Documentation, more, more

Daniel Vainsencher danielv at netvision.net.il
Fri Sep 12 08:31:01 UTC 2003


SM2 will provide a basis for a solution to that. Basically, you'd have
release-linked resources that can contain documentation. Writing tools
that integrate those into the Swiki and expose them systematically would
then be a SMOP ;-)

Daniel

"Richard A. O'Keefe" <ok at cs.otago.ac.nz> wrote:
> 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.



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