On 6/8/05, Torsten Hothorn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, Duncan Murdoch wrote: > > [...] > > > My proposal (modified following the suggestions I've heard so far) is as > > follows: > > > > - to check that a couple of help topic aliases exist (<pkg>.package > > and <pkg>) > > - to recommend that <pkg>.package contain general information about > > the package, and that <pkg> be an alias for it, if it isn't used for > > some other purpose. > > - to write promptPackage() to help create an initial version of > > <pkg>.package.Rd. It can get some information from the DESCRIPTION > > file; perhaps it could go looking for a vignette, or the INDEX, or > > - to modify the other help system tools to make use of this (e.g. the > > package:<pkg> heading on a page would become a link to the <pkg>.package > > alias, etc.) > > > > as a package author who already provides help pages for general package > descriptions (`?multcomp' and `?coin' work and, if I remember correctly, > Martin suggested to include the advertisement this way) I must > admit that I never say `?foo' when I'm interested in a global overview > about a new package `foo'. > > Instead, `library(help = foo)' gives what I want to see, namely the title > and description of a package and all documented topics. One may argue that > asking `library' for help is not the most obvious thing to do. But people > able to recall that fitting an ANOVA model requires `aov' and comparing > two models needs `anova' should be able to have `library' in mind for > general package information. > > So, for me having infrastructure for _automatically_ generated overviews > is very nice, but _forcing_ package authors to provide additional > meta-information would be less welcome.
I'm in the Robert/Brian school of thought -- this can be solved with better DESCRIPTIONS, or by explicitly writing such a file (which one can already do), or through better advertisement / incorporation of the vignette tools. Requiring anything additional is a PITA. Sure, it doesn't look like much time, but it is. "much" is in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps one thing to do is to map ?<pkgname>.package to library(help=pkgname) as was previously suggested, and let authors put information in the DESCRIPTION, perhaps with a lead towards the right help file to use to get more. best, -tony "Commit early,commit often, and commit in a repository from which we can easily roll-back your mistakes" (AJR, 4Jan05). A.J. Rossini [EMAIL PROTECTED] ______________________________________________ R-devel@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
