:
I use Misc.Rd for the purpose that Duncan suggests. I put things
like details and rationale for package
organization, pointers to the most important function(s) in the
package, and perhaps function descriptors
for ubiquitous functions that don't warrant their own helppage, but
need documentation [in
the case of gsl, this would be strictify() and process.args(), which
every user needs to know].
It would be *great* to be required to put in "package.gsl.R" (or
should that be "gsl.package.Rd"?)
for this purpose. Then maybe R CMD check could check for its
presence and throw a wobbly
if it isn't there.
Hi,
Well, I pretty strenuously object. That is just what vignettes are
for and the last thing I need is more wobbly's from R CMD check.
Function documentation should document functions. If you want to
document something more substantial then please use the tools already
provided to do that - and if you don't want to, and you want to make
use of the tools for function documentation in some other way please
don't try to impose your version of what should happen on others.
The current .Rd files don't just document functions, they also document
data objects and classes.
But the main point here is that it's not good to have multiple
disconnected sets of documentation for a package. Users should be able
to say the equivalent of "give me help on foo", and get help on foo,
whether it's a function, a data object, a package, a method, a class, or
whatever. It's a bad design to force them to ask for the same sort of
thing in different ways depending on the type of thing they're asking for.
Hi Duncan and others,
I think they are linked. There are tools available both in R and in
Bioconductor and some pop things up and some don't. It doesn't take much
work to add vignettes to the windows menu bar - as we have done in BioC
for some time now - it would be nice if this was part of R, but no one
seems to have been interested in achieving that. Fixing the help system
to deal with more diverse kinds of help would be nice as well - but
taking one part of it and saying, "now everyone must do it this way" is
not that helpful.
I respectfully disagree about the main point. My main point is, I
don't want more things imposed on me; dealing with R CMD check is
enough of a burden in its current version, without someone deciding that
it would be nice to have a whole bunch more requirements. Folks should
feel entirely free to do what they want - but a little less free to tell
me what I should be doing.
Best wishes,
Robert
If we had a way to link vignettes into the help system, then I'd think
it would be perfectly acceptable for ?package to pop up a vignette for
the package. However, right now we have too many different types of
ways to display help, and not all of them are capable of displaying
vignettes.
Duncan Murdoch
Best wishes
Robert
Some packages have so much material that it's difficult to know
where the "meat" of the functionality lies,
and Duncan's suggestion would help greatly in these circumstances.
best wishes
rksh
On Jun 7, 2005, at 01:11 pm, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
Kurt Hornik wrote:
Henrik Bengtsson writes:
Hi,
I would like to suggest a standard where all packages provide an
Rd page with the same name (or aliased) as the name of package so
that help(<package name>) or ?<package name> is always here. This
especially of interest to large packages with a large package
index. This page could explain the package in general and gives
some hints on how to start - not like extensive vignettes, but
just to get started, e.g. list the "most important" functions.
This page could typically contain information that is in the
DESCRIPTION file (which contains valuable information hardly every
accessed by a general user), such as who is the maintainer, how to
report bugs and so on.
I think this is a good idea. One minor problem is that for some
packages that topic name is already in use for a function (e.g.
boot). For that reason, I'd suggest that there *also* be an alias
called "package.<package name>", and the <package name> topic should
link to it.
How would this be different from the results of
help(package = <package name>)
?
1. It would work with ?, like other help topics.
2. It would give an overview. It's possible to do that in
DESCRIPTION or INDEX, but you don't get the same style as for other
help files (e.g. no links to other topics, at least in Windows).
We should work out what the topic headings should be and extend
package.skeleton() and prompt() to write a bare-bones file that
suggests the questions that need to be answered in the file. The
headings I'd suggest are:
\name
\title
\alias
\description (longer than the typical entry in the DESCRIPTION file)
\details (Should give a short guide to the main functions, should
point out the existence of external documentation like vignettes, etc.)
\author (could also describe maintainer, if different)
\references
\seealso (Should give references to related packages)
\examples
\keywords
There is some duplication of material from DESCRIPTION, but usually
this should be longer and more reader-friendly than that file.
I'd be happy to write the description of this in R Extensions, and
write the changes to prompt(), if we have agreement that this file
should be mandatory in 2.2.x or 2.3.x, and you'll write the checks
for it. (I think the check should just be for existence of aliases
<package name> and package.<package name>, and could perhaps just
give a warning in 2.2.x.)
Duncan Murdoch
______________________________________________
R-devel@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
--
Robin Hankin
Uncertainty Analyst
National Oceanography Centre, Southampton
European Way, Southampton SO14 3ZH, UK
tel 023-8059-7743
______________________________________________
R-devel@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
______________________________________________
R-devel@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
