[Rd] proposed changes to RSiteSearch

[Gabor Grothendieck]

But help really needs to be delivered with R, not an addon.
It should not be necessary to know how to install packages
just to get this level of help. I think it needs to be where it
is now.

On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 4:02 PM, Liaw, Andy <andy_liaw at merck.com> wrote:
>
>  I agree!  Recall, though, I had added the RSiteSearch() functionality
> to the Rgui under Windows (Help / search.r-project.org...), so if
> RSiteSearch() is taken out, this need to go, too.
>
> Best,
> Andy
>
> From: Jonathan Baron
>>
>> There is something to be said for taking all of these functions,
>> including the original RSiteSearch, out of utils and putting them in
>> the new RSiteSearch package.  These are the sorts of things that will
>> get revised frequently, and this way (I think) we won't have to bother
>> whoever takes care of utils, which is part of the regular R
>> distribution.
>>
>> I'm adding Spencer Graves to the cc list.  Maybe he is interested in
>> doing this.
>>
>> Jon
>>
>> On 05/07/09 20:54, Romain Francois wrote:
>> > We could have a few functions similar to RSiteSearch or
>> gmaneSearch I
>> > just posted and then cook a summary html page with R ...
>> >
>> > Here is a function that grabs relevant groups from gmane:
>> >
>> > gmaneGroups <- function( prefix = "gmane.comp.lang.r." ){
>> >     url <- URLencode( sprintf(
>> > "http://dir.gmane.org/index.php?prefix=%s", prefix) )
>> >     txt <- grep( '^<tr.*<td align=right.*<a', readLines(
>> url ), value =
>> > TRUE )
>> >
>> >     rx <- '^.*?<a href="(.*?)">(.*?)</a>.*<td>(.*?)</td>.*$'
>> >     out <- data.frame(
>> >         url = gsub( rx, "\\1", txt ),
>> >         group = gsub( rx, "\\2", txt ),
>> >         description = gsub( rx, "\\3", txt ),
>> >         stringsAsFactors = FALSE
>> >         )
>> >     out$group <- sub( "...", ".*", out$group, fixed = TRUE )
>> >     out
>> > }
>> >
>> > I'll clean this up and write a man page if there is
>> interest in adding
>> > this to R, but this might be more appropriate in a package,
>> for example:
>> > http://r-forge.r-project.org/projects/rsitesearch/
>> >
>> > Romain
>> >
>> > Liaw, Andy wrote:
>> > > From: Jonathan Baron
>> > >
>> > >> On 05/07/09 13:48, Liaw, Andy wrote:
>> > >>
>> > >>> From: Duncan Murdoch
>> > >>>
>> > >>>> I'll incorporate the changes if you like
>> > >>>>
>> > >> Yes.  Please do.  I understand that it won't take effect
>> for a while.
>> > >> When it does, I'll change my site.
>> > >>
>> > >>   What do you think
>> > >>
>> > >>>> of the idea
>> > >>>> of adding a gmane (or other archive) search to your results
>> > >>>> page?  Then
>> > >>>> if someone doesn't like what the man pages show, you can
>> > >>>>
>> > >> send them
>> > >>
>> > >>>> somewhere else, rather than leaving them to find out the
>> > >>>> other resources
>> > >>>> themselves.
>> > >>>>
>> > >>>> gmane has sample code for this on their search page
>> > >>>> search.gmane.org, so
>> > >>>> it looks reasonably easy.  I'd suggest following their
>> > >>>>
>> > >> last example,
>> > >>
>> > >>>> with a drop-down box to select mailing lists, with
>> > >>>> comp.lang.r.* as an
>> > >>>> option for "all lists".
>> > >>>>
>> > >>>> Duncan Murdoch
>> > >>>>
>> > >> Good idea.  I will do this.  But there are also two
>> other good search
>> > >> engines.  Maybe I'll add all three search alternatives.
>> But then,
>> > >> according to Sheena Iyengar, people won't choose any!  Hmm.
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >>> Actually, I was thinking about a possible RHelpSearch() in
>> > >>>
>> > >> addition, if
>> > >>
>> > >>> Jon is no longer going to include the R-help archive in the
>> > >>>
>> > >> search.  I
>> > >>
>> > >>> used the current RSiteSearch() a lot more for searching
>> > >>>
>> > >> R-help archive
>> > >>
>> > >>> than functions in packages.  Ideas?  comments?
>> > >>>
>> > >> This is OK with me, but I don't want to do it.  I guess it would
>> > >> search gmane.  MarkMail is also pretty good, as is
>> > >> http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/ All these are much better than
>> > >> Namazu for searching the R-help list.
>> > >>
>> > >
>> > > Sorry I didn't make it clear:  I meant something like the
>> gmaneSearcg()
>> > > that Romain posted, not hitting your site.
>> > >
>> > > Best,
>> > > Andy
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >> Jon
>> > >>
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Romain Francois
>> > Independent R Consultant
>> > +33(0) 6 28 91 30 30
>> > http://romainfrancois.blog.free.fr
>> >
>>
>> --
>> Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania
>> Home page: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron
>> Editor: Judgment and Decision Making (http://journal.sjdm.org)
>>
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