From bellis@hsph.harvard.edu  Fri May 25 18:17:14 2001
From: bellis@hsph.harvard.edu (Byron Ellis)
Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 13:17:14 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: RE^2: [Rd] New generic functions in "R base" {was `truncate'}
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.31.0105251715400.1160-100000@gannet.stats>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.10.10105251311040.18933-100000@hsph.harvard.edu>

I think the proposal was for something along the lines of Perl's CPAN
module (or ActiveState's PPM for that matter)---sure, you have to update
indices periodically, but whatever. Perhaps some sort HTTP based system
for performing full text queries (since the database for that sort of
thing will undoubtably be large) would be in order, but the spirit of the
idea is certainly a good one---especially for new users (students, etc)
who don't know the system like the back of their hand. 'sides, kids these
days aren't used to things like manpages and apropos. ;-)

Byron Ellis (bellis@hsph.harvard.edu)

On Fri, 25 May 2001, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:

> On Fri, 25 May 2001, Paul Gilbert wrote:
> 
> > PG> Some search/browse capability sure would be nice and I think this
> > PG> problem is going to get worse with the elimination of function.html in R
> > PG> 1.3.0.  Perhaps there is a possibility of putting a giant index of all
> > PG> functions in all packages on CRAN?
> >
> > BDR>Not only is it nice, but we do already have it, twice, in fact!
> > BDR>
> > BDR>There are two search/browse facilities for all current libraries (and I
> > BDR>mean that, not packages), namely help.search() and the Java-based HTML
> > BDR>search.  Try them some time!
> >
> > Brian
> >
> > Yes, I have tried these and they are very useful, but I believe they only work for
> > installed packages. If I am wrong about that then something else is broken since your
> > example gives this for me:
> >
> > > help.search("confidence interval")
> > No help files found with alias or title matching `confidence interval'
> 
> Nothing does uninstalled packages, as R has no means of knowing about
> them!  help.search does search un-loaded packages, as in my example.  In
> fact the same set as the function list (on Unix).  Looks as if something
> may be wrong your end: if MASS is in some library it should be found.
> 
> [1] ".GlobalEnv"    "package:ctest" "Autoloads"     "package:base"
> > help.search("confidence interval")
> Help files with alias or title matching `confidence interval':
> Type `?FOO' to inspect entry `FOO(PKG) TITLE'.
> 
> confint(MASS)                 Confidence Intervals for Model Parameters
> ...
> 
> -- 
> Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk
> Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
> University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
> 1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
> Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595
> 
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RE^2: [Rd] New generic functions in "R base" {was `truncate'}
Byron Ellis