From simon.urbanek at r-project.org  Thu Nov 15 15:57:23 2007
From: simon.urbanek at r-project.org (Simon Urbanek)
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 09:57:23 -0500
Subject: [Rd] faqs
In-Reply-To: <971536df0711142055t652a618jbac4b5f23af48652@mail.gmail.com>
References: <D4F43809-6D74-4FA4-92AB-0A9248072A1A@ysidro.econ.uiuc.edu>
	<971536df0711141753r5753c3c5i6faf438bd65ebc03@mail.gmail.com>
	<473BB9E1.4020001@stats.uwo.ca>
	<971536df0711142055t652a618jbac4b5f23af48652@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4ACB4F00-5E33-4ADD-B6BD-80324ACAAFCA@r-project.org>


On Nov 14, 2007, at 11:55 PM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:

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

I vote for NEWS for reasons above plus because that's what I use in my  
packages already ;).
IMHO it should be installed automatically if present, i.e. it  
shouldn't be necessary to have it in inst/NEWS, just plain NEWS should  
suffice.

Cheers,
Simon


>
> 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
>>
>>
>
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>



[Rd] faqs
Simon Urbanek