[Rd] proposed changes to RSiteSearch

[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)