Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
I agree with those who would like to see the R-Project's site redone. If/when it is redone, I think there should be more emphasis on providing links / access to useful materials for new users. I find it interesting that this discussion has been very focused on the technologies that should be used, rather than on the content should be provided. Although I think it is important to assess the relevant technologies that exist and choose a framework that will work well with R, I think there should also be some thought / discussion on the layout and content of any new site. In that spirit, I would like to make a suggestion / request. Currently, the website has a page dedicated to manuals: http://cran.r-project.org/manuals.html This is a good page and the manuals are very very helpful. However, there are a lot of good resources that are not (to the best of my knowledge) listed on the r-project's site. A few examples would include: * Quick-R - http://www.statmethods.net/ * The R Inferno - www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/R_inferno.pdf * Rseek.org There are others, but these are the three that I have found to be _most_ useful to me as a relatively new R user. I believe any redesigned site should really try to present more resources to new R users. Before I learned about Rseek (on this list), I wasted epic amounts of time trying to Google for R related information. Although it is possible to use Google to answer R related questions, it's not as easy as search for how to do something in perl or python. I think a new r-project site should include a page / wiki focused on informing new users about the myriad or resources that exist. This certainly won't eliminate all of the repetitive questions on the list, but I think it could help. I suggest a wiki format, because an open wiki would enable the R community to update the information and provide links to new resources as the become available and let the web-team focus on improving and maintaining the site. Others may disagree with me regarding an open wiki, but I want to keep my comment focused on the idea of helping new users find useful material, and not get side tracked in a discussion about wikis or other technologies. There are others here far more knowledgeable about web-design than I am, I just know that there could be more done to present information to new users. That's my 10 cents. -- This is the price and the promise of citizenship. -- Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
Andrew Choens andy.cho...@gmail.com [Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 04:56:33PM CET]: * Quick-R - http://www.statmethods.net/ * The R Inferno - www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/R_inferno.pdf * Rseek.org As an aside: Last time I tried, rseek.org yielded no results when searching for inferno. -- Johannes Hüsing There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture mailto:johan...@huesing.name from such a trifling investment of fact. http://derwisch.wikidot.com (Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi) __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 3:12 PM, Johannes Huesing johan...@huesing.name wrote: Last time I tried, rseek.org yielded no results when searching for inferno. ...although, if you hit the 'Support Lists' tab it finds the thread in which Patrick announced it. -- Johannes Hüsing There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture mailto:johan...@huesing.name from such a trifling investment of fact. http://derwisch.wikidot.com (Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi) __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
my personal feeling about R website is that it is as good as how it should be. i don't have any problem to navigate around and know exactly where I can find the thing that I need. instead, knime.org website looks too fancy and is all about marketing. i don't think it is necessary for R team to waste limited resource on something unnecessary. plus, R website is not bad at all, even compared with the ones of other open source languages. On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 9:52 PM, Ajay ohri ohri2...@gmail.com wrote: Dear List, One persistent feedback I am getting to people who are newly introduced to R ( especially in this cost cutting recession) is - 1) The website looks a bit old. While the current website does have a lot of hard work behind it, should n't a world class statistics package have a better website instead. You can check out www.knime.org which is an open source software , and free, and supports R---and notice the change in perception . Best Regards, Ajay Ohri www.decisionstats.com [[alternative HTML version deleted]] __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. -- === WenSui Liu Acquisition Risk, Chase Blog : statcompute.spaces.live.com I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people. -- Isaac Newton __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
On 13/02/2009, at 1:15 PM, Wensui Liu wrote:
my personal feeling about R website is that it is as good as how it
should be.
i don't have any problem to navigate around and know exactly where I
can find the thing that I need.
instead, knime.org website looks too fancy and is all about marketing.
i don't think it is necessary for R team to waste limited resource on
something unnecessary. plus, R website is not bad at all, even
compared with the ones of other open source languages.
Right on, Red Freak! :-)
cheers,
Rolf Turner
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Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
[coming late to an interesting thread ...] Ao == Ajay ohri ohri2...@gmail.com on Mon, 2 Feb 2009 18:14:03 +0530 writes: Ao Plain HTML coding is simple enough for this list ( I think)...but aesthetic Ao designhmm I tend to agree. A few months ago, we had volunteers to improve the ESS homepage (http://ess.r-project.org/), and I had asked for a similar .. but different! .. restriction : Yes: the result should be maintainable by SVN BUT: it can depend on server-side functionality Consequently, the two volunteers, Domenico Vistocco and Wilmar Igl, confined the code to using PHP (+ HTML + CSS), and while the result is not as if it had be done by (highly paid!) professional designers, it is a big step forward, and we've been very grateful for Domenico's and Wilmar's initiative and its result. Ao But a contest would the best way to get the best design and can be Ao publicly asked from the graphics community ( not just the R Ao community)..remember Tom Sawyer and the fence :) I would find it fun to have a contest on this... with the restriction of ASCII-files (+ a few pics) maintainable by SVN but *not* restricting it to no-server-side modules required. Martin Maechler, ETH Zurich Ao - I volunteer in both cases :) Ao Winner of Design Contest should get Ao some bragging rights in a small hyperlink (with nofollow tag -so no seo) Ao on main page ,French Wine in the user conference location , Ao etc etc... Ao On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 5:26 PM, friedrich.lei...@stat.uni-muenchen.dewrote: On Mon, 02 Feb 2009 08:44:21 +0100, Thomas Petzoldt (TP) wrote: Hi, you are probably right, though I must say that I like *spartanic and efficient* homepages and I don't think that the example given by the first mail is a good prototype for the R homepage. But, yes, occasional face lifting may be adequate. Anti-aliasing is of course simple, but that's probably not the point. (And I know that there are graphics experts with a masters in psychology between us.) So, why not a new Homepage Graphics Competition 2009? There is still some time until useR!2009 in Rennes: http://www2.agrocampus-ouest.fr/math/useR-2009/ Perhaps we should extend that to a competition for the complete design of the homepage? We often get emails like the first in this thread that R could do with an update on homepage design (I fully agree) ... but actually nobody volunteers to do it. Hence, we still have what I did when the worldwide number of R users was probably less than 1000. For technical reasons there are some conditions: the homepage is maintained via SVN like the R sources, so all should be plain HTML, no content management system etc. Ad frames: the main reason that I used them in the first place is to have the menus etc in only one file, no need for updating several files when a link changes. Today I would probably use iframes, but any other soultion is fine, too. Another plus would be if we could use the same design for CRAN, and that means no server-trickery like server-side includes etc (because we do not control the server setup of the mirrors). Best, Fritz -- --- Prof. Dr. Friedrich Leisch Institut für Statistik Tel: (+49 89) 2180 3165 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Fax: (+49 89) 2180 5308 Ludwigstraße 33 D-80539 München http://www.statistik.lmu.de/~leisch --- Journal Computational Statistics --- http://www.springer.com/180 Münchner R Kurse --- http://www.statistik.lmu.de/R __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. Ao [[alternative HTML version deleted]] Ao __ Ao R-help@r-project.org mailing list Ao https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help Ao PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html Ao and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
For redesigning functionality , some input must be given to the path of web pages followed by users. This would rely on the current analytics software installed on the main website (?) . I use a software called called clicky from www.getclicky.com and use the user input to tweak pages,posts including time of pause at web pages. I can also in addition to the coding of the HTML, CSS help with the online analytics for the website- It is actually best if someone who knows the users is given the row level records ( which is done in clicky but not in Google Analytics) Some websites offer a choice at the entrance - light HTML version and heavy Flash version. This can be done as well just for the main pages (2-3) ,and then link to the same cran page . Given that next website upgrade (after this one!) would take some years- There could be section for leading R blogs/practitioners, as well as some social networking links (Twitter) and a Journal /Books Recommended page .There could also be spaces for Video Tutorial ( Embed only in HTML ) from other sides. This group can also meet /talk via voice talk ( using skype or Gtalk) if possible on getting this project ahead- chaired by Moderator and Co-ordinator of the project. Best Regards, Ajay www.decisionstats.com Doug Larson - Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks. On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 7:05 PM, Martin Maechler maech...@stat.math.ethz.ch wrote: [coming late to an interesting thread ...] Ao == Ajay ohri ohri2...@gmail.com on Mon, 2 Feb 2009 18:14:03 +0530 writes: Ao Plain HTML coding is simple enough for this list ( I think)...but aesthetic Ao designhmm I tend to agree. A few months ago, we had volunteers to improve the ESS homepage (http://ess.r-project.org/), and I had asked for a similar .. but different! .. restriction : Yes: the result should be maintainable by SVN BUT: it can depend on server-side functionality Consequently, the two volunteers, Domenico Vistocco and Wilmar Igl, confined the code to using PHP (+ HTML + CSS), and while the result is not as if it had be done by (highly paid!) professional designers, it is a big step forward, and we've been very grateful for Domenico's and Wilmar's initiative and its result. Ao But a contest would the best way to get the best design and can be Ao publicly asked from the graphics community ( not just the R Ao community)..remember Tom Sawyer and the fence :) I would find it fun to have a contest on this... with the restriction of ASCII-files (+ a few pics) maintainable by SVN but *not* restricting it to no-server-side modules required. Martin Maechler, ETH Zurich Ao - I volunteer in both cases :) Ao Winner of Design Contest should get Ao some bragging rights in a small hyperlink (with nofollow tag -so no seo) Ao on main page ,French Wine in the user conference location , Ao etc etc... Ao On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 5:26 PM, friedrich.lei...@stat.uni-muenchen.dewrote: On Mon, 02 Feb 2009 08:44:21 +0100, Thomas Petzoldt (TP) wrote: Hi, you are probably right, though I must say that I like *spartanic and efficient* homepages and I don't think that the example given by the first mail is a good prototype for the R homepage. But, yes, occasional face lifting may be adequate. Anti-aliasing is of course simple, but that's probably not the point. (And I know that there are graphics experts with a masters in psychology between us.) So, why not a new Homepage Graphics Competition 2009? There is still some time until useR!2009 in Rennes: http://www2.agrocampus-ouest.fr/math/useR-2009/ Perhaps we should extend that to a competition for the complete design of the homepage? We often get emails like the first in this thread that R could do with an update on homepage design (I fully agree) ... but actually nobody volunteers to do it. Hence, we still have what I did when the worldwide number of R users was probably less than 1000. For technical reasons there are some conditions: the homepage is maintained via SVN like the R sources, so all should be plain HTML, no content management system etc. Ad frames: the main reason that I used them in the first place is to have the menus etc in only one file, no need for updating several files when a link changes. Today I would probably use iframes, but any other soultion is fine, too. Another plus would be if we could use the same design for CRAN, and that means no server-trickery like server-side includes etc (because we do not control the server setup of the mirrors). Best, Fritz -- --- Prof. Dr. Friedrich Leisch Institut für Statistik
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
Patrick Connolly wrote: On Sun, 01-Feb-2009 at 11:34PM -0500, Stavros Macrakis wrote: | A first step that would make the current Web page look much better | would be to anti-alias the demonstration graphic. The current graphic | makes R graphics seem (falsely!) to be very primitive. I'm afraid I | don't know how to do the anti-aliasing myself. | | Replacing the fixed-width, typewriter-style font with something a bit | more elegant might also be good I'd say it would not be good. Fixed-width fonts are desirable when it's for code (of any language). not necessarily. when you do not need clearly visible number of spaces in indents or formats, why care. very many books on programming could have a better look had the authors (or editors) not insisted on having the code in fixed-width. in most cases i write my code with variable-width font, and it feels much better to my eyes. it's just a matter of taste, perhaps ask psychologists if you really want it quantified before making a grounded decision. vQ The example www.knime.org site uses proportional fonts for R code which makes it hard to read IMHO. I really dislike that. What's wrong with a spartan look? Google has flourished with a no-unnecessaries approach to home page clutter. -- --- Wacek Kusnierczyk, MD PhD Email: w...@idi.ntnu.no Phone: +47 73591875, +47 72574609 Department of Computer and Information Science (IDI) Faculty of Information Technology, Mathematics and Electrical Engineering (IME) Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) Sem Saelands vei 7, 7491 Trondheim, Norway Room itv303 Bioinformatics Gene Regulation Group Department of Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine (IKM) Faculty of Medicine (DMF) Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) Laboratory Center, Erling Skjalgsons gt. 1, 7030 Trondheim, Norway Room 231.05.060 __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
I don't think you should completely rule out javascript. It's possible to use it in ways that add to the utility of a page, while not detracting from it if not available. OK, what particularly do you have in mind? Here's a few of examples off the top of my head. These are things that would add to the aesthetic appeal/usability of the site, without distracting from the main content and without making the site unusable if javascript is turned off. * instead of a single graphic from the r graph gallery, you could have a slideshow of a random selection of many graphics (e.g. http://css-tricks.com/creating-a-slick-auto-playing-featured-content-slider/) * you could use a js client side web analytics service (like google analytics) to collect usage statistics across all cran mirrors in one place (wouldn't work for packages, just pages) * you could use jsMath (http://www.math.union.edu/~dpvc/jsMath/) to convert from tex style math formulas to nicely styled formulas * you could use amberjack (http://amberjack.org/) to help people learn where the important parts of the site are * you could use a lightboxing technique when zooming into screenshot thumbnails, e.g. http://fancy.klade.lv/ These techniques all degrade well so if you don't have javascript you don't missing functionality. Hadley -- http://had.co.nz/ __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 8:32 AM, hadley wickham h.wick...@gmail.com wrote: I don't think you should completely rule out javascript. It's possible to use it in ways that add to the utility of a page, while not detracting from it if not available. OK, what particularly do you have in mind? Some more ideas: Because we are limited in terms of server side interactivity, you could write a small script that sniffs the user agent and presents the matching version of R most prominently. Or use an ip2geo service to guess which cran mirror is geographically closest and move that to the top of the list of mirrors. (e.g. http://www.petefreitag.com/item/683.cfm) Hadley -- http://had.co.nz/ __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
On Sun, 01-Feb-2009 at 11:34PM -0500, Stavros Macrakis wrote:
| A first step that would make the current Web page look much better
| would be to anti-alias the demonstration graphic. The current graphic
| makes R graphics seem (falsely!) to be very primitive. I'm afraid I
| don't know how to do the anti-aliasing myself.
|
| Replacing the fixed-width, typewriter-style font with something a bit
| more elegant might also be good
I'd say it would not be good. Fixed-width fonts are desirable when
it's for code (of any language). The example www.knime.org site uses
proportional fonts for R code which makes it hard to read IMHO. I
really dislike that.
What's wrong with a spartan look? Google has flourished with a
no-unnecessaries approach to home page clutter.
--
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.
___Patrick Connolly
{~._.~} Great minds discuss ideas
_( Y )_ Average minds discuss events
(:_~*~_:) Small minds discuss people
(_)-(_) . Eleanor Roosevelt
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.
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Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 8:56 PM, Patrick Connolly p_conno...@slingshot.co.nz wrote: On Sun, 01-Feb-2009 at 11:34PM -0500, Stavros Macrakis wrote: | A first step that would make the current Web page look much better | would be to anti-alias the demonstration graphic. The current graphic | makes R graphics seem (falsely!) to be very primitive. I'm afraid I | don't know how to do the anti-aliasing myself. | | Replacing the fixed-width, typewriter-style font with something a bit | more elegant might also be good I'd say it would not be good. Fixed-width fonts are desirable when it's for code (of any language). The example www.knime.org site uses proportional fonts for R code which makes it hard to read IMHO. I really dislike that. But you don't need fixed width fonts for headings... What's wrong with a spartan look? Google has flourished with a no-unnecessaries approach to home page clutter. There's nothing wrong with a spartan look. There's something wrong with making simple tasks difficult. Why not do better if we can? Hadley -- http://had.co.nz/ __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
On Tue, 3 Feb 2009 18:56:37 -0400, Mike Lawrence (ML) wrote: One of my colleagues is a interdisciplinary PhD in Design and Psychology and he has an in with a design school where we might be able to get students to take on the redesign of the website. Thanks a lot, sounds exactly like what we need. If they don't succeed we can always by time from a professional afterwards. But I'd say let's give them a shot. For the students it should be more thrilling to work on a site that gets thousands of hits per day rather than redoing the menu of the school, cafeteria ;-) He asks: In order to ensure efficient consumption of resources and maximize our return on investment, please provide potential designers with a direct point of contact (name, email, telephone number) so that they may request a project description and feedback. Obviously the redesign idea has been generated in a community thread, but if anyone from the R foundation can step up as such a contact person I will forward your info to my colleague who will then take the temperature of students at the design school. Well, I think I qualify for that job and would be happy to do so. Best, Fritz -- --- Prof. Dr. Friedrich Leisch Institut für Statistik Tel: (+49 89) 2180 3165 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Fax: (+49 89) 2180 5308 LudwigstraÃe 33 D-80539 München http://www.statistik.lmu.de/~leisch --- Journal Computational Statistics --- http://www.springer.com/180 Münchner R Kurse --- http://www.statistik.lmu.de/R __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
Hadley put together a couple of nice versions of the main Windows download page cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base, and I've adopted one of them for the release, and the patched and devel snapshot builds. They should show up on CRAN in a few hours. Thanks a lot for the contribution, Hadley: I hope you also get involved in the larger CRAN redesign mentioned elsewhere in this thread. Duncan Murdoch On 2/3/2009 9:20 AM, hadley wickham wrote: Again I'd disagree, perhaps the most widely used suite of software has a very simple and clean web-site with few bells and whistles, ditto for one of the most popular text-editors. I am of course referring to the suite of GNU utilities (http://www.gnu.org/) that make a working GNU/Linux distribution and Emacs (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ ). I like the R web-site, its clean and simple, present key information prominently (manuals, docs, CRAN, RNew and mailing lists). Have you ever used the R website? To download the latest version for R for windows you have to: 1. avoid clicking on the R version 2.8.1 link - that takes you to a directory listing of strangely named files 2. recognise that you need to click on an CRAN (what is a cran?) 3. successfully select a mirror that is up-to-date (with no information about which mirrors are up-to-date) 4. click Windows (ok, this one is easy) 5. guess that base is the distribution that you want 6. phew, you're there (but don't follow the advice to download from a mirror near you or you'll be back at step 3) And then if you want to email the url of that page to someone else you have to jump through hoops because it's embedded in a frame. Hadley __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
One of my colleagues is a interdisciplinary PhD in Design and Psychology and he has an in with a design school where we might be able to get students to take on the redesign of the website. Thanks a lot, sounds exactly like what we need. If they don't succeed we can always by time from a professional afterwards. But I'd say let's give them a shot. For the students it should be more thrilling to work on a site that gets thousands of hits per day rather than redoing the menu of the school, cafeteria ;-) It might be good to put some mild restriction on the design: * should be valid (x)html and css * use the YUI css grid framework for layout * use jquery for any (subtle) animated or interactive effects Hadley -- http://had.co.nz/ __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
In any redesign we need to remember that a good user interface that works with
as many browsers as possible should be the primary design criteria. We don't
need eye candy.
John
John David Sorkin M.D., Ph.D.
Chief, Biostatistics and Informatics
University of Maryland School of Medicine Division of Gerontology
Baltimore VA Medical Center
10 North Greene Street
GRECC (BT/18/GR)
Baltimore, MD 21201-1524
(Phone) 410-605-7119
(Fax) 410-605-7913 (Please call phone number above prior to faxing)
hadley wickham h.wick...@gmail.com 2/4/2009 11:05 AM
One of my colleagues is a interdisciplinary PhD in Design and
Psychology and he has an in with a design school where we might be
able to get students to take on the redesign of the website.
Thanks a lot, sounds exactly like what we need. If they don't succeed
we can always by time from a professional afterwards. But I'd say
let's give them a shot. For the students it should be more thrilling
to work on a site that gets thousands of hits per day rather than
redoing the menu of the school, cafeteria ;-)
It might be good to put some mild restriction on the design:
* should be valid (x)html and css
* use the YUI css grid framework for layout
* use jquery for any (subtle) animated or interactive effects
Hadley
--
http://had.co.nz/
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and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
On Wed, 4 Feb 2009 10:05:44 -0600, hadley wickham (hw) wrote: One of my colleagues is a interdisciplinary PhD in Design and Psychology and he has an in with a design school where we might be able to get students to take on the redesign of the website. Thanks a lot, sounds exactly like what we need. If they don't succeed we can always by time from a professional afterwards. But I'd say let's give them a shot. For the students it should be more thrilling to work on a site that gets thousands of hits per day rather than redoing the menu of the school, cafeteria ;-) It might be good to put some mild restriction on the design: * should be valid (x)html and css Of course (although the current page also does not validate without errors ;-) * use the YUI css grid framework for layout Never heard about that one, but looks sensible. * use jquery for any (subtle) animated or interactive effects Actually, I'd prefer no javascript at all if possible. Simply has better performance on old hardware (and R is used a lot in developing countries). Best, Fritz -- --- Prof. Dr. Friedrich Leisch Institut für Statistik Tel: (+49 89) 2180 3165 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Fax: (+49 89) 2180 5308 Ludwigstraße 33 D-80539 München http://www.statistik.lmu.de/~leisch --- Journal Computational Statistics --- http://www.springer.com/180 Münchner R Kurse --- http://www.statistik.lmu.de/R __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
On Tue, 03 Feb 2009 07:00:54 -0700,
Warren Young (WY) wrote:
friedrich.lei...@stat.uni-muenchen.de wrote:
For technical reasons there are some conditions: the homepage is
maintained via SVN like the R sources, so all should be plain HTML, no
content management system etc.
Consider using a static templating system, or a higher-level document
language like DocBook's website variant; perhaps even Sweave?
The idea is, you write your pages in a non-HTML format that gets
compiled to HTML, just like building a program. Such tools let you do
things like add a common navigation bar to all pages, so you can stop
using frames for the nav bar, add common tags to all pages such as CSS
includes, generate parts of the page programmatically, etc.
I have sites using GTML and WPP for this:
http://sunnyspot.org/wpp/
http://www2.lifl.fr/~beaufils/gtml/
Unfortunately, both are basically abandonware now. I keep using them
because they still work, but if I were starting a new site design, I'd
first look for better-maintained tools.
One option would be to build something similar in R. A simple
templating system might only take a few thousand LOC. R is flexible
enough that the page source could be R code. Something like this:
#!/usr/bin/Rscript
require('rhtml')
foo - 'bits'
page - ('
pPage body text goes here./p
pSome [[foo]] of the page can be replaced, or you can
call functions to calculate bits, such as to insert the
current date: [[R(date())]]/p
')
rhtml::generate(page, navbar = 'templates/navbar.R',
header = 'templates/header.R')
Call the script index.R, run it, and get index.html as output.
A side benefit is that you could generate inline graphics with R. This
would fix the antialiasing problem brought up above: as better graphics
drawing code gets put into R, just rebuild the web site on a machine
with the current version of R.
That would of course be fine ... I did not say that the HTML needs to
be written manually. What I did say is the the process should be
controllable by text files that are checked into SVN. Of course I am
as happy to say make to generate the R homepage as I am to compile R
itself.
The basics of the above idea is actually in some minutes of an R core
meeting from years ago, but we never found time to do it. Which takes
me to an important point I felt when reading the thread: It is very
interesting to see how much energy people invest in writing what they
would like to see done (most likely by others). R is a volunteer
project, it's not like there are people waiting for input from the
mailing list on what to do in there ample free time. Of course the
discussion is important to see what people would like to have ... but
where are the people volunteering to *do* it? [Mike Lawrence's nice
and very welcome suggestion of the design students being the exception
to the rule]
Being responsible for much of the stuff on our current web page could
make me look like a natural candidate ... but I'd rather spend the
forthcoming semester break on implementing all those Sweave changes I
have been promising for ages rather than redesigning web pages.
Best,
Fritz
PS: Somebody mentioned that the pages scream 1995 ... well you
missed by 2 years, it was actually 1997.
--
---
Prof. Dr. Friedrich Leisch
Institut für Statistik Tel: (+49 89) 2180 3165
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Fax: (+49 89) 2180 5308
Ludwigstraße 33
D-80539 München http://www.statistik.lmu.de/~leisch
---
Journal Computational Statistics --- http://www.springer.com/180
Münchner R Kurse --- http://www.statistik.lmu.de/R
__
R-help@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
--- On Tue, 2/3/09, hadley wickham h.wick...@gmail.com wrote: From: hadley wickham h.wick...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R To: Neil Shephard nsheph...@gmail.com Cc: r-help@r-project.org Received: Tuesday, February 3, 2009, 9:20 AM Again I'd disagree, perhaps the most widely used suite of software has a very simple and clean web-site with few bells and whistles, ditto for one of the most popular text-editors. I am of course referring to the suite of GNU utilities (http://www.gnu.org/) that make a working GNU/Linux distribution and Emacs (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ ). I like the R web-site, its clean and simple, present key information prominently (manuals, docs, CRAN, RNew and mailing lists). Have you ever used the R website? To download the latest version for R for windows you have to: 1. avoid clicking on the R version 2.8.1 link - that takes you to a directory listing of strangely named files 2. recognise that you need to click on an CRAN (what is a cran?) 3. successfully select a mirror that is up-to-date (with no information about which mirrors are up-to-date) 4. click Windows (ok, this one is easy) 5. guess that base is the distribution that you want 6. phew, you're there (but don't follow the advice to download from a mirror near you or you'll be back at step 3) And then if you want to email the url of that page to someone else you have to jump through hoops because it's embedded in a frame. Hadley This sounds simple enough :) Somewhere I have a set of instructions for some naive new users on how to find documents about R. They were surprisingly difficult to write. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
It might be good to put some mild restriction on the design: * should be valid (x)html and css Of course (although the current page also does not validate without errors ;-) * use the YUI css grid framework for layout Never heard about that one, but looks sensible. * use jquery for any (subtle) animated or interactive effects Actually, I'd prefer no javascript at all if possible. Simply has better performance on old hardware (and R is used a lot in developing countries). I don't think you should completely rule out javascript. It's possible to use it in ways that add to the utility of a page, while not detracting from it if not available. Hadley -- http://had.co.nz/ __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
Quite nice and simple. A thing of beauty is a joy forever.Thanks a lot. Regards, Ajay www.decisionstats.com On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 10:13 PM, Duncan Murdoch murd...@stats.uwo.cawrote: Hadley put together a couple of nice versions of the main Windows download page cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base, and I've adopted one of them for the release, and the patched and devel snapshot builds. They should show up on CRAN in a few hours. Thanks a lot for the contribution, Hadley: I hope you also get involved in the larger CRAN redesign mentioned elsewhere in this thread. Duncan Murdoch On 2/3/2009 9:20 AM, hadley wickham wrote: Again I'd disagree, perhaps the most widely used suite of software has a very simple and clean web-site with few bells and whistles, ditto for one of the most popular text-editors. I am of course referring to the suite of GNU utilities (http://www.gnu.org/) that make a working GNU/Linux distribution and Emacs (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ ). I like the R web-site, its clean and simple, present key information prominently (manuals, docs, CRAN, RNew and mailing lists). Have you ever used the R website? To download the latest version for R for windows you have to: 1. avoid clicking on the R version 2.8.1 link - that takes you to a directory listing of strangely named files 2. recognise that you need to click on an CRAN (what is a cran?) 3. successfully select a mirror that is up-to-date (with no information about which mirrors are up-to-date) 4. click Windows (ok, this one is easy) 5. guess that base is the distribution that you want 6. phew, you're there (but don't follow the advice to download from a mirror near you or you'll be back at step 3) And then if you want to email the url of that page to someone else you have to jump through hoops because it's embedded in a frame. Hadley __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. [[alternative HTML version deleted]] __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
On Wed, 4 Feb 2009 13:05:56 -0600, hadley wickham (hw) wrote: It might be good to put some mild restriction on the design: * should be valid (x)html and css Of course (although the current page also does not validate without errors ;-) * use the YUI css grid framework for layout Never heard about that one, but looks sensible. * use jquery for any (subtle) animated or interactive effects Actually, I'd prefer no javascript at all if possible. Simply has better performance on old hardware (and R is used a lot in developing countries). I don't think you should completely rule out javascript. It's possible to use it in ways that add to the utility of a page, while not detracting from it if not available. OK, what particularly do you have in mind? .f __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
Adam D. I. Kramer-2 wrote: I respectfully disagree. In my repeated experience, I have seen colleagues in industry and university simply write R off as too difficult or not worth the effort based on purely cosmetic grounds, and then at my urging and after some instruction embrace R as being a fantastic piece of software. The reality of the situation is that before you read a book, you only have its cover to judge. Suggesting that people should read every book regardless of the cover does not make sense for people who have other things to do. I respectfully disagree with your disagreement :-) You don't just have the cover by which to judge a book you have reviews of the book too (unless of course its just been printed, but even then it quickly gets sent out to review which then appear in journals/papers/web-sites/etc.). As it is there are a lot of reviews which extol the virtues of R. If you're colleagues (or anyone else) ignores these in favour of the look of the web-site to determine whether they are to start trying out and using R then that is their loss. Adam D. I. Kramer-2 wrote: In the ecological context of open-source software, the cover or cosmetics of a software program, its documentation, and its support structure are actually quite correlated with overall ease of use, and if functionality is modeled as the factorial interaction of information produced with the amount of time it takes to produce the information, then functionality correlates with ease of use, and so the appearance of the webpage is not a triviality. Again I'd disagree, perhaps the most widely used suite of software has a very simple and clean web-site with few bells and whistles, ditto for one of the most popular text-editors. I am of course referring to the suite of GNU utilities (http://www.gnu.org/) that make a working GNU/Linux distribution and Emacs (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ ). I like the R web-site, its clean and simple, present key information prominently (manuals, docs, CRAN, RNew and mailing lists). Neil -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Problems-in-Recommending-R-tp21783299p21808549.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
2009/2/3 Neil Shephard nsheph...@gmail.com: Again I'd disagree, perhaps the most widely used suite of software has a very simple and clean web-site with few bells and whistles, ditto for one of the most popular text-editors. I am of course referring to the suite of GNU utilities (http://www.gnu.org/) that make a working GNU/Linux distribution and Emacs (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ ). What?!? Surely the most widely-used suite of software is Microsoft Windows, and that has a full-on bells, whistles, activeX, silverlight-powered web site. I'd say there was a direct relationship between website glossiness and amount of usage - more people use Notepad than Emacs. In which direction the causality (if any) works is an interesting question... I like the R web-site, its clean and simple, present key information prominently (manuals, docs, CRAN, RNew and mailing lists). The open-source community should encourage contributions from beyond the world of the coder -- graphic designers, translators, writers and so on. Careful contributions from non-coders greatly enhance a project. Certainly style should not triumph over content but help to express the nature of the content. The R website still has a certain y2k feel about it, and although I'm sure we'd agree it would be wrong to make it all web 2.0 with rounded corners and a tag cloud, there's nothing wrong with refreshing a brand every five or six years. [ I did try redesigning the R logo for a cleaner look a few years ago - here it is on different backgrounds with a semi-ironic 3.0 flash: http://www.maths.lancs.ac.uk/~rowlings/Graphics/Logo/R/logos.png ] Barry __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
Stavros Macrakis wrote: anti-alias the demonstration graphic. The current graphic makes R graphics seem (falsely!) to be very primitive. I'm afraid I don't know how to do the anti-aliasing myself. Simply re-plotting it in 2.8.1 built with Cairo support produces something better: http://etr-usa.com/tmp/swiss-cairo-281.png The text is antialiased, as are some of the graph lines. The dots in the largest plot aren't, though. Outputting to PDF and then scaling down does even better: http://etr-usa.com/tmp/swiss-from-pdf.png The command at the end to do this is: pdf(file=swiss.pdf, width=12, height=8) The R webmasters are welcome to use either of these in place of the current graphic, but it might be good to change the script to fix up some of the changes in the way the script is interpreted first. Fair warning: I won't be hosting these pictures for very long. Download 'em if you want 'em now. Replacing the fixed-width, typewriter-style font with something a bit more elegant might also be good The choice of fonts on the web is pretty limited, unless you want to get clever. I prefer to work with the few standard web fonts, building up improved styles relative to the defaults with CSS. It might be interesting to keep the current font, but experiment with letter spacing, for instance. Far more serious problems: - Use of frames. The usability problems of frames are well known, and are justified only in a few special cases. A content-heavy site like r-project.org is not one of them, if only because of the bookmarking issue. - Use of Times as the standard font. Times was commissioned by a newspaper, with a primary goal of reducing paper costs. Its creators succeeded by creating something compact and spindly, and thus uncommonly ugly and hard to read considering its popularity. It is marginally justifiable on paper, its design target. It should never be used on computer screens; at least, not until they get to 300 dpi or so. In general, use sans serif fonts on computer screens. There are rare exceptions, like Georgia (designed for PC screens from the start) and Courier (heavy slab serifs that come out okay on low-res screens). Look at the default fonts used on every OS, and every device with an LCD screen you own: they're all sans serif, aren't they? There's a reason for that... - HTML tables using the default 3D chiseled look. Nothing says 1995 better, except maybe blink tags, rainbow colored separator bars, and under construction graphics. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 7:26 AM, Barry Rowlingson b.rowling...@lancaster.ac.uk wrote: ... I'd say there was a direct relationship between website glossiness and amount of usage - more people use Notepad than Emacs. In which direction the causality (if any) works is an interesting question... How many people use Google to search? What about Yahoo? Which is glossier? I wouldn't quit using R (hah!), but I would be repelled by a glitzy website that requires script or plugins or anything beyond a standard web browser and an old computer to view. That said, there is an advantage to having an attractive, easy-to-navigate site. Sarah -- Sarah Goslee http://www.functionaldiversity.org __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
friedrich.lei...@stat.uni-muenchen.de wrote:
For technical reasons there are some conditions: the homepage is
maintained via SVN like the R sources, so all should be plain HTML, no
content management system etc.
Consider using a static templating system, or a higher-level document
language like DocBook's website variant; perhaps even Sweave?
The idea is, you write your pages in a non-HTML format that gets
compiled to HTML, just like building a program. Such tools let you do
things like add a common navigation bar to all pages, so you can stop
using frames for the nav bar, add common tags to all pages such as CSS
includes, generate parts of the page programmatically, etc.
I have sites using GTML and WPP for this:
http://sunnyspot.org/wpp/
http://www2.lifl.fr/~beaufils/gtml/
Unfortunately, both are basically abandonware now. I keep using them
because they still work, but if I were starting a new site design, I'd
first look for better-maintained tools.
One option would be to build something similar in R. A simple
templating system might only take a few thousand LOC. R is flexible
enough that the page source could be R code. Something like this:
#!/usr/bin/Rscript
require('rhtml')
foo - 'bits'
page - ('
pPage body text goes here./p
pSome [[foo]] of the page can be replaced, or you can
call functions to calculate bits, such as to insert the
current date: [[R(date())]]/p
')
rhtml::generate(page, navbar = 'templates/navbar.R',
header = 'templates/header.R')
Call the script index.R, run it, and get index.html as output.
A side benefit is that you could generate inline graphics with R. This
would fix the antialiasing problem brought up above: as better graphics
drawing code gets put into R, just rebuild the web site on a machine
with the current version of R.
__
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https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
Barry Rowlingson wrote: 2009/2/3 Neil Shephard nsheph...@gmail.com: Again I'd disagree, perhaps the most widely used suite of software has a very simple and clean web-site with few bells and whistles, ditto for one of the most popular text-editors. I am of course referring to the suite of GNU utilities (http://www.gnu.org/) that make a working GNU/Linux distribution and Emacs (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ ). What?!? Surely the most widely-used suite of software is Microsoft Windows, and that has a full-on bells, whistles, activeX, silverlight-powered web site. My apologies I ommitted the 'open-source' caveat that Adam had written and I quoted in my response. Thus of all the _open-source_ software packages I have a strong suspicion that it is the GNU utilities that are the most widely used (since they are what makes up a funtional GNU/Linux installation, the Linux part simply refers to the code that forms the kernel and gets the hardware to communicate). Barry Rowlingson wrote: I'd say there was a direct relationship between website glossiness and amount of usage - more people use Notepad than Emacs. In which direction the causality (if any) works is an interesting question... Notepad doesn't have a web-site! (If your assertion is true it is the perfect vindication of the EU taking M$ to court over bundling IE with their OS ;-) Theres probably also a relationship between the glossiness of a website (or indeed software) and its quality/functionality. Usage is all well and good, but if you get the wrong answers out it doesn't matter how many people use it, they'll all be wrong! (viz. using Excel for statistics). Its a fine balance. Barry Rowlingson wrote: I like the R web-site, its clean and simple, present key information prominently (manuals, docs, CRAN, RNew and mailing lists). The open-source community should encourage contributions from beyond the world of the coder -- graphic designers, translators, writers and so on. Careful contributions from non-coders greatly enhance a project. Certainly style should not triumph over content but help to express the nature of the content. The R website still has a certain y2k feel about it, and although I'm sure we'd agree it would be wrong to make it all web 2.0 with rounded corners and a tag cloud, there's nothing wrong with refreshing a brand every five or six years. The issue of revamping the web-site arises regularly on this discussion list. A few people have said they're willing to help (in this thread and others in the past), but little has come to fruition. Refreshing branding can work two ways though, sometimes the identity and image that has been built up over time is lost. The developers of R have focused on what they are good at, which is developing R. I get the impression that they are willing to embrace graphic designers, translators, writers and so on (with some caveats on how it is to be managed as pointed out by Friedrich), but no one appears to have stepped up to the oche yet. Neil -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Problems-in-Recommending-R-tp21783299p21810523.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
Warren Young wrote: Far more serious problems: - Use of frames. The usability problems of frames are well known, and are justified only in a few special cases. A content-heavy site like r-project.org is not one of them, if only because of the bookmarking issue. the framing problem has been solved with the use of a few css elements years ago. using css may simplify the html (to the degree you don't even need html, it can be plain xml with tags denoting data, not formatting), and once fixed, make editing of the page much easier (because you don't need to navigate among that many formatting tags). some formatting can also be fixed by designing an xslt template to be run once when new content is uploaded. the page can still be static while cleanly separating the data and the formatting. - Use of Times as the standard font. Times was commissioned by a newspaper, with a primary goal of reducing paper costs. Its creators succeeded by creating something compact and spindly, and thus uncommonly ugly and hard to read considering its popularity. It is marginally justifiable on paper, its design target. It should never be used on computer screens; at least, not until they get to 300 dpi or so. In general, use sans serif fonts on computer screens. There are rare exceptions, like Georgia (designed for PC screens from the start) and Courier (heavy slab serifs that come out okay on low-res screens). Look at the default fonts used on every OS, and every device with an LCD screen you own: they're all sans serif, aren't they? There's a reason for that... indeed, though it's not really so grave an issue. it's easy to override fonts in your browser, and see the cran/r pages in sf by default. - HTML tables using the default 3D chiseled look. Nothing says 1995 better, except maybe blink tags, rainbow colored separator bars, and under construction graphics. maybe they do want to say '1995'? it would claim progress. by far the most often explicitly mentioned date in r help is 1988 (for 'the new s language'). vQ __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
Again I'd disagree, perhaps the most widely used suite of software has a very simple and clean web-site with few bells and whistles, ditto for one of the most popular text-editors. I am of course referring to the suite of GNU utilities (http://www.gnu.org/) that make a working GNU/Linux distribution and Emacs (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ ). I like the R web-site, its clean and simple, present key information prominently (manuals, docs, CRAN, RNew and mailing lists). Have you ever used the R website? To download the latest version for R for windows you have to: 1. avoid clicking on the R version 2.8.1 link - that takes you to a directory listing of strangely named files 2. recognise that you need to click on an CRAN (what is a cran?) 3. successfully select a mirror that is up-to-date (with no information about which mirrors are up-to-date) 4. click Windows (ok, this one is easy) 5. guess that base is the distribution that you want 6. phew, you're there (but don't follow the advice to download from a mirror near you or you'll be back at step 3) And then if you want to email the url of that page to someone else you have to jump through hoops because it's embedded in a frame. Hadley -- http://had.co.nz/ __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 9:20 AM, hadley wickham h.wick...@gmail.com wrote: Again I'd disagree, perhaps the most widely used suite of software has a very simple and clean web-site with few bells and whistles, ditto for one of the most popular text-editors. I am of course referring to the suite of GNU utilities (http://www.gnu.org/) that make a working GNU/Linux distribution and Emacs (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ ). I like the R web-site, its clean and simple, present key information prominently (manuals, docs, CRAN, RNew and mailing lists). Have you ever used the R website? To download the latest version for R for windows you have to: 1. avoid clicking on the R version 2.8.1 link - that takes you to a directory listing of strangely named files 2. recognise that you need to click on an CRAN (what is a cran?) 3. successfully select a mirror that is up-to-date (with no information about which mirrors are up-to-date) 4. click Windows (ok, this one is easy) 5. guess that base is the distribution that you want 6. phew, you're there (but don't follow the advice to download from a mirror near you or you'll be back at step 3) Its even more confusing than that because actually you're not there yet! You have to click on the unobtrusive patched link and then download that or you get the version with the bugs. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
1. avoid clicking on the R version 2.8.1 link - that takes you to a directory listing of strangely named files 2. recognise that you need to click on an CRAN (what is a cran?) 3. successfully select a mirror that is up-to-date (with no information about which mirrors are up-to-date) 4. click Windows (ok, this one is easy) 5. guess that base is the distribution that you want 6. phew, you're there (but don't follow the advice to download from a mirror near you or you'll be back at step 3) Its even more confusing than that because actually you're not there yet! You have to click on the unobtrusive patched link and then download that or you get the version with the bugs. Wow, I'd never noticed that before! Hadley -- http://had.co.nz/ __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
Hi All, Before these things be set in stone, it should be noted that it would be a real mistake to have a miscalculated statistical object on R's Homepage. Imagine if SAS found out! Fact is, the manner in which the percentage contribution of each PC to the overall inertia is calculated in the code used to make the display graphic is wrong. I have been meaning to point this out to Eric Lecoutre for some time now, but just never got around to it. There simply wasn't an urgent need to do so, given other things that had to be done first. So, apologies to Eric for pointing it out here; what he presented was a very nice piece of work and it justly deserved top honours. ## % contribution calculated as [line 31 in plotacpclust()] pclperc=100*(pcr$sdev)/sum(pcr$sdev)## this is wrong ## should be calculated as pclperc=100*(pcr$sdev^2)/sum(pcr$sdev^2) ## Proof summary(pcr - princomp(USArrests, cor = TRUE)) Importance of components: Comp.1Comp.2Comp.3 Comp.4 Standard deviation 1.5748783 0.9948694 0.5971291 0.41644938 Proportion of Variance 0.6200604 0.2474413 0.0891408 0.04335752 Cumulative Proportion 0.6200604 0.8675017 0.9566425 1. 100*(pcr$sdev)/sum(pcr$sdev) Comp.1 Comp.2 Comp.3 Comp.4 43.95018 27.76385 16.66410 11.62187 100*(pcr$sdev^2)/sum(pcr$sdev^2) Comp.1Comp.2Comp.3Comp.4 62.006039 24.744129 8.914080 4.335752 100*(pcr$sdev^2)[1]/sum(pcr$sdev^2) + 100*(pcr$sdev^2)[2]/sum(pcr$sdev^2) 86.75017 ## or using ade4 library(ade4) pcr - dudi.pca(USArrests, scannf=F, nf=4) inertia.dudi(pcr) Regards, Mark. Warren Young wrote: Stavros Macrakis wrote: anti-alias the demonstration graphic. The current graphic makes R graphics seem (falsely!) to be very primitive. I'm afraid I don't know how to do the anti-aliasing myself. Simply re-plotting it in 2.8.1 built with Cairo support produces something better: http://etr-usa.com/tmp/swiss-cairo-281.png The text is antialiased, as are some of the graph lines. The dots in the largest plot aren't, though. Outputting to PDF and then scaling down does even better: http://etr-usa.com/tmp/swiss-from-pdf.png The command at the end to do this is: pdf(file=swiss.pdf, width=12, height=8) The R webmasters are welcome to use either of these in place of the current graphic, but it might be good to change the script to fix up some of the changes in the way the script is interpreted first. Fair warning: I won't be hosting these pictures for very long. Download 'em if you want 'em now. Replacing the fixed-width, typewriter-style font with something a bit more elegant might also be good The choice of fonts on the web is pretty limited, unless you want to get clever. I prefer to work with the few standard web fonts, building up improved styles relative to the defaults with CSS. It might be interesting to keep the current font, but experiment with letter spacing, for instance. Far more serious problems: - Use of frames. The usability problems of frames are well known, and are justified only in a few special cases. A content-heavy site like r-project.org is not one of them, if only because of the bookmarking issue. - Use of Times as the standard font. Times was commissioned by a newspaper, with a primary goal of reducing paper costs. Its creators succeeded by creating something compact and spindly, and thus uncommonly ugly and hard to read considering its popularity. It is marginally justifiable on paper, its design target. It should never be used on computer screens; at least, not until they get to 300 dpi or so. In general, use sans serif fonts on computer screens. There are rare exceptions, like Georgia (designed for PC screens from the start) and Courier (heavy slab serifs that come out okay on low-res screens). Look at the default fonts used on every OS, and every device with an LCD screen you own: they're all sans serif, aren't they? There's a reason for that... - HTML tables using the default 3D chiseled look. Nothing says 1995 better, except maybe blink tags, rainbow colored separator bars, and under construction graphics. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Problems-in-Recommending-R-tp21783299p21811357.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
On 2/3/2009 9:32 AM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote: On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 9:20 AM, hadley wickham h.wick...@gmail.com wrote: Again I'd disagree, perhaps the most widely used suite of software has a very simple and clean web-site with few bells and whistles, ditto for one of the most popular text-editors. I am of course referring to the suite of GNU utilities (http://www.gnu.org/) that make a working GNU/Linux distribution and Emacs (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ ). I like the R web-site, its clean and simple, present key information prominently (manuals, docs, CRAN, RNew and mailing lists). Have you ever used the R website? To download the latest version for R for windows you have to: 1. avoid clicking on the R version 2.8.1 link - that takes you to a directory listing of strangely named files 2. recognise that you need to click on an CRAN (what is a cran?) 3. successfully select a mirror that is up-to-date (with no information about which mirrors are up-to-date) 4. click Windows (ok, this one is easy) 5. guess that base is the distribution that you want 6. phew, you're there (but don't follow the advice to download from a mirror near you or you'll be back at step 3) Its even more confusing than that because actually you're not there yet! You have to click on the unobtrusive patched link and then download that or you get the version with the bugs. It's not necessarily true that the patched version has milder bugs than the release version. The release has gone through an alpha/beta/rc test period (for whatever that's worth); the patched version hasn't necessarily been tested by anyone at all, though generally whoever fixes a bug does tests. It may also be harder to reproduce your research if you use patch builds: we don't save those, though we do try to save releases. But in any case, if you want to improve this, the source is available. In this case it's actually stored as part of the R sources, in https://svn.R-project.org/R/trunk/src/gnuwin32/cran/release.in Duncan Murdoch __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
hadley wickham wrote: 1. avoid clicking on the R version 2.8.1 link - that takes you to a directory listing of strangely named files Yes, this is of course much harder than avoiding to read the two bullet points labeled Getting Started 2. recognise that you need to click on an CRAN (what is a cran?) Clicking on the words CRAN mirror never comes to people's mind. I mean, it's not like the first line of the link explains the acronym, is it? 3. successfully select a mirror that is up-to-date (with no information about which mirrors are up-to-date) Of course the R project website is required to keep track of that. 4. click Windows (ok, this one is easy) 5. guess that base is the distribution that you want Yes, there are two links so people will take the other one. 6. phew, you're there (but don't follow the advice to download from a mirror near you or you'll be back at step 3) Its even more confusing than that because actually you're not there yet! You have to click on the unobtrusive patched link and then download that or you get the version with the bugs. Wow, I'd never noticed that before! However, you are only supposed to need it if you are one of the exceedingly rare users who happens to be bitten by a bug that went undiscovered through several weeks of user testing. (Warning: The above may contain traces of sarcasm...) -- O__ Peter Dalgaard Øster Farimagsgade 5, Entr.B c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics PO Box 2099, 1014 Cph. K (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen Denmark Ph: (+45) 35327918 ~~ - (p.dalga...@biostat.ku.dk) FAX: (+45) 35327907 __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
Neil Shephard wrote: Perhaps this is a deliberate design and serves as an intelligence test. If you can't navigate through to find the correct download you're really going to struggle getting started with R ;-D Yyeahhh...look how much that sort of stance has helped the cause of Linux on the desktop. World domination has been a year or two away for the last 10 years. (Speaking as one who uses Linux every day, and used it as his main desktop at home for many years before switching to OS X.) It's easy to pick apart the 6-step process posted above point by point, but the main thing to realize is that there really is no good technical reason why there have to be 6 decision points between arriving at the home page and getting an installable package. Take a look at how, say, getfirefox.com works. The download button is the biggest thing on the home page, impossible to miss. The site detects what platform you're on, and sets up the button to download that platform's latest version. No doubt they're using a CDN or mirror system on the back end, but detection of geographical location is done automatically based on client IP, not bothering the user. I think that's the earlier poster's main point: this can be a one-click process. Why make the human tell the computer things it already knows? __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
Having listened to the complains I would like to say that I disagree. I like the Cran web set up. Given the amount of material it contains it is relatively easy to find things. It would be helpful if one read some of the material such as the FAQ or the R for windows FAQ or even the descriptions opposite links such as base which appeared to cause problems. I am not in favour of the over bloated sites of many commercial companies. Have you ever tried to negotiate the microsoft site? Some things work well but those that don't are terrible. I think that the current team are doing a good job. The site caters for many operating systems with a multitude of users at various levels Best Regards John 2009/2/3 Neil Shephard nsheph...@gmail.com: hadley wrote: Have you ever used the R website? To download the latest version for R for windows you have to: No I don't use windows and install R via the package management system of my chosen distribution (http://www.gentoo.org/). That said I have installed from source in the past when starting out with GNU/Linux and using Slackware, and I _never_ had a problem finding the source tarball to download. Perhaps this is a deliberate design and serves as an intelligence test. If you can't navigate through to find the correct download you're really going to struggle getting started with R ;-D The most useful thing (and quite rightly so) on the front page is the link the the FAQ which should be the starting point for anyone looking at any new software, and answers/explains everything thats pertinent! (At least thats what I read first when I start using new software and have questions). hadley wrote: And then if you want to email the url of that page to someone else you have to jump through hoops because it's embedded in a frame. I'd hit 'Back' on my browser, then right-click on the link I want to send and select 'Copy Link Location' and paste it into an email. Neil -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Problems-in-Recommending-R-tp21783299p21811904.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. -- John C Frain Trinity College Dublin Dublin 2 Ireland www.tcd.ie/Economics/staff/frainj/home.html mailto:fra...@tcd.ie mailto:fra...@gmail.com __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 9:03 AM, Peter Dalgaard p.dalga...@biostat.ku.dk wrote: hadley wickham wrote: 1. avoid clicking on the R version 2.8.1 link - that takes you to a directory listing of strangely named files Yes, this is of course much harder than avoiding to read the two bullet points labeled Getting Started You think people read text before clicking on links? ;) Next you'll be trying to persuade me that people read the R startup text. I certainly had never noticed that link - the wrong words are higlighted by the link - the important part of that sentence is download R, CRAN mirror is just an implementation detail. 2. recognise that you need to click on an CRAN (what is a cran?) Clicking on the words CRAN mirror never comes to people's mind. I mean, it's not like the first line of the link explains the acronym, is it? Which first line? You have to click on the link to find out what it means. 3. successfully select a mirror that is up-to-date (with no information about which mirrors are up-to-date) Of course the R project website is required to keep track of that. Well someone needs to. 4. click Windows (ok, this one is easy) 5. guess that base is the distribution that you want Yes, there are two links so people will take the other one. Why would anyone ever click on contrib? Why not move the content of base to that directory and then provide a link to contrib? That would save one step in the process. 6. phew, you're there (but don't follow the advice to download from a mirror near you or you'll be back at step 3) Its even more confusing than that because actually you're not there yet! You have to click on the unobtrusive patched link and then download that or you get the version with the bugs. Wow, I'd never noticed that before! However, you are only supposed to need it if you are one of the exceedingly rare users who happens to be bitten by a bug that went undiscovered through several weeks of user testing. (Warning: The above may contain traces of sarcasm...) Ditto. Hadley -- http://had.co.nz/ __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
One of my colleagues is a interdisciplinary PhD in Design and Psychology and he has an in with a design school where we might be able to get students to take on the redesign of the website. He asks: In order to ensure efficient consumption of resources and maximize our return on investment, please provide potential designers with a direct point of contact (name, email, telephone number) so that they may request a project description and feedback. Obviously the redesign idea has been generated in a community thread, but if anyone from the R foundation can step up as such a contact person I will forward your info to my colleague who will then take the temperature of students at the design school. -- Mike Lawrence Graduate Student Department of Psychology Dalhousie University www.thatmike.com Looking to arrange a meeting? Check my public calendar: http://www.thatmike.com/mikes-public-calendar ~ Certainty is folly... I think. ~ __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
The most useful thing (and quite rightly so) on the front page is the link the the FAQ which should be the starting point for anyone looking at any new software, and answers/explains everything thats pertinent! (At least thats what I read first when I start using new software and have questions). Again, have you ever read the FAQ? It is 133 pages! Hadley -- http://had.co.nz/ __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
hadley wrote: The most useful thing (and quite rightly so) on the front page is the link the the FAQ which should be the starting point for anyone looking at any new software, and answers/explains everything thats pertinent! (At least thats what I read first when I start using new software and have questions). Again, have you ever read the FAQ? It is 133 pages! 133 pages (when printed?) that is divivded up into nice sections with sensible, navigable headings so that I can quickly find the relevant information From r-project.org - R FAQ - R Basics - How Can R be Installed - Choose your OS all in 10 seconds. People can only have their hands held for so long (and I'm not for one minute insinuating that you need your hand holding, its a more general comment as the information is out there, it just requires it to be read and understood). Neil -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Problems-in-Recommending-R-tp21783299p21813384.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
Warren Young wrote: Yyeahhh...look how much that sort of stance has helped the cause of Linux on the desktop. World domination has been a year or two away for the last 10 years. (Speaking as one who uses Linux every day, and used it as his main desktop at home for many years before switching to OS X.) Linux on the desktop is more likely a goal of Ubuntu. The main aims of http://www.kernel.org/ is simply to support the hardware in an open manner. GNU was to develop a UNIX-like standards compliant operating system, not sure getting that onto the desktop of every computer was an aim. Anyway this is a tangent and mostly irrelevant. Warren Young wrote: I think that's the earlier poster's main point: this can be a one-click process. Why make the human tell the computer things it already knows? Because sometimes the human has a better idea as to what they want than the computer? Example - I've found it infuriating when I've wanted to download browser source code (as the distro I use compiles from source) for firefox and only been presented with pre-compiled binaries (if I'm browsing at home) or windows versions (if I'm at work), then wasting more time trying to find FTP mirrors where the most recent source tar-balls are available, and as I remember that took far longer than being able to choose what OS and version I wanted from a series of clearly written pages. Neil -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Problems-in-Recommending-R-tp21783299p21813695.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
Hadley wickham wrote: The most useful thing (and quite rightly so) on the front page is the link the the FAQ which should be the starting point for anyone looking at any new software, and answers/explains everything thats pertinent! (At least thats what I read first when I start using new software and have questions). Again, have you ever read the FAQ? It is 133 pages! This means you have not read them??? Time to start reading! Uwe Hadley __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
Gabor Grothendieck wrote: On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 9:20 AM, hadley wickham h.wick...@gmail.com wrote: Again I'd disagree, perhaps the most widely used suite of software has a very simple and clean web-site with few bells and whistles, ditto for one of the most popular text-editors. I am of course referring to the suite of GNU utilities (http://www.gnu.org/) that make a working GNU/Linux distribution and Emacs (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ ). I like the R web-site, its clean and simple, present key information prominently (manuals, docs, CRAN, RNew and mailing lists). Have you ever used the R website? To download the latest version for R for windows you have to: 1. avoid clicking on the R version 2.8.1 link - that takes you to a directory listing of strangely named files 2. recognise that you need to click on an CRAN (what is a cran?) 3. successfully select a mirror that is up-to-date (with no information about which mirrors are up-to-date) 4. click Windows (ok, this one is easy) 5. guess that base is the distribution that you want 6. phew, you're there (but don't follow the advice to download from a mirror near you or you'll be back at step 3) Its even more confusing than that because actually you're not there yet! You have to click on the unobtrusive patched link and then download that or you get the version with the bugs. ... while you generally prefer the new bugs. otherwise, when you report a problem, you're (sometimes kindly) asked to upgrade -- and here you go again. vQ __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
How much time do you think is needed to read 133 pages of FAQ. Regards, Ajay www.decisionstats.com On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 10:04 PM, Uwe Ligges lig...@statistik.tu-dortmund.de wrote: Hadley wickham wrote: The most useful thing (and quite rightly so) on the front page is the link the the FAQ which should be the starting point for anyone looking at any new software, and answers/explains everything thats pertinent! (At least thats what I read first when I start using new software and have questions). Again, have you ever read the FAQ? It is 133 pages! This means you have not read them??? Time to start reading! Uwe Hadley __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. [[alternative HTML version deleted]] __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
Ajay ohri wrote: How much time do you think is needed to read 133 pages of FAQ. About 132.5 / 133 more times longer than most people are wanting to spend. Patrick Burns patr...@burns-stat.com +44 (0)20 8525 0696 http://www.burns-stat.com (home of The R Inferno and A Guide for the Unwilling S User) Regards, Ajay www.decisionstats.com On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 10:04 PM, Uwe Ligges lig...@statistik.tu-dortmund.de wrote: Hadley wickham wrote: The most useful thing (and quite rightly so) on the front page is the link the the FAQ which should be the starting point for anyone looking at any new software, and answers/explains everything thats pertinent! (At least thats what I read first when I start using new software and have questions). Again, have you ever read the FAQ? It is 133 pages! This means you have not read them??? Time to start reading! Uwe Hadley __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. [[alternative HTML version deleted]] __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
One of my colleagues is a interdisciplinary PhD in Design and Psychology and he has an in with a design school where we might be able to get students to take on the redesign of the website. He asks: In order to ensure efficient consumption of resources and maximize our return on investment, please provide potential designers with a direct point of contact (name, email, telephone number) so that they may request a project description and feedback. Obviously the redesign idea has been generated in a community thread, but if anyone from the R foundation can step up as such a contact person I will forward your info to my colleague who will then take the temperature of students at the design school. Mike -- Mike Lawrence Graduate Student Department of Psychology Dalhousie University www.thatmike.com Looking to arrange a meeting? Check my public calendar: http://www.thatmike.com/mikes-public-calendar ~ Certainty is folly... I think. ~ __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
Neil Shephard wrote: Why make the human tell the computer things it already knows? Because sometimes the human has a better idea as to what they want than the computer? I think the computer can guess the right answer in the solid majority of cases. Up in the 90th percentile certainly, probably much higher. It gets all it needs to make that guess in the HTTP request. If the default doesn't work, fine, the user can go through the same 6-step process as now, losing nothing. This is no argument against trying to make a good default. Example - I've found it infuriating when I've wanted to download browser source code (as the distro I use compiles from source) for firefox and only been presented with pre-compiled binaries (if I'm browsing at home) or windows versions (if I'm at work), then wasting more time trying to find FTP mirrors where the most recent source tar-balls are available, and as I remember that took far longer than being able to choose what OS and version I wanted from a series of clearly written pages. Granted, Mozilla's leaning strongly toward the end-user binary-only case. People in the R world are more likely to want source than Firefox users. But, it's still less than 1% of all downloads, I'd bet. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
We often get emails like the first in this thread that R could do with an update on homepage design (I fully agree) ... but actually nobody volunteers to do it. Hence, we still have what I did when the worldwide number of R users was probably less than 1000. Well I've volunteered a couple of times but no one took me up on the offer... I'm not sure a competition to redesign the homepage is the best way to go. Why not start a fund to hire a professional designer to look at all aspects of the R website? Hadley -- http://had.co.nz/ __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
Plain HTML coding is simple enough for this list ( I think)...but aesthetic designhmm But a contest would the best way to get the best design and can be publicly asked from the graphics community ( not just the R community)..remember Tom Sawyer and the fence :) - I volunteer in both cases :) Winner of Design Contest should get some bragging rights in a small hyperlink (with nofollow tag -so no seo) on main page ,French Wine in the user conference location , etc etc... On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 5:26 PM, friedrich.lei...@stat.uni-muenchen.dewrote: On Mon, 02 Feb 2009 08:44:21 +0100, Thomas Petzoldt (TP) wrote: Hi, you are probably right, though I must say that I like *spartanic and efficient* homepages and I don't think that the example given by the first mail is a good prototype for the R homepage. But, yes, occasional face lifting may be adequate. Anti-aliasing is of course simple, but that's probably not the point. (And I know that there are graphics experts with a masters in psychology between us.) So, why not a new Homepage Graphics Competition 2009? There is still some time until useR!2009 in Rennes: http://www2.agrocampus-ouest.fr/math/useR-2009/ Perhaps we should extend that to a competition for the complete design of the homepage? We often get emails like the first in this thread that R could do with an update on homepage design (I fully agree) ... but actually nobody volunteers to do it. Hence, we still have what I did when the worldwide number of R users was probably less than 1000. For technical reasons there are some conditions: the homepage is maintained via SVN like the R sources, so all should be plain HTML, no content management system etc. Ad frames: the main reason that I used them in the first place is to have the menus etc in only one file, no need for updating several files when a link changes. Today I would probably use iframes, but any other soultion is fine, too. Another plus would be if we could use the same design for CRAN, and that means no server-trickery like server-side includes etc (because we do not control the server setup of the mirrors). Best, Fritz -- --- Prof. Dr. Friedrich Leisch Institut für Statistik Tel: (+49 89) 2180 3165 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Fax: (+49 89) 2180 5308 Ludwigstraße 33 D-80539 München http://www.statistik.lmu.de/~leisch --- Journal Computational Statistics --- http://www.springer.com/180 Münchner R Kurse --- http://www.statistik.lmu.de/R __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. [[alternative HTML version deleted]] __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
friedrich.lei...@stat.uni-muenchen.de wrote: On Mon, 2 Feb 2009 18:14:03 +0530, Ajay ohri (Ao) wrote: Plain HTML coding is simple enough for this list ( I think)...but aesthetic designhmm In most cases one can do more than most think using HTML and CSS: Our universities corporate design was done by professionals and is backed by a CMS: http://www.uni-muenchen.de Our dpertment didn't want to use the CMS, so we emulated it using HTML, CSS and iframes: http://www.stat.uni-muenchen.de/ which is *much* more convenient to maintain for us: I have a copy of my page on my laptop, I can work on it while offline on a train, etc. I don't want to discuss whether the above examples are aesthetic or not (we are required to follow the coporate design, so have no choice). The main point I want to make is: that everything is static HTML makes life very easy for command line junkies like me ;-) Apart from making life easy for command line junkies, plain HTML is also very search engine friendly. Best, Tobias __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
On 2/02/2009, at 3:52 PM, Ajay ohri wrote:
Dear List,
One persistent feedback I am getting to people who are newly
introduced to R
( especially in this cost cutting recession) is -
1) The website looks a bit old.
While the current website does have a lot of hard work behind it,
should n't
a world class statistics package have a better website instead.
You can check out www.knime.org which is an open source software ,
and free,
and supports R---and notice the change in perception .
I think the R website is just fine as it is. Effort should be put into
content and not into cosmetics. Those (potential) users who would be
likely to
be influenced by such trivialities as the appearance of the web page
are unlikely
to be the sort of people who would use R anyway.
cheers,
Rolf Turner
##
Attention:\ This e-mail message is privileged and confid...{{dropped:9}}
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and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
On Tue, 3 Feb 2009, Rolf Turner wrote: I think the R website is just fine as it is. Effort should be put into content and not into cosmetics. Those (potential) users who would be likely to be influenced by such trivialities as the appearance of the web page are unlikely to be the sort of people who would use R anyway. I respectfully disagree. In my repeated experience, I have seen colleagues in industry and university simply write R off as too difficult or not worth the effort based on purely cosmetic grounds, and then at my urging and after some instruction embrace R as being a fantastic piece of software. The reality of the situation is that before you read a book, you only have its cover to judge. Suggesting that people should read every book regardless of the cover does not make sense for people who have other things to do. In the ecological context of open-source software, the cover or cosmetics of a software program, its documentation, and its support structure are actually quite correlated with overall ease of use, and if functionality is modeled as the factorial interaction of information produced with the amount of time it takes to produce the information, then functionality correlates with ease of use, and so the appearance of the webpage is not a triviality. Cordially, -- Adam D. I. Kramer Ph.D. Student, Social Psychology University of Oregon __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
On Mon, 02 Feb 2009 08:44:21 +0100, Thomas Petzoldt (TP) wrote: Hi, you are probably right, though I must say that I like *spartanic and efficient* homepages and I don't think that the example given by the first mail is a good prototype for the R homepage. But, yes, occasional face lifting may be adequate. Anti-aliasing is of course simple, but that's probably not the point. (And I know that there are graphics experts with a masters in psychology between us.) So, why not a new Homepage Graphics Competition 2009? There is still some time until useR!2009 in Rennes: http://www2.agrocampus-ouest.fr/math/useR-2009/ Perhaps we should extend that to a competition for the complete design of the homepage? We often get emails like the first in this thread that R could do with an update on homepage design (I fully agree) ... but actually nobody volunteers to do it. Hence, we still have what I did when the worldwide number of R users was probably less than 1000. For technical reasons there are some conditions: the homepage is maintained via SVN like the R sources, so all should be plain HTML, no content management system etc. Ad frames: the main reason that I used them in the first place is to have the menus etc in only one file, no need for updating several files when a link changes. Today I would probably use iframes, but any other soultion is fine, too. Another plus would be if we could use the same design for CRAN, and that means no server-trickery like server-side includes etc (because we do not control the server setup of the mirrors). Best, Fritz -- --- Prof. Dr. Friedrich Leisch Institut für Statistik Tel: (+49 89) 2180 3165 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Fax: (+49 89) 2180 5308 Ludwigstraße 33 D-80539 München http://www.statistik.lmu.de/~leisch --- Journal Computational Statistics --- http://www.springer.com/180 Münchner R Kurse --- http://www.statistik.lmu.de/R __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
On Mon, 2 Feb 2009 18:14:03 +0530, Ajay ohri (Ao) wrote: Plain HTML coding is simple enough for this list ( I think)...but aesthetic designhmm In most cases one can do more than most think using HTML and CSS: Our universities corporate design was done by professionals and is backed by a CMS: http://www.uni-muenchen.de Our dpertment didn't want to use the CMS, so we emulated it using HTML, CSS and iframes: http://www.stat.uni-muenchen.de/ which is *much* more convenient to maintain for us: I have a copy of my page on my laptop, I can work on it while offline on a train, etc. I don't want to discuss whether the above examples are aesthetic or not (we are required to follow the coporate design, so have no choice). The main point I want to make is: that everything is static HTML makes life very easy for command line junkies like me ;-) Best, Fritz -- --- Prof. Dr. Friedrich Leisch Institut für Statistik Tel: (+49 89) 2180 3165 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Fax: (+49 89) 2180 5308 Ludwigstraße 33 D-80539 München http://www.statistik.lmu.de/~leisch --- Journal Computational Statistics --- http://www.springer.com/180 Münchner R Kurse --- http://www.statistik.lmu.de/R __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
On Mon, 2 Feb 2009 13:43:23 +0100, ONKELINX, Thierry (OT) wrote: Dear Fritz, I'm wondering if the use of plain HTML is a conditio sine qua non. Just not to be mistaken: with plain HTML I mostly meant text files, of course including CSS etc. What are the advantages of maintaining the website via SVN? IMO maintaining a website and source code are two separate things. Sure, but it makes life easier for us: this way all of R core can modify the webpage, and access rights etc are easier to maintain if all is done using the same system (in our case, SVN). It is simply very convenient that I don't have learn and remember different tools for different aspects of the R project. Most of us have almost everything under version control (from source code to HTML pages, to latex files, etc), it simply is the groupware we use. Best, Fritz -- --- Prof. Dr. Friedrich Leisch Institut für Statistik Tel: (+49 89) 2180 3165 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Fax: (+49 89) 2180 5308 Ludwigstraße 33 D-80539 München http://www.statistik.lmu.de/~leisch --- Journal Computational Statistics --- http://www.springer.com/180 Münchner R Kurse --- http://www.statistik.lmu.de/R __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
Dear Fritz, I'm wondering if the use of plain HTML is a conditio sine qua non. What are the advantages of maintaining the website via SVN? IMO maintaining a website and source code are two separate things. Just my 2 cents. Thierry ir. Thierry Onkelinx Instituut voor natuur- en bosonderzoek / Research Institute for Nature and Forest Cel biometrie, methodologie en kwaliteitszorg / Section biometrics, methodology and quality assurance Gaverstraat 4 9500 Geraardsbergen Belgium tel. + 32 54/436 185 thierry.onkel...@inbo.be www.inbo.be To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more than asking him to perform a post-mortem examination: he may be able to say what the experiment died of. ~ Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher The plural of anecdote is not data. ~ Roger Brinner The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data. ~ John Tukey -Oorspronkelijk bericht- Van: r-help-boun...@r-project.org [mailto:r-help-boun...@r-project.org] Namens friedrich.lei...@stat.uni-muenchen.de Verzonden: maandag 2 februari 2009 12:56 Aan: thomas.petzo...@tu-dresden.de CC: r-help@r-project.org; user-2...@r-project.org; p...@stat.auckland.ac.nz Onderwerp: Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R On Mon, 02 Feb 2009 08:44:21 +0100, Thomas Petzoldt (TP) wrote: Hi, you are probably right, though I must say that I like *spartanic and efficient* homepages and I don't think that the example given by the first mail is a good prototype for the R homepage. But, yes, occasional face lifting may be adequate. Anti-aliasing is of course simple, but that's probably not the point. (And I know that there are graphics experts with a masters in psychology between us.) So, why not a new Homepage Graphics Competition 2009? There is still some time until useR!2009 in Rennes: http://www2.agrocampus-ouest.fr/math/useR-2009/ Perhaps we should extend that to a competition for the complete design of the homepage? We often get emails like the first in this thread that R could do with an update on homepage design (I fully agree) ... but actually nobody volunteers to do it. Hence, we still have what I did when the worldwide number of R users was probably less than 1000. For technical reasons there are some conditions: the homepage is maintained via SVN like the R sources, so all should be plain HTML, no content management system etc. Ad frames: the main reason that I used them in the first place is to have the menus etc in only one file, no need for updating several files when a link changes. Today I would probably use iframes, but any other soultion is fine, too. Another plus would be if we could use the same design for CRAN, and that means no server-trickery like server-side includes etc (because we do not control the server setup of the mirrors). Best, Fritz -- --- Prof. Dr. Friedrich Leisch Institut für Statistik Tel: (+49 89) 2180 3165 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Fax: (+49 89) 2180 5308 Ludwigstraße 33 D-80539 München http://www.statistik.lmu.de/~leisch --- Journal Computational Statistics --- http://www.springer.com/180 Münchner R Kurse --- http://www.statistik.lmu.de/R __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. Dit bericht en eventuele bijlagen geven enkel de visie van de schrijver weer en binden het INBO onder geen enkel beding, zolang dit bericht niet bevestigd is door een geldig ondertekend document. The views expressed in this message and any annex are purely those of the writer and may not be regarded as stating an official position of INBO, as long as the message is not confirmed by a duly signed document. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
yes html and css can be pretty. the point is if we can do so much collective and individual work in suggesting,creating,maintaining much more complex codes- how much time would it take to replace the html of the home page? hmm .. who decides to create the Official 2009 Website Design Contest is now open for entries ? - submit html and css only pages by such and such date... - winners choosen by vote among common publicand judges and fans and media - award /prize is mention and hyperlink (nofollow tag) and bragging rights and free lodging and tickets to the annual R conference and extra credits for passing the dissertation exam and A in Stats 303 and sip of vintage beer /wine /schnapps/vodka. and .. regards, Ajay Samuel Goldwyn - I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it. On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 6:45 PM, friedrich.lei...@stat.uni-muenchen.dewrote: On Mon, 2 Feb 2009 18:14:03 +0530, Ajay ohri (Ao) wrote: Plain HTML coding is simple enough for this list ( I think)...but aesthetic designhmm In most cases one can do more than most think using HTML and CSS: Our universities corporate design was done by professionals and is backed by a CMS: http://www.uni-muenchen.de Our dpertment didn't want to use the CMS, so we emulated it using HTML, CSS and iframes: http://www.stat.uni-muenchen.de/ which is *much* more convenient to maintain for us: I have a copy of my page on my laptop, I can work on it while offline on a train, etc. I don't want to discuss whether the above examples are aesthetic or not (we are required to follow the coporate design, so have no choice). The main point I want to make is: that everything is static HTML makes life very easy for command line junkies like me ;-) Best, Fritz -- --- Prof. Dr. Friedrich Leisch Institut für Statistik Tel: (+49 89) 2180 3165 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Fax: (+49 89) 2180 5308 Ludwigstraße 33 D-80539 München http://www.statistik.lmu.de/~leisch --- Journal Computational Statistics --- http://www.springer.com/180 Münchner R Kurse --- http://www.statistik.lmu.de/R --- [[alternative HTML version deleted]] __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
I offer my time in this particular pursuit. Although, the website is functional and I wonder if statisticians and other scientists care about the aesthetics of the website. R is incredibly useful to me, and until this conversation I didn't even realize that the website was a little old school, but I may be an outlier. Because it is useful- spartanic, I believe, was used earlier and I agree. However, if the group thinks it would be a useful pursuit then I will help any way that I can. Stephen Sefick On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 8:41 AM, Ajay ohri ohri2...@gmail.com wrote: yes html and css can be pretty. the point is if we can do so much collective and individual work in suggesting,creating,maintaining much more complex codes- how much time would it take to replace the html of the home page? hmm .. who decides to create the Official 2009 Website Design Contest is now open for entries ? - submit html and css only pages by such and such date... - winners choosen by vote among common publicand judges and fans and media - award /prize is mention and hyperlink (nofollow tag) and bragging rights and free lodging and tickets to the annual R conference and extra credits for passing the dissertation exam and A in Stats 303 and sip of vintage beer /wine /schnapps/vodka. and .. regards, Ajay Samuel Goldwyn - I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it. On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 6:45 PM, friedrich.lei...@stat.uni-muenchen.dewrote: On Mon, 2 Feb 2009 18:14:03 +0530, Ajay ohri (Ao) wrote: Plain HTML coding is simple enough for this list ( I think)...but aesthetic designhmm In most cases one can do more than most think using HTML and CSS: Our universities corporate design was done by professionals and is backed by a CMS: http://www.uni-muenchen.de Our dpertment didn't want to use the CMS, so we emulated it using HTML, CSS and iframes: http://www.stat.uni-muenchen.de/ which is *much* more convenient to maintain for us: I have a copy of my page on my laptop, I can work on it while offline on a train, etc. I don't want to discuss whether the above examples are aesthetic or not (we are required to follow the coporate design, so have no choice). The main point I want to make is: that everything is static HTML makes life very easy for command line junkies like me ;-) Best, Fritz -- --- Prof. Dr. Friedrich Leisch Institut für Statistik Tel: (+49 89) 2180 3165 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Fax: (+49 89) 2180 5308 Ludwigstraße 33 D-80539 München http://www.statistik.lmu.de/~leisch --- Journal Computational Statistics --- http://www.springer.com/180 Münchner R Kurse --- http://www.statistik.lmu.de/R --- [[alternative HTML version deleted]] __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. -- Stephen Sefick Let's not spend our time and resources thinking about things that are so little or so large that all they really do for us is puff us up and make us feel like gods. We are mammals, and have not exhausted the annoying little problems of being mammals. -K. Mullis __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
[R] Problems in Recommending R
Dear List, One persistent feedback I am getting to people who are newly introduced to R ( especially in this cost cutting recession) is - 1) The website looks a bit old. While the current website does have a lot of hard work behind it, should n't a world class statistics package have a better website instead. You can check out www.knime.org which is an open source software , and free, and supports R---and notice the change in perception . Best Regards, Ajay Ohri www.decisionstats.com [[alternative HTML version deleted]] __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
A first step that would make the current Web page look much better would be to anti-alias the demonstration graphic. The current graphic makes R graphics seem (falsely!) to be very primitive. I'm afraid I don't know how to do the anti-aliasing myself. Replacing the fixed-width, typewriter-style font with something a bit more elegant might also be good -s On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 9:52 PM, Ajay ohri ohri2...@gmail.com wrote: Dear List, One persistent feedback I am getting to people who are newly introduced to R ( especially in this cost cutting recession) is - 1) The website looks a bit old. While the current website does have a lot of hard work behind it, should n't a world class statistics package have a better website instead. You can check out www.knime.org which is an open source software , and free, and supports R---and notice the change in perception . Best Regards, Ajay Ohri __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
Hi, you are probably right, though I must say that I like *spartanic and efficient* homepages and I don't think that the example given by the first mail is a good prototype for the R homepage. But, yes, occasional face lifting may be adequate. Anti-aliasing is of course simple, but that's probably not the point. (And I know that there are graphics experts with a masters in psychology between us.) So, why not a new Homepage Graphics Competition 2009? There is still some time until useR!2009 in Rennes: http://www2.agrocampus-ouest.fr/math/useR-2009/ Thomas Petzoldt PS to all useRs: Don't miss to visit the useR!2009 homepage and note the upcoming submission deadline 2009-02-27 and the exciting location of the conference! Stavros Macrakis wrote: A first step that would make the current Web page look much better would be to anti-alias the demonstration graphic. The current graphic makes R graphics seem (falsely!) to be very primitive. I'm afraid I don't know how to do the anti-aliasing myself. Replacing the fixed-width, typewriter-style font with something a bit more elegant might also be good -s On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 9:52 PM, Ajay ohri ohri2...@gmail.com wrote: Dear List, One persistent feedback I am getting to people who are newly introduced to R ( especially in this cost cutting recession) is - 1) The website looks a bit old. While the current website does have a lot of hard work behind it, should n't a world class statistics package have a better website instead. You can check out www.knime.org which is an open source software , and free, and supports R---and notice the change in perception . Best Regards, Ajay Ohri __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
