R-alpha: Re: Separation of Program & Doc; REQUIRING Perl5 [was: New Version]

[Paul Gilbert]

>B. Unix users without Perl, or  Windows / Mac  users:
 >  Besides the base tar/zip file,
 >  they need to get the precompiled online help --- as distributed by
CRAN,
 >  in addition, and then can use (but not enhance conveniently) the
help.

This does not seem unreasonable for Windows/Mac users since, if I
understand the situation correctly, they will also need a pre-compiled
version of some C and Fortran. For Unix users without Perl5 the
situation is not so obvious. (It might be easier to distribute Perl5
than precompiled versions of all possible Unix versions.)

Also, for users always connected to the Internet, it is not really clear
that they always need and should be forced to have the help on their own
machine. Effectively it is, or can be made, available on line. There are
advantages to this: the help can be updated and corrected on the fly.
(Assuming, of course, that it is not perfect to begin with.)

Paul Gilbert


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