From maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch  Fri Apr 29 16:17:44 2011
From: maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch (Martin Maechler)
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2011 16:17:44 +0200
Subject: [Rd] request for R-exts addition
In-Reply-To: <4DB97449.7040609@ufl.edu>
References: <4DB97449.7040609@ufl.edu>
Message-ID: <19898.51336.279623.134281@stat.math.ethz.ch>

>>>>> Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com>
>>>>>     on Thu, 28 Apr 2011 10:06:01 -0400 writes:

    >   would it be possible / make sense to copy some of the
    > information in ?news into the R-exts manual, where package
    > writers are most likely (?)  to look for it?  

sure...

    > The information therein seems more appropriate for the
    > extensions manual ...

you mean when we (R core) add extensions to package handling, Rd
syntax, the C API, ... and only report it in NEWS instead of
also updating the  R Extensions  manual?
Well, that happens as you can imagine.

In some cases, the entry in NEWS will say that a feature is
experimental, so we don't want to document it yet "in stone", as
we expect the details to change.

But apart from those, I'm sure it will also happen otherwise,
since most of R core have more fun writing code than manuals ....
but when we are "called to duty" we typically eventually oblige ;-)

So, yes indeed, it makes very much sense to keep the manual as
up-to-date as possible, and some of us  consider the manual to
be an important part of R's source tarball.

So, patches  and even other (concrete!) proposals for
improvement are welcome.
Ideally using texinfo syntax or even better a patch towards
a current version of the manual
	 <Rsource>/doc/manual/R-exts.texi 
from subversion, a nightly tarball, or simply
      https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/doc/manual/R-exts.texi

With many thanks in advance,

Martin Maechler, 
ETH Zurich



[Rd] request for R-exts addition
Martin Maechler