From murdoch at stats.uwo.ca  Thu Nov 15 16:53:28 2007
From: murdoch at stats.uwo.ca (Duncan Murdoch)
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 10:53:28 -0500
Subject: [Rd] NEWS file (was  faqs)
In-Reply-To: <4ACB4F00-5E33-4ADD-B6BD-80324ACAAFCA@r-project.org>
References: <D4F43809-6D74-4FA4-92AB-0A9248072A1A@ysidro.econ.uiuc.edu>
	<971536df0711141753r5753c3c5i6faf438bd65ebc03@mail.gmail.com>
	<473BB9E1.4020001@stats.uwo.ca>
	<971536df0711142055t652a618jbac4b5f23af48652@mail.gmail.com>
	<4ACB4F00-5E33-4ADD-B6BD-80324ACAAFCA@r-project.org>
Message-ID: <473C6B78.5090605@stats.uwo.ca>

On 11/15/2007 9:57 AM, Simon Urbanek wrote:
> 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.

And you're volunteering to make that change?

Duncan

> 
> 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
>>>
>>>
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>
>>



[Rd] NEWS file (was faqs)
Duncan Murdoch