[Rd] raw data documentation

[Heinz Tuechler]

Dear Developers,

after several discussions on r-help I got the impression that the
"standard" R distribution, including the recommended packages, does not
offer much to document raw data, imported into R.
Hmisc has some functionality in this respect, and others like Richard
Heiberger solved some other aspects, but I think there could be a more
unified approach, which, of course needs the support from the core
developers to become "standard".
In particular I am looking for is a possibility to label variables, label
values and add other information. Of course, all this is possible by adding
attributes, but most attributes are lost when indexing/subsetting.
>From many helpful suggestions of others I learned that this can be resolved
by defining a class and corresponding methods, as is done for variable
labels in Hmisc.
For now I drafted something more general for my personal use, but before
continuing on this I want to know, if there is some intention at the core
developer team to work on the question of raw data documentation.

Greetings,

Heinz Tüchler