Daniel Vainsencher <danielv at netvision.net.il> wrote:
	> (5) Loading and installing a package over the internet is simple,
	>     as is automatically updating one.  This also brings the documentation
	>     across; there are never _two_ downloads.
	This is the same as SM? or do they deal with depenedencies?
	
SM is in some ways easier to use.  Downloading a package from CRAN,
you have to use a web browser to find a package, then you are best
to use R to download and install it.  SM can do this from the one place.

On the other hand, if you point your browser at a CRAN site
the thing that catches your eye at the foot of the first screen
is "Installation of Packages".

They do handle dependencies.  Here's the DESCRIPTION file from the
package I got most recently:

    Package: compiler
    Version: 0.1-0
    Author: Luke Tierney <luke at stat.uiowa.edu>
    Description: byte code compiler for R
    Title: Byte Code Compiler for R
    Depends: R (>= 1.8)
    Maintainer: Luke Tierney <luke at stat.uiowa.edu>
    License: GPL

Since I have R 1.7.1 (which is the latest release; 1.8.0 has not been
officially releaseed yet), this package will not load in my copy of R.

The next thing to catch your eye after "Installation of Packages"
is
    Daily Package Check Results
    
    (Almost) all packages are tested deaily on a machine running
    Debian Linux.  The results of "R CMD check" for the current
    release versions of R, the patched and development version
    are summarized in the <A>check summary</A>.

For example, I can easily see that the HMisc package works (with some
relatively minor quibbles) in the version I have, but _doesn't_ work in
the new system.

And the next thing after _that_ is

    Writing Your Own Packages.

	I think we should think about how the Swiki and "internal
	documentation" can be made one.

I've said this before, but the _last_ thing I need is documentation
I can't reach.  My home machine is not connected to the net and won't
be.  When I install Squeak on a machine, the internal documentation
needs to be _there_.  (Yes, I also run R on my home machine.)

When you are considering getting a package from CRAN, you see
something like this:

<A>abind</B>: Combine multidimensional arrays
    Combine multi-dimensional arrays.  This is a generalization of
    cbind and rbind.  Takes a sequence of vectors, matrices, or arrays
    and produces a single array of the same or higher dimension.
    Version:      1.0-1
    Depends:      R (>= 1.5.0)
    Date:         2003-06-10
    Author:       ....
    Maintainer:   ....
    Licence:      ....
    <A>Index of Contenxt</A> (Text)
    <A>Reference Manual</A> (PDF)

So the documentation is there on the web; you can read it before you
decide to download.  But when you DO decide to download, you get the
documentation.  If someone updates the version on CRAN, you don't find
that you are suddenly looking at documentation for the new version
while running the old one.  I mislike the word "caching" here;  the
documentation I want at hand is the documentation for the packages/
change-sets/whatever that I have actually chosen to use, not some other
version, so I don't want some tool helpfully "updating" my documentation.