[Rd] Typo(s) in proc.time.Rd and comment about ?proc.time (PR#8092)

[P Ehlers]

David,

Re: "of the order of ..." vs "on the order of ..."

My Oxford dictionary has "of (or 'in' or 'on') the order of",
so that there is no correction needed in proc.time.Rd. And, yes,
I do hear 'of', at least on the northern side of the 49th
parallel. But please don't let these comments discourage
further documentation improvement suggestions.

Peter Ehlers
U. of Calgary (Canada)

dhinds at sonic.net wrote:
> ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk wrote:
> 
>>On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 Weigand.Stephen at mayo.edu wrote:
> 
> 
>>>I just downloaded the file
>>>
>>>ftp://ftp.stat.math.ethz.ch/Software/R/R-devel.tar.gz
>>>
>>>and within proc.time.Rd, the second paragraph of the \value
>>>section contains a typo:
> 
> 
>>I believe your understanding of the English language is different from the 
>>author here, who is English.  (You on the other hand seem to think there 
>>is no need to give your country in your address when writing an addess in 
>>Denmark.)  The preferred language for R documentation is English (and not 
>>American).
> 
> 
>>>The resolution of the times will be system-specific; it is common for
>>>them to be recorded to of the order of 1/100 second, and elapsed [...]
>>>                    ^^^^^
>>>
>>>I'd say replacing "to of" with just "of" would grammatically
>>>fix the sentence.
> 
> 
>>I'd say it was correct and your correction is incorrect.  In English we 
>>say `recorded to 1/100th of a second', not `recorded 1/100th second'.
> 
> 
> The correction was incorrect, but so was the original.  I've never
> heard the expression "of the order of"; common usage (in English or
> American, as far as I know) is "on the order of".  Your "recorded to
> 1/100th of a second" is also ok.
> 
> 
>>>Second, the \note{} section for Unix-like machines reads:
>>>
>>>It is possible to compile \R without support for \code{proc.time},
>>>when the function will throw an error.
>>>
>>>I believe this is ungrammatical and suggest replacing
>>>"when the function will throw an error" with "in which
>>>case the function will throw an error".
> 
> 
>>Again, the statement given is the intended meaning.
> 
> 
> I think more clear might be, "it is possible to compile R without
> support for proc.time, when the function *would* throw an error".
> 
> -- Dave
>