It's easier to install a package from CRAN than from Github, but not all
that much easier. If it's too much trouble to satisfy CRAN, then don't
bother. Just post instructions on how to do a Github install of it and
move on to other things. (I'd post those instructions in a README.md
file on the Github site, so when people follow your link they'll find
the description.)
Duncan Murdoch
On 28/06/2020 12:07 p.m., Charles Geyer wrote:
I have a package that has the datasets for Categorical Data Analysis by
Agresti that do not appear in the book. The whole package is a github repo
https://github.com/cjgeyer/CatDataAnalysis. All of the data were
translated mechanically using the R script foo.R included in the repo (but
not in the package) from Agresti's web site
http://www.stat.ufl.edu/~aa/cda/data.html.
This package seems to be a useful service to students and teachers. The
data
are much simpler to use with this package than trying to get the data from
Agresti's web page (foo.R has 277 lines of code).
When I submitted the package to CRAN, I got the following response.
The Description field of the DESCRIPTION file is intended to be a (one
paragraph) description of what the package does and why it may be
useful. Please elaborate. Tell the users what the datasets are about and
what they contain so they can use them even when they haven't read your
book.
Please fix and resubmit, and document what was changed in the submission
comments.
In an alternate universe without copyright law this seems a reasonable
request. In this universe it seems to be asking for trouble. I know about
fair use, but I am not a lawyer and do not want to walk the borderline
between fair use and copyright violation.
The package as it is seems OK because it comes from the author's public web
site and these data were never in the book.
Please note that I made Alan Agresti (with his acquiescence) the author of
the package because it is his book and his data, but I (or rather foo.R)
did all the work.
I replied to cran.r-project.org, but that was apparently sent to /dev/null.
This book is IMHO the authoritative textbook on the subject. Amazon sales
rank agrees. The book is used for many courses. So this package would be
very helpful as is to many students and teachers.
So what to do? Is there any way to get this package on CRAN?
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