I strongly support this proposal! I also find it inconvenient to cite some R packages and really do not like edit the BibTeX entries manually.
Regards, Yihui -- Yihui Xie <xieyi...@gmail.com> Phone: 515-294-2465 Web: http://yihui.name Department of Statistics, Iowa State University 2215 Snedecor Hall, Ames, IA On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 8:44 AM, Michael Friendly <frien...@yorku.ca> wrote: > == Summary == > * Problem: BibTeX entries extracted from R packages via citation() require > too much manual editing to be > of general use. > * Proposal: Date: fields should be made mandatory in package DESCRIPTION > files, perhaps > beginning with warnings from R CMD check > * Proposal: Package authors should be encouraged to use a (new) > Contributors: field in the DESCRIPTION file > rather than packing all information into the Author: field, which at present > cannot often be parsed by BibTeX. > * Files: All test files referred to here can be found at > > http://euclid.psych.yorku.ca/SCS/Private/Rbibs/ > > == Details == > Around 16 Dec. 2009, I queried R-help about automating the extraction of > citation()s from R packages. The stimulus > was that some journals, notably JSS, now require a reference and citation of > every R package mentioned, > and it is a pain to create these manually, no less maintain them for current > versions. > > The result of that query was a function, Rpackage.bibs() by Achim Zeileis > that I have been using ever since. > Code in: http://euclid.psych.yorku.ca/SCS/Private/Rbibs/Rpackages.bib.R > On one current system I get the following: > >> Rpackage.bibs(file="Rpackages-R.2.11.1.bib") > Converted 230 of 230 package citations to BibTex > Results written to file Rpackages-R.2.11.1.bib > Warning messages: > 1: In citation(x) : > no date field in DESCRIPTION file of package 'codetools' > 2: In citation(x) : > no date field in DESCRIPTION file of package 'gridBase' > 3: In citation(x) : no date field in DESCRIPTION file of package 'iplots' >> > See: > http://euclid.psych.yorku.ca/SCS/Private/Rbibs/Rpkg-test.pdf > for the result of processing this .bib file with latex/bibtex using the > jss.bst bibliography style > > I'm writing to R-Devel because the DESCRIPTION and inst/CITATION files in R > packages provide the > basic data used in citation() and any methods based on this, and yet the > information in these files is > often insufficient to generate well-formed BibTeX entries for use in > vignettes and publications. > > One easy case is illustrated above, where 3 packages have no Date: field so > the BibTeX gets no > year = {}, > and references get printed as Murrell, P (????) for gridBase. (In my > original test under R 2.9.1, there where > ~ 20 such warnings.) Thus, I propose that Date: be a required field in > DESCRIPTION files, and > R CMD check complain if this is not found. > > The more difficult case has to do with the Author: field in the DESCRIPTION > file (when no CITATION file is present) > People can write whatever they want here, and the result looks sort of OK > when printed by citation(), but confuses > BibTeX mightly. One example: > >> citation("akima") > To cite package ‘akima’ in publications use: > > Fortran code by H. Akima R port by Albrecht Gebhardt aspline function > by Thomas Petzoldt <petzo...@rcs.urz.tu-dresden.de> enhancements and > corrections by Martin Maechler (2009). akima: Interpolation of > irregularly spaced data. R package version 0.5-4. > http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=akima > > A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is > > @Manual{, > title = {akima: Interpolation of irregularly spaced data}, > author = {Fortran code by H. Akima R port by Albrecht Gebhardt aspline > function by Thomas Petzoldt <petzo...@rcs.urz.tu-dresden.de> enhancements > and corrections by Martin Maechler}, > year = {2009}, > note = {R package version 0.5-4}, > url = {http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=akima}, > } > > ATTENTION: This citation information has been auto-generated from the > package DESCRIPTION file and may need manual editing, see > ‘help("citation")’ . >> > > Yes, the ATTENTION note does say that manual editing may be necessary, but I > think a worthy goal would be > to try to reduce the need for this. > > One simple way to do that would be to support an extra Contributions: field > in the DESCRIPTION file, > so that Authors: can be more cleanly separated for the purpose of creating > well-structured BibTeX. > Perhaps others have better ideas. > > -Michael > > -- > Michael Friendly Email: friendly AT yorku DOT ca > Professor, Psychology Dept. > York University Voice: 416 736-5115 x66249 Fax: 416 736-5814 > 4700 Keele Street Web:http://www.datavis.ca > Toronto, ONT M3J 1P3 CANADA > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
