[Rd] Suggestion: help(<package name>)

[Thomas Lumley]

On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, Henrik Bengtsson wrote:

> Kurt Hornik wrote:
>> 
>> How would this be different from the results of
>> 
>> 	help(package = <package name>)
>> 
>> ?
>
> Thanks for that. I was not aware of this one; I like how DESCRIPTION is 
> included and how the index is divided in functions and dataset, e.g. 
> help(package=MASS). May I also suggest that the CITATION file is included 
> here, e.g. help(package=foreign).
>
> My suggestion differ in the sense that 1) additional information may be 
> included such as which functions are "main" functions and which are of less 
> interest, and 2) that it would show up in the HTML index page too.
>

For point (1) you can write your own INDEX file, in which case it can have 
more information than the auto-generated one.  A simple example is the 
survey package.  My description of the INDEX file in courses has been that 
it contains a line for every "sufficiently interesting" function. Writing 
R Extensions says that "normally this file is missing" but I think this is 
descriptive rather than prescriptive.

2) seems sensible.  The INDEX file is included in the CRAN page and I find 
it useful there.


 	-thomas