[Rd] package encoding warning

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Sat, 30 Jul 2011, baptiste auguie wrote:

> Dear list,
>
> I'd like to get rid off a couple of warnings that have appeared in
> checking my package on CRAN (I did not find them on my local machine
> before submission). What puzzles me is that different platforms return
> different warnings, only one of which I recognise as my obvious
> mistake. The check results are at
> http://cran.r-project.org/web/checks/check_results_planar.html
>
> r-devel-linux-x86_64-gcc-fedora
> complains about unused variable in c++ code; this I understand as my
> mistake, I'll fix it.
>
> r-patched-windows-ix86+x86_64
> is happy, no warning
>
> r-release-macosx-ix86
> checking examples ... WARNING
> checking a package with encoding 'UTF-8' in an ASCII locale
>
> This one really puzzles me: I have a Encoding: UTF-8 directive in
> DESCRIPTION, precisely because I thought it would take care of
> encoding issues such as with my surname.

Your 'thought' was unfounded: please re-read the relevant sections of 
the R manuals.

> What does this mean, and what should I do about it?

It means that your package cannot be checked correctly in that locale.
You can avoid it by following the recommendations to use only ASCII, 
as you did in this message (or at least, it was ASCII by the time it 
reached me).

>
> Similarly,
> r-oldrel-macosx-ix86
> checking whether package 'planar' can be installed ... WARNING
> Found the following significant warnings:
> Warning: 'DESCRIPTION' file has 'Encoding' field and re-encoding is not possible
>
> has me perplexed.

Same: non-ASCII UTF-8 strings cannot be represented in the C (aka 
ASCII) locale.

Now, I think it is a mistake to be checking in the C locale on Mac OS 
X as no end user will deliberately be using it, but that is the 
default for batch use on many OSes.  *But* the same encoding issues 
for European names will occur in, say, the Japanese Windows locale.


> Best regards,
>
> baptiste
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>

-- 
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