From Martin Maechler <maechler@stat.math.ethz.ch>  Sat Aug  2 16:55:05 1997
From: Martin Maechler <maechler@stat.math.ethz.ch> (Martin Maechler)
Date: Sat, 2 Aug 1997 17:55:05 +0200
Subject: R-alpha: Re: ?"+"; ALIAS(Arithmetic)
In-Reply-To: <199708011154.NAA20022@aragorn.ci.tuwien.ac.at> (message from
 Kurt Hornik on Fri, 1 Aug 1997 13:54:36 +0200)
Message-ID: <199708021555.RAA14833@florence.ethz.ch>

>>>>> "Kurt" == Kurt Hornik <hornik@ci.tuwien.ac.at> writes:

>>>>> Patrick Lindsey writes:
    >> Problems in R but not in S: ---------------------------
    ......

    >> 3) Some problems occur when using the help. Eg.,
    R> ?"+"
    >> sorry, no help for "Arithmetic".
    R>
    >> This occurs in R-0.49 and in R-0.50-a1 and seems to be the case for
    >> any item contained in a help file starting with a capital letter.

    Kurt> The problem is as follows.  The function help() catches the
    Kurt> special funs like "+" etc (more precisely, the arithmetic,
    Kurt> comparison, logic and extract ones) and directly assigns a topic
    Kurt> for them.

    Kurt> For "+", the topic is 'Arithmetic".  But the index file has no
    Kurt> entry for that, because (see RHOME/etc/install-help)
			.......

    Kurt> If that really is the intended usage (Martin?), then e.g. the
    Kurt> Arithmetic file should also have ALIAS(Arithmetic) in it.

Yes, this is the thing to do.

It was R&R's idea to change the usage of  ALIAS(.).
[[Again: an ALIAS(..) should be made for  EVERY  R object that is
	 documented in that man file, and sometimes even for things such as
  Special or Arithmetic
]]

The current  etc/install-help  
was made by me in order to merge the former  install-help and
install-libhelp (Kurt, this answers another question of you) and
reflects the fact that the help files in the libraries have not (yet!?)
been adapted to the new scheme.

I think, we should decide to upgrade the help files of the libraries --
(eda & mva) and ALL the 'contrib' ones !! -- to the new scheme.

The only thing: The upgrade should happen  'SIMULTANEOUSLY'
such that a simple change to etc/install-help then would make things work.
A good time to do this would be  "about now", i.e. before another alpha
release and (somewhat ?) close to THE 0.50 beta relase...

- Martin
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R-alpha: Re: ?"+"; ALIAS(Arithmetic)
Martin Maechler