On 28/02/2010 12:29 PM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
Or both the short and and the long term won't happen.
That's one interpretation. I'd prefer to think that the short term
changes happened in November. All the content is there; it just needs
to be made prettier.
Duncan Murdoch
On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 12:24 PM, Duncan Murdoch <murd...@stats.uwo.ca> wrote:
On 28/02/2010 12:04 PM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 11:52 AM, Duncan Murdoch <murd...@stats.uwo.ca>
wrote:
Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 9:43 AM, Duncan Murdoch <murd...@stats.uwo.ca>
wrote:
On 28/02/2010 9:08 AM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 8:59 AM, Duncan Murdoch <murd...@stats.uwo.ca>
wrote:
On 28/02/2010 7:19 AM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
The name of the package is at the top of each help page and then
library(help = myPackage) would get you the maintainer info. Or in
place of the last step googling for CRAN myPackage would get to a
page
like this:
http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/zoo/index.html
so it could be done in two steps.
What would be nice would be if the R help systems HTML help page for
each command had a link to a local version of the above page for the
associated package (and perhaps the HTML Index page for the package
would also link to it). Then it would just be a matter of bringing
up
the help page and clicking on the package name at the top.
Not all of the information on that page would make sense locally.
Some
of
it is there to help you decide whether to download the package, or to
actually download it.
The things I see that aren't available in the package index page in
R-devel:
- CRAN checks
- download links
- reverse dependencies
Am I missing something? None of those seem like they'd be sensible
locally.
By Index page I was referring to the page you get when you click Index
at the bottom of any HTML help file. After clicking Index you get an
HTML page that gives a clickable list of help pages for that package.
You don`t get the description of the package, the name and contact
info to the maintainer, or a link to such info. For the
helloJavaWorld package this is what you get (where I have added a star
after each link):
Hello Java World
Documentation for package ‘helloJavaWorld’ version 0.0-6
User Guides and Package Vignettes
Read overview* or browse directory*.
Help Pages
helloJavaWorld* Function to say hello from a Java class
That looks like 2.10.x or earlier. In R-devel (to be 2.11.0) you get:
Documentation for package ‘helloJavaWorld’ version 0.0-7
* DESCRIPTION file.
* Overview of user guides and package vignettes; browse directory.
Help Pages
helloJavaWorld Function to say hello from a Java class
The only addition for that particular package is the link to the
DESCRIPTION
file, which contains most of the additional information that's on the
CRAN
page. Other pages will also show links to demos and package NEWS.
That's great. Looks like you have already anticipated this.
Would still be nice to have
- a second link to the Index at the top of each help page since its
typically off the screen otherwise.
Yes, I agree. In fact, I think the whole system needs to be updated.
Anyone like doing HTML design?
- also if the DESCRIPTION could be HTMLized with links that would be
nice. The software that puts the DESCRIPTION file info up onto CRAN
already can do that so the capability seems to exist.
Sure, but remember that CRAN is not part of R, so the code needs to be
extracted from the CRAN code (which I don't have a copy of), and
rewritten
to suit the new context. It may not be any easier to do that than to
redo
it from scratch, but in any case, it needs someone to volunteer to do it
(and I think it should be part of the HTML design mentioned above.
- a link from the Index or possibly right from each help page to the
help.start() page so that once you are in HTML you can just click
about rather than having to go back to R and then back into help.
Its normal in web pages that there is a link on every one of them back
to the home page. Typically clicking the site name or logo at the top
gets you there.
Currently from any help page you can get there in two clicks: the
"Index"
link at the bottom of the page takes you to the package index, the up
arrow
on the package index takes you to the help.start() page. But I agree
this
could be improved: see above.
Duncan Murdoch
Couldn't this be separated into short term and long term. Surely its
trivial to add a second link to the Index at the top of every help
page and that is the most important of all the wish list items. That
shouldn't have to wait for a redesign (which could take some time)
since its such an annoyance.
That's one argument. Another is that the more of an annoyance it is, the
more likely someone will be motivated to fix it. If we do a partial job to
remove the annoyance, the long term improvement might never happen.
Duncan Murdoch
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