[Rd] author field in Rd files
Martin Maechler
maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch
Fri Aug 27 22:54:19 CEST 2004
Since nobody else has reacted yet:
>>>>> "Timothy" == Timothy H Keitt <tkeitt at mail.utexas.edu>
>>>>> on Wed, 25 Aug 2004 16:53:39 -0500 writes:
Timothy> I noticed in the extension manual that the
Timothy> \author{} entry should refer to the author of the
Timothy> Rd file and not the code documented. I had always
Timothy> interpreted it as the author of the code, not the
Timothy> documentation. I wonder if others also find this
Timothy> ambiguous.
I tend to agree with you. Very often the author means both the
author of the R object and the help page.
In the few other cases, for me, I was the help page author
(rather than the other way around) and I think I usually have
done what you suggest: Showed the author of the code and
sometimes also mentioned myself (as docu-author), but typically
only if I had also improved on the code.
Timothy> Its generally not an issue, except when there is a
Timothy> third party writing documentation. It looks like
Timothy> they wrote all the code. Would it make sense to
Timothy> have two entries, one for the documentation author
Timothy> and one for the code author if different?
I think in such a case \author{..} should contain both the code
and documentation authors.
In a package with many help pages, a possibility is also to
specify \author{..} and \references{....} in only a few help
pages and for the others, inside the \seealso{...} section
have a sentence pointing to the main help page(s), such as
\seealso{
..............
For references etc, \code{\link{<mainpage>}}.
}
Regards,
Martin Maechler
More information about the R-devel
mailing list