From ross at biostat.ucsf.edu  Thu Dec 17 18:42:22 2009
From: ross at biostat.ucsf.edu (Ross Boylan)
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2009 09:42:22 -0800
Subject: [Rd] ?setGeneric garbled (PR#14153)
In-Reply-To: <19242.16131.942089.481511@lynne.math.ethz.ch>
References: <20091217011512.AE18B2831FE2@mail.pubhealth.ku.dk>
	<19242.16131.942089.481511@lynne.math.ethz.ch>
Message-ID: <1261071742.12277.11.camel@corn.betterworld.us>

On Thu, 2009-12-17 at 15:24 +0100, Martin Maechler wrote:
> >>>>> Ross Boylan <ross at biostat.ucsf.edu>
> >>>>>     on Thu, 17 Dec 2009 02:15:12 +0100 (CET) writes:
> 
>     > Full_Name: Ross Boylan
>     > Version: 2.10.0
>     > OS: Windows XP
>     > Submission from: (NULL) (198.144.201.14)
> 
> 
>     > Some of the help for setGeneric seems to have been garbled.  In the section
>     > "Basic Use", 5th paragraph (where the example counts as a single line 3rd
>     > paragraph) it says
>     > <quote>
>     > Note that calling 'setGeneric()' in this form is not strictly
>     > necessary before calling 'setMethod()' for the same function.  If
>     > the function specified in the call to 'setMethod' is not generic,
>     > 'setMethod' will execute the call to 'setGeneric' itself.
>     > Declaring explicitly that you want the function to be generic can
>     > be considered better programming style; the only difference in the
>     > result, however, is that not doing so produces a You cannot (and
>     > never need to) create an explicit generic version of the primitive
>     > functions in the base package.
>     > <quote>
> 
>     > The stuff after the semi-colon of the final sentence is garbled, or at least
>     > unparseable by me.  Probably something got deleted by mistake.
> 
> That's very peculiar.
> 
> The corresponding  methods/man/setGeneric.Rd file has not been
> changed in a while,
> but I don't see your problem.

The help from R launched directly from the R shortcut on my desktop
looks fine, in both 2.10 and 2.8.

I closed all my emacs sessions and restarted, but ?setGeneric produces
the same garbled text.  I also tried telling ESS to use a different
working directory when launching R; it didn't help.


The last sentence of this paragraph is also garbled:
<quote>
 The description above is the effect when the package that owns the
     non-generic function has not created an implicit generic version.
     Otherwise, it is this implicit generic function that is us_same_
     version of the generic function will be created each time.
</quote>

Weird.

P.S. http://bugs.r-project.org was extremely sluggish, even timing out,
both yesterday and today for me.



[Rd] ?setGeneric garbled (PR#14153)
Ross Boylan