Dear Brian et al., Jonathan's search site is excellent -- I use it frequently -- and for some reason new users seem unaware of help.search(), which, despite the fact that it searches only in installed packages, I also find very useful.
A couple of comments, however: First, if help pages from all packages were available at a central location -- e.g., at CRAN -- help.search() could have an option to search that location. Second, I still feel that it would be useful to provide some other way of searching the space of all available functions. One idea, which I mentioned in an earlier message on this thread, would be a keyword system (again, different from the current set of standard keywords). The keywords could be accessed by help.search() and also compiled into an index. Regards, John > -----Original Message----- > From: Prof Brian Ripley [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Friday, September 10, 2004 5:26 AM > To: Jonathan Baron > Cc: Adaikalavan Ramasamy; John Fox; R-help; 'Berton Gunter' > Subject: Re: [R] Proposal for New R List: Criticism? Comments? > > On Fri, 10 Sep 2004, Jonathan Baron wrote: > > > On 09/10/04 03:54, Adaikalavan Ramasamy wrote: > > >There is another issue to be considered. Currently you > need to have > > >the relevant packages installed before help.search() bring > it up. My > > >work around this is to install all available packages just in case > > >the function I need is nestled in some non-standard > packages. I also > > >update them rather frequently. > > > > I do this too, at my search site (where > "frequently"=monthly) and you > > can search functions only, and use Boolean search expressions and > > phrases. > > > > But right now the entire set of packages takes about 885 > meg (if I'm > > reading du correctly), which is less than my very modest > collection of > > digital photos, and a tiny fraction of a 3-year-old standard hard > > disk. In other words, it is no big deal to install all the > packages > > if you have your own computer. > > I am seeing about 520Mb for all base + CRAN packages under > 1.9.1, and it will be rather less under 2.0.0 as more parts > are stored compressed. > BioC is a lot larger. > > It is however, a BIG deal to install *all* the packages and > am I currently 10 short since they depend on other software > that I do not have a licence for or will not compile (and > there are three others I cannot reinstall using current gcc). > On AMD64 and Solaris there are several others, and something > like 20 do not install on Windows. (I could use > --install-fake as the CRAN checks do, but I have the almost > complete set installed to test R changes, not test packages.) > > So I do see some merit in having a full-text search for R > help available at some URL, as Jonathan has kindly provided. > > -- > Brian D. Ripley, [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/ > University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self) > 1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA) > Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595 > ______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
