From oliver at first.in-berlin.de  Tue Jun  7 15:03:15 2011
From: oliver at first.in-berlin.de (oliver)
Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2011 15:03:15 +0200
Subject: [Rd] Packages for R-CRAN (organizing aspects)
Message-ID: <20110607130315.GA4434@siouxsie>

Hello,

I have some ideas for packages that I want to provide on R-CRAN.

One package alreads is working, but I have some warnings in
when compiling. Also I don't know if the libraries in use are only
working on Unix/Linux.

So I have some general questions:

  - If I'm not sure if the code would also work on windows
    (needing some ceratain libraries or tools),
    would it be better to mark it as Unix-like only?

    Would other people, who are interested in using the package
    on Windows, then look for the other issues?

    (I'm just interested in providing the functionality, and I don't use Windows,
     so compatibility would not be my main goal, if it's using certain libraries;
     but if the code is not relying on certain libs or tools I of course write
     code ANSI-conform, so that it *should* compile on windows too.)

    I mean: I just want to have the work for Unix/Linux, but in general like the
    platform-independent approach. I just have no interest, looking at the windows
    side too much. Are there people from R-CRAN team, who help at that point to make
    things available on many platforms?


  - I have in mind packages for reading a lot of different files / fileformat.
    How to name them?
    it would be consequent to name them
    read.<fileformat>
    but I'm not sure if this naming style is reserved for OO-methods only,
    and that topic I will learn later in detail, so that at the moment
    I just would provide the raw functionality.

    Maybe the name of the reading function should then better be named
    read<filefomat> or <fileformat>read ?

  - There are a lot of different fileformats that I want to read in.

    Would it be better to make for each format one different package,
    or rather put them all together as a package "Readmisc"?

    For example the following formats I have in mind:

      - jpeg (libjpeg62)                     => already working, I want to
                                                clean up the code and documentation
                                                soon and then provide on R-CRAN

      - bvh   (maybe (f)lex or yacc or pcre) => want to start this soon

      - apachelogfile /maybe using pcre)     => starting date not planned

      - some other formats also


  - Other package ideas: rolling application (which uses R's built in types,
    not like zoo() using special types)


Can you give me some general advice on how to organize this best,
so that it also fits into the R / R-CRAN philosophy?!


Ciao,
   Oliver



[Rd] Packages for R-CRAN (organizing aspects)
oliver