From Kurt.Hornik@ci.tuwien.ac.at  Fri Mar 13 07:21:02 1998
From: Kurt.Hornik@ci.tuwien.ac.at (Kurt Hornik)
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 08:21:02 +0100
Subject: "`R notes' should be better"
In-Reply-To: <199803121717.SAA13033@sophie.ethz.ch>
References: <Pine.OSF.3.95.980312092714.1585B-100000@io.uwinnipeg.ca>
 <199803121717.SAA13033@sophie.ethz.ch>
Message-ID: <199803130721.IAA05393@aragorn.ci.tuwien.ac.at>

>>>>> Martin Maechler writes:

> 	[CC'ed  to R-devel, not R-help]
>>>>> "Bill" == Bill Simpson <wsimpson@uwinnipeg.ca> writes:

Bill> Thanks very much Douglas for the pointer to nlm.  Maybe the
Bill> "Notes on R" maintainer can add at least a mention of nlm in the
> 	   ======================
Bill> section on nonlinear fitting?

Bill> .....

Bill> (This example could replace the current nonlinear fitting section
Bill> in "Notes on R")


> You are talking of  <CRAN>/doc/Rnotes.ps, or Rnotes.tgz respectively,
> yes?

> The first page states both R & R as authors (beside Venables &
> D.Smith).  However, I doubt if they consider themselves as
> 'maintainers' of these notes (due to lack of time), or do you?

> 	Ross?  Robert?

> The problem is that these notes need more work than just ('nls' <->
> 'nlm').

> Maybe I should ask again for volunteers, or maybe even a discussion 
> on what could / should be done.

> The notes have several sections (organized in different *.tex files)
> in Rnotes.tgz.  Could(/should) we have different authors
> (ie. volunteers from among you) for these sections?

> About a year ago or so, Kurt Hornik proposed that these notes should
> become chapter 1 -- n of ``the book'' where the current things in
> RHOME/doc/manual/Man.tex are just the appendices (they already *are*
> appendices, currently).  R & R instead, originally thought (and have
> also started ??) of completely rewriting from scratch these chapters
> (1 -- n).

> Which should be done (and by whom) ?

> In the case of "R notes upgrading, it'd make sense if someone first
> works thru the current notes and makes them (somewhat) ``compatible''
> with the Rd.sty that we currently use for the help-manual (i.e. the
> doc/manual/... things).

We DEFINITELY need to do something about R notes very soon.  The 0.61
tree should be frozen by this weekend, 0.62 needs the bug fixes that we
know of, the re-implementation of factors (asap, please!) and docs for
the new graphics things (dev.xxx), but that's about it, I would say (we
can have the `real' make install things later).

Working on Rnotes should at least come right after that.

I am no longer sure about LaTeX and my suggestion from about a year ago,
though.  I would more be in favor of having a Texinfo version as I could
also use this on-line via info, but perhaps everyone else thinks that I
should use now-free Netscape for doing that (my experience is that the
conversion Texinfo -> HTML is trivial whereas I am never sure about
latex2html or hyperlatex).

In any case, I perhaps could try to go through Rnotes sometimes this
weekend to find out what most urgently needs fixing.

-k
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
r-devel mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html
Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe"
(in the "body", not the subject !)  To: r-devel-request@stat.math.ethz.ch
_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._


"`R notes' should be better"
Kurt Hornik