From bellis at hsph.harvard.edu  Thu Jan 22 22:56:44 2004
From: bellis at hsph.harvard.edu (Byron Ellis)
Date: Thu Jan 22 22:57:15 2004
Subject: [Rd] ChangeLog for R packages {was "Wish list"}
In-Reply-To: <20040122132152.Y15307@jimmy.harvard.edu>
References: <bgeu00p7bpvo40ll4av8mvh7md93vlpq99@4ax.com>
	<Pine.LNX.4.44.0401221133420.5481-100000@itasca.stat.uiowa.edu>
	<20040122132152.Y15307@jimmy.harvard.edu>
Message-ID: <DE8188EE-4D25-11D8-9B35-000393956206@hsph.harvard.edu>

An R structure wouldn't be bad either---you can output whatever format  
you want and less reliance on other languages can't hurt. For that  
matter I wouldn't be averse to seeing DESCRIPTION going that way (not  
that its all that difficult to parse I suppose). In any case, while I'm  
thinking about it, ?DESCRIPTION would be handy.

On Jan 22, 2004, at 1:21 PM, Robert Gentleman wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 22, 2004 at 11:37:26AM -0600, Luke Tierney wrote:
>> On Wed, 21 Jan 2004, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, 21 Jan 2004 06:48:04 -0800, you wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Some of us don't mind using XML because it gives us much more
>>>> flexibility to do interesting things with our data quite easily at  
>>>> the
>>>> expense of a little markup.
>>>
>>> Would it be easy to write a function that read the XML and produced
>>> something like the current NEWS format?
>>>
>>> If that's easy, then one option is to suggest that people keep the
>>> original source in XML, with the BUILD process doing the conversion,
>>> but allow people to edit the human-readable version directly if they
>>> prefer.
>>
>> Duncan TL's suggestion to use Using R for the mark-up structure seems
>> very reasonable to me.  Asking package authors to write in XML
>> directly, or anything that would make doing that the path of least
>> resistance, is I think a non-starter.
>>
>
>   I agree completely. We need to be careful about making package
>   writing more difficult than it already is (and for some it is
>   very difficult).
>
>   Robert
>
>
>
>> luke
>>
>>
>> --  
>> Luke Tierney
>> University of Iowa                  Phone:             319-335-3386
>> Department of Statistics and        Fax:               319-335-3017
>>    Actuarial Science
>> 241 Schaeffer Hall                  email:      luke@stat.uiowa.edu
>> Iowa City, IA 52242                 WWW:  http://www.stat.uiowa.edu
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-devel@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
>> https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>
> --  
> +---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> -----+
> | Robert Gentleman                 phone : (617) 632-5250               
>      |
> | Associate Professor              fax:   (617)  632-2444               
>      |
> | Department of Biostatistics      office: M1B20                        
>      |
> | Harvard School of Public Health  email: rgentlem@jimmy.harvard.edu    
>      |
> +---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> -----+
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>
---
Byron Ellis (bellis@hsph.harvard.edu)
"Oook" -- The Librarian


[Rd] ChangeLog for R packages {was "Wish list"}
Byron Ellis