From simon.urbanek at r-project.org  Fri Apr 25 16:41:19 2008
From: simon.urbanek at r-project.org (Simon Urbanek)
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2008 10:41:19 -0400
Subject: [Rd] RFC:  What should ?foo do?
In-Reply-To: <4811D298.4030102@biostat.ku.dk>
References: <48110D8B.10300@stats.uwo.ca> <48115131.7000402@comcast.net>
	<4811B9EC.3010701@stats.uwo.ca> <4811D298.4030102@biostat.ku.dk>
Message-ID: <8CBFD83C-9EAE-443D-836B-03F3B14CA88F@r-project.org>


On Apr 25, 2008, at 8:46 AM, Peter Dalgaard wrote:

> Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>> I haven't done it, but I suspect we could introduce special behaviour
>> for ??foo very easily.  We could even have a whole hierarchy:
>>
>> ?foo, ??foo, ???foo, ????foo, ...
>>
>>
> Heh, that's rather nice, actually. In words, that could read
>
> ?foo: tell me about foo!
> ??foo: what can you tell me about foo?
> ???foo: what can you tell me about things like foo?
> ????foo: I don't know what I'm looking for but it might be something
> related foo?
>
> You do have to be careful about messing with ?, though. I think many
> people, including me, would pretty quickly go nuts if ?par suddenly
> didn't work the way we're used to.
>

I strongly agree with that.

One potential way out could be to offer some extended fall-back in  
case the man page doesn't exist. (I'm not sure I like that, either,  
but I could get used to it ;).)

I don't really have a problem with status quo and I think if you want  
proper advanced searches, you should be using (or implementing them)  
in the GUIs anyway. That is what the new users will be using (and  
looking for) in the first place. If they have to count the question  
marks instead, they won't know about it (although I like the idea for  
advanced users).

Cheers,
Simon

>



[Rd] RFC: What should ?foo do?
Simon Urbanek