From andy_liaw at merck.com  Thu May  7 19:48:06 2009
From: andy_liaw at merck.com (Liaw, Andy)
Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 13:48:06 -0400
Subject: [Rd] proposed changes to RSiteSearch
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From: Duncan Murdoch 
> 
> On 5/7/2009 10:18 AM, Jonathan Baron wrote:
> > On 05/07/09 10:05, Liaw, Andy wrote:
> >> Can someone in R Core please take a look at the attached patches to
> >> RSiteSearch() and its help page?  I guess Jon is planning 
> some changes
> >> on his site.  Jon:  could you elaborate on what the patch does?
> > 
> > The idea is simply to remove the mail archives, so the 
> search will be
> > only of functions' help pages.  Eventually I will also add package
> > vignettes, but I don't think we need anything special for that.  I
> > can't imagine that someone would want to search just 
> vignettes and not
> > help pages, or the reverse.
> > 
> > The reasons are: 1. The mail archives are becoming increasingly
> > difficult and time consuming for me to maintain.  2. There are now
> > three other ways of searching mail archives, all of which seem much
> > better than mine, but there seem to be no other good ways to search
> > help pages for functions, and, indeed, the new RSiteSearch packages
> > does only functions.  3. With only functions it would be much easier
> > for someone to set up a complete mirror of my site, which 
> seems like a
> > good idea.
> 
> I'll incorporate the changes if you like.  What do you think 
> of the idea 
> of adding a gmane (or other archive) search to your results 
> page?  Then 
> if someone doesn't like what the man pages show, you can send them 
> somewhere else, rather than leaving them to find out the 
> other resources 
> themselves.
> 
> gmane has sample code for this on their search page 
> search.gmane.org, so 
> it looks reasonably easy.  I'd suggest following their last example, 
> with a drop-down box to select mailing lists, with 
> comp.lang.r.* as an 
> option for "all lists".
> 
> Duncan Murdoch

Actually, I was thinking about a possible RHelpSearch() in addition, if
Jon is no longer going to include the R-help archive in the search.  I
used the current RSiteSearch() a lot more for searching R-help archive
than functions in packages.  Ideas?  comments?

Andy 
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[Rd] proposed changes to RSiteSearch
Liaw, Andy