Barry,
thanks for the ideas and the suggestion of a more interesting title page
for the task views. Just a few comments from me as the person coordinating
the task views on CRAN:
o The design of CRAN task view presentation/installation was chosen to be
parallel to CRAN package presentation/installation. In particular, the
task views are mirrored with the rest of CRAN and all links refer to the
locally available package pages. Also, installation can be done from any
repository.
o While this is good for distributing web services, it limits the
possibilities in terms of web design. In think that the CRAN maintainers
do not use Javascript, for example.
o Personally, I like the images used but I could imagine that some
maintainers would prefer different pictures (e.g., a different
visualization of a posterior for the Bayesian task view). But if the
maintainers choose the images, it would be harder to assure a consistent
design, I guess.
So there are some practical caveats when implementing such an approach.
Certainly nothing insurmountable but maybe not very straightforward
either. In any case, I will keep the "ctv" tools in sync with the general
approach taken by CRAN.
Best,
Z
On Tue, 21 Feb 2012, Barry Rowlingson wrote:
A little while ago here we had a short discussion about Task Views - I
think ignited by someone saying 'how many times do I have to say "have
you read the Optimisation Task View?"?' and I poured some fuel on that
fire by saying "Task Views" was a stupid name.
Anyway, I did say that Task Views were rather brilliant, but were let
down by their hidden position on the R web sites (tucked away as the
third element of a sub-menu of a CRAN mirror site linked to by the
CRAN link from the Download menu on the main R home page). The index
page is rather plain, so I designed a more engaging one. The result of
my effort is now here:
http://www.maths.lancs.ac.uk/~rowlings/R/TaskViews/
Having done that, I even considered that something like that could
replace the R Homepage. Giving new visitors an idea of the vast range
of techniques and application areas available in R would seem to be
better than the current graphic which has been there since perhaps
2004.
Comments, thoughts, flames, etc?
Barry
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