From ggrothendieck at gmail.com  Thu Nov 15 05:55:05 2007
From: ggrothendieck at gmail.com (Gabor Grothendieck)
Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 23:55:05 -0500
Subject: [Rd] faqs
In-Reply-To: <473BB9E1.4020001@stats.uwo.ca>
References: <D4F43809-6D74-4FA4-92AB-0A9248072A1A@ysidro.econ.uiuc.edu>
	<971536df0711141753r5753c3c5i6faf438bd65ebc03@mail.gmail.com>
	<473BB9E1.4020001@stats.uwo.ca>
Message-ID: <971536df0711142055t652a618jbac4b5f23af48652@mail.gmail.com>

inst/NEWS would have the advantage of consistency with R itself
which also has a NEWS file.


On Nov 14, 2007 10:15 PM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> wrote:
> On 14/11/2007 8:53 PM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> > Another possibility is to just place it at the end of the vignette.
> > That is where it is in the proto package:
> >
> > http://cran.r-project.org/doc/vignettes/proto/proto.pdf
> >
> > Package documentation is already quite scattered and adding
> > a faq() command would add just one more thing one has
> > to do.  Here are some places one might look already for
> > documentation:
> >
> > package?mypackage
>
> Or just ?mypackage.  Writing R Extensions recommends package?mypackage,
> with ?mypackage also working if that name isn't taken.  However, the
> advice is ignored more than it is followed.
>
> > vignette(...)
> > library(help = mypackage)
> > ?mycommand
> > home page
> > WISHLIST file
> > NEWS file
> > THANKS file
> > svn log
> >
> > I personally would give a much higher priority to a standardized
> > place to find change information.  Some packages provide it.
> > Some don't which is very frustrating since you see a new version
> > and have no idea what has changed.  If they do document it you
> > often have to download the source just to get at the change information.
>
> Where do you put it?  I put it in inst/ChangeLog, which ends up
> installed in the package root as ChangeLog.
>
> Whenever this has come up in the past, there have been several
> proposals, but no consensus.  So, to encourage consensus, I've got a
> proposal:
>
> Why don't we vote on a location, with every voter agreeing to follow the
> majority?  The only condition I'd put on it is that it should be
> something that gets installed, hence somewhere in inst, but I'd be happy
> to change the name if ChangeLog doesn't win.
>
> My vote is for inst/ChangeLog.
>
> Duncan Murdoch
>
>
> >
> >
> >
> > On Nov 14, 2007 8:22 PM, roger koenker <roger at ysidro.econ.uiuc.edu> wrote:
> >> An extremely modest proposal:
> >>
> >> It would be nice if packages could have a FAQ and if
> >>
> >>        faq(package.name)
> >>
> >> would produce this faq.  And if, by default
> >>
> >>        faq()
> >>        FAQ()
> >>
> >> would produce the admirable R faq...  Apologies in advance
> >> if there is already a mechanism like this, but help.search()
> >> didn't reveal anything.
> >>
> >> url:    www.econ.uiuc.edu/~roger                Roger Koenker
> >> email   rkoenker at uiuc.edu                       Department of Economics
> >> vox:    217-333-4558                            University of Illinois
> >> fax:    217-244-6678                            Champaign, IL 61820
> >>
> >> ______________________________________________
> >> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> >>
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>
>



[Rd] faqs
Gabor Grothendieck