[Rd] Links to non-vignette documentation

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Thu, 23 Feb 2006, hadley wickham wrote:

>> I think you need to define `vignette'.  I understand the usage to mean an
>> Sweave file.  There are ways to include other PDF files, and you can write
>> your own index file.  R can't do that for you as it cannot read PDF (it
>> can read Sweave).
>
> How can I write an index file with a pointer to my pdf?  Should I
> provide a code snippet to run system(paste(getOption("pdfviewer"),
> system.file("doc/my.pdf", package="mypackage"), "&"))?

Just add a hyperlink in inst/doc/index.html to foo.pdf and let the browser 
do the rest.  The grid/doc/index.html is a suitable template.

> Perhaps my problem is thinking of a vignette as a "A brief verbal
> description of a person, place, etc.; a short descriptive or evocative
> episode in a play, etc." rather than a Sweave document.
>
>> I am not aware of any other sort of `package help index', although one
>> could arge the toss about Compiled HTML.
>
> What about (eg.) help(package=grid)?  This is where vignettes are
> listed by name (and location).  I would like to be able put my pdf
> into a similar list.

Which is really library(help=grid).  Vignettes there are a recent 
addition, and we need the author to tell us.  It looks to me as if that 
means strict-sense vignettes (it gets the info from the vignette 
metadata).  If there were a mechanism for authors to list PDF docs and 
titles in a two-column format in some file in inst/docs, the installation 
tools could provide more support.  (I think this is Kurt's area.)

[I am not arguing that this could not be better documented, but I think 
most things are possible by digging around.]

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595