From maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch  Fri Dec 18 09:35:25 2009
From: maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch (maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch)
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2009 09:35:25 +0100 (CET)
Subject: [Rd] ?setGeneric garbled (PR#14153)
Message-ID: <20091218083525.A7169282EF5A@mail.pubhealth.ku.dk>

>>>>> "RossB" == Ross Boylan <ross at biostat.ucsf.edu>
>>>>>     on Thu, 17 Dec 2009 09:42:22 -0800 writes:

    RossB> 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.

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

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


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

    RossB> Weird.

Very weird, indeed!

However, in any case, this is a bug of your version / installation of
 [Emacs + ESS]
and not of R.
So the topic should move to the 
ESS-help list ess-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
and you could possibly additionally also send an "official Ess bug report":
   [iESS] emacs-menu, last line:  "Send bug report"




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

Maybe the world climate is a bit more important in Copenhagen,
at the moment, than R's bugs server? ;-)
{{bugs.r-project.org *is* indeed located there}}

Thanks for the report, but as we've established, the bug is not
with R, really, but with your installation/version of the  R <->
Emacs interface.

Regards,
Martin



[Rd] ?setGeneric garbled (PR#14153)
maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch