RE^2: [Rd] New generic functions in "R base" {was `truncate'}

[bolker@zoo.ufl.edu]

  Just my two cents -- but --
  I don't really care if it's in the search path or not, I think the
biggest help to this particular problem would be getting a full-text
search engine going and incorporated into the R-project home page.  Of
course, it's easy for me to say this since I don't have the time or
expertise to do it myself ...
  (One minor can of worms that occurs to me is what sites (if any) to
index in addition to CRAN.  I often look at S-news, Jim Lindsey's site,
Frank Harrell's site, etc., etc., but there could be a problem with
indexing "unofficial" sites and then having to answer myriad questions
from people about how to make things work in R ...)

  Ben Bolker

On Wed, 23 May 2001, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:

> On Wed, 23 May 2001, Warnes, Gregory R wrote:
>
> >
> > > From: Martin Maechler [mailto:maechler@stat.math.ethz.ch]
> > > Sent: Friday, May 18, 2001 11:30 AM
> > > To: gregory_r_warnes@groton.pfizer.com
> > > Subject: RE^2: [Rd] New generic functions in "R base" {was `truncate'}
> > >
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > > Apropos  ci() :
> > >
> > >  There's the very generally useful  confint() function in MASS.
> > >  Since MASS will become one of the recommended packages `real soon now',
> > >  I doubt that we'd want yet another one in `base'.
> > >  Or do you have reasons to prefer your ci() over V&R's  confint() ?
> > >  If so, it may make quite some sense discussing that on R-devel..
> > >
> > > Regards, Martin
> >
> > Actually, I wasn't aware of the confint() function in MASS.  My ci()
> > function doesn't have any particular advantage.
> >
> >
> > Actually, this illustrates a problem and raises another issue.  As it turns
> > out, I'm not the only one to have (unnecessarily) re-implemented the
> > features of confint() because it didn't occur to me to look in MASS for it.
> > I'm sure that others have had the same thing happen.
> >
> > Shouldn't such generally useful functions get moved into base or some other
> > package that is on the default search path?
>
> Interesting Q.  Partly for perfomance reasons and partly for embedded
> applications, we are trying to make base a lot smaller.  The agreed idea
> seems to be to have a tiny core for R and lots of added functionality.
> Unfortunately whereas S seems to be able to have long search paths without
> performance penalty, we haven't found the right tricks in R (although it is
> much better than it once was).  So just adding MASS to the path has
> something like a 5% penalty (last timed just pre-1.2.0).  And careful
> observers may have noticed that R gets a little slower (on almost) each
> release.
>
> One step in this direction that 1.3.0 will have is load-on-demand modules,
> that is compiled code that is not loaded until used.  This allowed us to
> avoid a 50% increase in code size.
>
> Brian
>
>

-- 
318 Carr Hall                                bolker@zoo.ufl.edu
Zoology Department, University of Florida    http://www.zoo.ufl.edu/bolker
Box 118525                                   (ph)  352-392-5697
Gainesville, FL 32611-8525                   (fax) 352-392-3704

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